My Personal Hell, D. Richardson [ebook reader browser txt] 📗

“Too bad, because if you knew your history, you’d know what he was up too. Instead of having to have a half breed, lone female tell you,” I replied, his face turned red, but Bastion stepped in.

“Asher, shut up, Ailith, get to the point.” I nodded.

“My point is, back in the day those who held the females held the pack. The females, as inconsequential and weak as they are portrayed, are the future. The only means of reproducing, maintaining the alpha lines and all that. And that’s what Van plans on doing. While everyone has their eyes on the battle field, he’s going to send some males to take the females.”

“How did you get that?” Sadler asked. I looked over at him.

“Something that Luscious said, ‘It doesn’t matter what happens on the battle field,’ the battle is just a distraction. A way to get all of your best males and closest allies away from the prize.”

“He doesn’t have that kind of manpower,” Drake answered with a wave of his hand. I shook my head.

“Sadler, what would it take to get the rogues to back up a pack?” I asked. He looked a little shocked, but did his best to answer.

“Um…not a lot really. A place to settle, some females, freedom to come and go as they please.”

“All of which Van can promise. Whether he plans on following through or not doesn’t matter. Fact is, is that he has a lot more man power than we give him credit for,” I said standing, and starting to pace again. “My best guess is that he plans on having the rogues at the battle, as their ‘witness’. When the battle is over, they’ll attack whoever’s left standing, which means the best males and your allies males. While the rest of his pack goes after the homes. He wouldn’t trust a bunch of rogues with something quite so delicate,” I finished, and was met with silence.

“We can’t defend against that,” Dalton muttered. Even Bastion looked crestfallen.

“We’d have to double our forces at least, as well as every able bodied male in both packs. There’s no way we could train that many in enough time,” he groaned.

At this point I started to tremble. I knew that we had enough forces, or at least a good chunk of what we needed. But I couldn’t decide whether or not to offer up their services.

“We could appeal to a couple more packs, just to have them watch the territory while we’re away.”

“That still leaves us outnumbered by at least a third,” Asher breathed. Everyone looked so crestfallen. So defeated and I could feel myself start to grimace as I opened my mouth.

“Not necessarily,” I replied, everyone turned to stare at me. Bastion’s eyes narrowed.

“What did you do?” he asked, suspicion dropping from every word.

“Well…,” I said slowly, looking at the ceiling.

“Ailith, what did you do?” Drake reiterated, his tone so low I could feel it vibrating in my chest.

“Well…you see…funny story…you‘re going to laugh really…but…uh…,” I started breaking for a nervous laugh. “we, I mean I…maybe…sort of…trained some females.” I flinched back as soon as the words left my mouth, and it’s a good thing I did.

“What!?” Drake yelled at the top of his lungs.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Asher mumbled before dropping his head onto his arms. Bastion on the other hand started to laugh silently.

“Before you kill me just hear me out?!” I yelled before Drake could get a full breath to start screaming with. Drake paused letting that large breath out all at once. His face was still a deep shade of red, but he did his best to calm down, though he did sit kind of heavily. I think I was starting to do a number on the poor guy’s blood pressure.

“Fine,” he replied quietly. The type of quiet that was just downright scary.

“Okay,” I started pulling every journal I had found in the attic out of my bag and stacking them on the table. “So I’ve been doing a lot of research on the old pack customs. It started when I was trying to figure out why Van would want to buy the school, but then it kind of became a hobby. Anyway, your great grandfather was a twin.”

“Yes, everyone knows that, he was a twin and they were both alphas and he got the pack.”

“Actually, he didn’t want the pack,” I answered, and he stared at me so hard I thought I was going to burst into flames. “Well, he wanted his brother to have it. I mean, his brother wanted it, he was a good leader, really cared about the pack and all that. He felt that that’s what was best for the pack as a whole. Anyway, he only got the pack after his brother was killed in battle, he actually wanted to be a historian. These are his journals.” Drake started to pick one of them up, but seemed to settle on just touching them.

“He used to travel, all over the world, studying the different packs and customs that they had created for themselves. His goal was to find the pack that was closest to the oldest customs, the beginning, as he calls it.

“Anyway, about the time he turned thirty he heard a rumor about a pack that still practiced the original ways. He said that they were called the True Pack, because they still did things the way the ancient wolves used too. So he went looking for them, and about five years later he found them. They were secluded in parts of a rainforest that was said to be unexplored.” I leaned forward, partly to make my next point, but mostly because I was getting kind of excited.

