Revelations to an Alpha

Chapter 17, Revelation: everything was remarkably fine

 {  a short update, but better than nothing ayee - thanks for reading! }

It had been three days and I had persuaded Max that learning to fly would help me fit in. The queen, luckily, hadn’t suspected a thing and sent me out with Max. First he’d shown me in simulators, but after spending all my free time memorising everything, he had no choice but to put me in the passenger seat and take me on an actual flight.

Watching Max walk into the aircraft was something else. His eyes widened, his hands tensed around the seats and the buttons and the chairs. He looked… he looked like a wolf. He looked as if he was going to change. Emotions do that. Extreme emotions. The queen hadn’t been wrong when she had seen something in him.

Passion. That was it. The look in his eyes was a gentle passion.

I’d seen it a few times in Lucas, and definitely Phoenix. I’d seen it briefly in Nelly too. But this was different. They were all fighting for something with passion. They wanted something. Max already had his something.

“Well, sit down then.” I hadn’t realised that Amele and the boy from data had been standing behind me. I nodded and quickly sat in one of the seats behind Max. Amele strapped me in, smiling kindly as if she was a parent strapping a toddler into a car seat. The boy from data sat down quietly on the seat next to me, took off his glasses and adjusted his headband so that a microphone reached his lips.

Amele sat the other side of me, and as she sat she rolled up her sleeves.

“OK, take us on a southbound trip.” The data boy announced into his microphone as Max started the engines up. It became too loud to hear what either one was saying for a while, so I lay my head back and just watched.

It wasn’t at all like the simulator. Maybe this would take longer than expected. Max started to move the plane forwards, through the air bunker and past all the other air crafts. This mountain looked pretty big from the inside. I wondered how far we were below the surface.

It suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t been outside in a significant amount of time. The roof above us at the end of the air bunker suddenly split into too. There was a moment of blinding light, to which I squealed and covered my face. I heard a faint chuckle from Amele, but other than that my ears were filled with the whooshing of air and engines.

The airplane seemed to rise up smoothly and completely in line, like it was the floor being raised and not Max controlling it. I suppose someone who has such a passion for this must be pretty good at it.

The sounds seemed to cut off abruptly as we reached the surface, the same time my eyes were met with the striking white of the snow in Greenland. My eyes started to water just as Amele tapped me on the arm and pointed to the left window. I followed her arm to see two wolves parading about in the snow.

One of the wolves was a contrasting black haired shiny thing, like an ink blotch on paper, dancing in the it’s cold surroundings. The other was a just as striking shade of reflecting blond. It almost looked like gold. I looked down at my gold, shimmering clothes and smirked in the image of the queen.

“They’re the attack guys.” Amele said, and I nodded. They played around with each other, and at one stage it looked as if the blond wolf was attacking the black one. But they soon got up and started hiding in the snow again.

“Ok, and up.” Said the data boy to Max. The plain then put its nose forwards, so we were practically vertical. I grabbed the sides of my seat and Amele laughed again.

“Anddd…” The data boy typed something into the computer I hadn’t noticed until now. It all looked very technicaly. “Around please.” The plane then balanced itself and returned to a normal height. Max put the left window down and the plane curved so it circled the rows of mountains.

You could see little specs of colour that were supposedly wolves, but apart from that you wouldn’t have guessed what was going on below the surface. It looked ghostly almost.

“How are you doing, Cathy?” Max momentarily turned around in his chair and beamed a smile too wide to be fake at me.

“This is…” There weren’t any words to describe it. Beautiful. But I knew it was also the fate I’d take whilst attempting to save Eustatia. It could go many ways. In my mind, the snow on the mountains would be a stained crimson if it went badly.

“Remarkable.” The data boy nodded my way and finished my sentence.

“Yes…” I looked over to him and wondered how he had ended up here. Not on the plane, but in Greenland serving for the werewolf queen. Surely he was too intelligent to sign up for this work if he could have a much better situation in the human world. But then again, the queen’s power was remarkable in so many ways. Beautiful, yes. But not pure. “Remarkable.” I muttered, but it seemed that all three people on the plane had heard. Luckily, by the looks on their faces, they assumed I was still talking about the icy surface of Greenland.

By the time Max had completed all of data boy’s wishes it was mid-day and the sun was beating down into the air craft. It was getting unbelievably hot through the light of the windows. We all agreed that it was time to land, and although Max looked sad to leave the plane, he looked satisfied too.

“I can see why you like it so much.” I said to Max as we headed to the normal lunch time routine.

“It’s remarkable.” He looked smugly at his uniform, then at me. “As you said.”

We sat in our normal places, and the queen was just as bouncy and bubbly as ever. The attack boys were her preferred favourites as always. The data girl and boy kept to themselves, as always. The defence people included Amele in their conversations as always. And me and Max chatted. As always.

I felt myself begin to slip into the uneventful, yet strained life of being the queen’s daughter and her ally in war. There was a constant need to protect myself, and everyone around me, without getting caught.

It was like being in a fight, but being attacked with every beat of your heart. There was no chance to get up. You had to stay down and take it. You couldn’t get ahead, because it wasn’t possible.

And yet, somehow, I felt like maybe I was getting ahead now. Maybe I had a sort-of kind-of plan.

I had Max, an ally, that was unknowingly my single ticket out of here. I had Lucas, Phoenix, Nelly, Fi and Lupa, who were all safe and would be safe until I came up with something. Eustatia island was beginning to feel safe again. Necker Island couldn’t be saved. But that was the risk we took when we ran out on the queen.

Safety was never an option. Yet I felt more than safe here. Protected by the jokes and the trust that had somehow found me a willing suitor. I was their enemy, yet I’d never been treated so… so much like an ally.

“Everything alright, dear?” The queen directed all eyes to me. I looked up from the plate of food I hadn’t noticed.

“Yes.” I nodded, smiling a little more genuinely than I meant. “Everything is,” I watched as the queen smiled back and her red lips settled again. It was then that it occurred to me that she could not live forever. One way or another, she would fade out, fizzle and die like a fire that had burnt all that it could possibly burn and has nothing left to set ablaze. One day she will run out of things, out of werewolves and people to scorch and hurt, and she will fade into ashes. It was this that made me smile just as patronisingly evil as she had smiled to me many times. “Remarkably fine.”