ALPHA: Heir Of The Four

Chapter Six | Part I*

I turned from the setting sun and faced Ava-Rain once more. She was no longer seated on the couch but at the breakfast bar. Even with the distance, I knew she was intrigued, that she had been listening attentively and that she wanted more. "What possible chance did the bearers of desire and emotions stand, especially if those very desires and emotions could be controlled? Hi-jacked? Manipulated? Silenced?"

She shifted in her seat slightly and I could only assume that she wondered if my question had been rhetorical or not. Slowly, I crossed the room towards her, refusing to drop my gaze from hers. "Well, I think," she answered softly, "I think that the power of one's desires and emotions should never be underestimated. I think that if pushed, if really pushed, those desires and emotions will push back," she ended more confidently.

"Exactly. The red and blue birthed fierce warriors. Fire and Water combined resulted in an unstoppable driving force. Imagine, Ava-Rain, a point in your life when you were angry, truly and undeniably angry; an anger so strong and so powerful that you could not see or think straight. You were non-existent. You had become the anger. The emotion."

Once in front of her, I placed my hands on top of the breakfast bar on either side of her, causing her to be trapped between my arms. My face was inches away from hers, close enough that I felt her every exhale against my face. Close enough to see that she was no stranger to being held captive by emotion. "Imagine all of that anger, multiply it by infinity, and add in a whirlwind of other emotions. Aggression, determination, pride, rage, greed, hate, lust. Imagine all of those emotions swallowing you whole, controlling you to the point where there is nothing left of you and certainly nothing left to be controlled by your enemies."

I dropped my arms, straightened up and took up my previous post against the wall. "All those emotions along with their desire for power and honour, made the Fire and Water pack believe victory was within their grasp. They believed that they could force their enemies into submission with little effort, that their power of heightened emotions and desires ranked them as the superior clan. But it did not go the way either clans intended. Both had put too much faith in their powers. The many that were able to achieve the ultimate balance failed to maintain it. To gain the reins of one element is already hard as it is, but gaining control over two was obviously something never heard of until the time of the First War so there had been no precedent.

"Many of the Air and Earth wolves went crazy and became trapped or locked inside their own minds. As for the Fire and Water clan, whose mighty howls were loud enough to block out their enemies' mind tricks, became debilitated by all of those heightened emotions and desires, and became deaf to not only the cries of their brothers but to the cries of their own reason and logic. They, too, failed to achieve and maintain the ultimate balance and those very heightened desires and emotions were their downfall."

"So how did it end?" Ava-Rain asked, intrigue and suspense written all over her face. "After a month of fighting each other and themselves, what finally caused the war to end?"

"There were many casualties on both sides, making both clans in-victorious. The war ended once both sides acknowledged the cries of death ringing in the air; once they looked past their quest for power and noticed the blood stained graveyard they called their battlefield had been littered with their fallen brethren. Then, and only then, had the war ceased. Although the odds were in his favour, the alpha of the Fire and Water pack submitted first. It is said that he crossed over the lifeless bodies of his kin and ordered his pack to stand down. In the middle of the battlefield, he shifted into his human form, intentionally making himself vulnerable. His pain and sorrow weighed heavily upon him, but the love he felt for his brothers greatly outweighed his thirst for victory.