“They were matriarchal.”

“What?” several different voices said in several different tones. Asher’s was disbelief, Bastion’s was surprise, Dalton’s was lighthearted as though he thought it were a joke, and Sadler’s was pure curiosity. Drake didn’t say anything. But I was already on a roll so I didn’t stop.

“Yeah, they believed in balance, yin and yang, male to female, complete equality, but the females got the last say.”

“Why?” Asher asked, I chose to ignore the incredulity in his tone.

“Because, they were the future of the pack. The males were expected to show the same respect to any female, no matter the rank, as the females showed the males for their share of taking care of things. Every female was trained in combat from a young age. Trained to fight along side any male or female for the sake of protecting the pack members and the territory. The males protected the pack, the females protected the individual. It was the perfect set up where no one person was less than another.

“They had this elite team or squad. Made up of entirely females, they called them The Mothers. When a female conceived she was relieved of duty but continued with training after the baby was born. They found that females who had young fought three times as hard and were ten times as ferocious in battle. But they were only called on to protect the young, when every other resource was exhausted. They were for absolute emergencies only.”

“Who commanded them?” Becca asked from the doorway. Jen and Camilla stood with her. I met her eyes.

“The alpha female, the mother of the entire pack. At all times, before and after having children, the alpha female was trained by the best, to be the best. Just as the alpha male is supposed to be the best. They believed that the alpha female and alpha male were equals in every way, and were meant to rule side by side. Different but equal. Complete and total balance.”

“So what happened? Why did it change?” Jen asked, coming to sit next to her brother.

“Humans,” I answered simply. When it became apparent that I needed to explain further I took a deep breath. “When wolves started having to mix with humans they had to adopt some of their customs in order to stay hidden. And about four hundred years ago women were seen as less than men. Needing to be protected and told what to do for their own good. But inside the pack they maintained their balance.

“The pack names weren’t always dictated by the male lines. The name was passed down through the female line. But then about that time a male got greedy. Inheriting the pack had the same guidelines as it does now. The female had to marry to inherit the pack. And one female was desperate. Back then they didn’t just marry whoever they had too they waited to find their mate. Sometimes they would fall in love with another male and marry if hope of finding their mate was diminishing. But actually mating was a lot more common then.

“This one female’s mother was dying. Her father had already been taken by disease. And if she didn’t marry her pack would pass to a distant cousin whom she had never even met. So in order to keep the pack in her family line she set out to gain a husband. But the only male that was willing said that he would only do so if she gave him the pack name. It was either that or lose the pack so she made the sacrifice.

“But once he had the name, he got greedy. He wanted final say on everything. At the time there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Not and keep any sort of peace within the pack. He was an alpha male, so when they married the pack doubled in size. His pack obeyed him without question because they had always been his pack. She feared her pack being split in two, so for the sake of peace she relinquished most of the control.

“It wasn’t long after that, that other alpha males started to do the same thing. Refusing to marry any female unless she and the pack took his name. Then it all kind of spiraled out of control, and suddenly they weren’t pretending to act like humans. They were acting like humans. But the packs didn’t evolve socially as quickly as humans, and your great grandfather knew that,” I directed at Drake again.

“He lived with that pack for a year, before he got news of his brother’s death and had to come back and take over the pack. He wrote that he only wished he had found his mate among their females. He kept these journals so that he could pass them on to his son. So that they could slowly restore the balance that was lost. But I guess in the process they were put away and forgotten about.”

“Well, that was a nice meaningless story,” Asher snapped, standing.

Okay, I understand how difficult it is to realize that everything you thought to be fact turned out to be wrong. And I knew how it could change your entire way of life, and how unsettling that could be, but he was really starting to piss me off.

“Pull your head out of your ass, sit the fuck down, and listen, I’m not done,” I snapped. The entire room looked at like me I had grown a second head. He glared at me, but slowly sat back down in his chair. “Your great grandfather had a best friend. A man that traveled with him and they shared the same interests.

“He went with him to that pack and wrote as many journals as he did. But he took a different take on the information he gained. Instead of righting the balance he wanted to tip it further in his favor. Using it to gain a tighter hold on the females so that they could never rise up again. I’m willing to bet that those journals were passed on. His name was Vanderbilt Crudelus the first.” I was breathing heavily by the time I was done speaking. The room was completely silent, until finally Drake spoke.

“I don’t want those females on the front lines.” I shook