Alpha's Fallen Angel

The next morning, the rest of the gang is finally awake enough to join us for breakfast. I’m buzzing with excitement. My father will start off with magic training, and then I’ll be with Aylin for physical training. Azrael wanted to spar with all the guys, so they won’t be bugging me during training. After that, I plan to explore around here with the girls. I tried to convince Aylin to come with, and after the third “absolutely fucking not” she reached for her dagger and I portaled behind Roman. He had the good sense to stay quiet, but he stiffened, and I swear to Selene I saw him pale slightly.

The girls, unable to hide their blatant curiosity, decide to tag along with me to the training grounds. As I’m sitting on one of the chairs while Azrael shows everyone else around, Aylin comes and sits next to me. She places two wooden boxes in my lap.

“These are for you. I had the blacksmith make them.” is all she says to me as I look up at her.

I look back at the two boxes, the one is long, while the other is a quarter of the size. I open the smaller one first and I bite my tongue to hold back a squeak of excitement when a simple, yet absolutely magnificent dagger sits inside. The entire thing, pommel to point is black, and the only color is a trio of red rubies that sit at the top of the cross guard.

“It’s beautiful…thank you” I say, she looks at me expectantly, and then eyes the larger box. I already have an idea of what it will be, but I still want to cry as I find a set of twin blades, the coloring the exact same, with the 3 rubies, in the box.

“If I were to hug you, would you rip my arms off?” I ask her, choked up with emotion. I can’t believe she was so thoughtful…even if she had agreed to train me I would have happily used whatever was readily available in the weapon storage for the army.

“Yes, so don’t even think about it. We’ll start training with those today after hand to hand combat. I have matters to attend to in the council, I’ll be here for your combat training in 3 hours.” she says, excusing herself and walking away

“She’s rough around the edges, but you’ll never have to wonder for a second if she truly cares for you” my father says, startling me.

“She’s not so bad. I can’t believe she went to all that trouble to get these for me, though.” I respond

“I doubt it was any trouble at all for her. She doesn’t ask much of any of her people, so most jump at the opportunity to do something for her. The most troublesome part for her would have been getting the blacksmith to accept her payment.” he says with a laugh “now, get up, let’s get this training started. We have a lot to cover in very limited time” he says beckoning me to the training grounds.

“Now. Before we cover any magic, this is a basic skill you and everyone who knows you should have. You need to build walls in your mind, to prevent anyone from glamouring you, reading your mind, or harming you from the inside out. It’s quite simple. You just push your thoughts into containment, close to you, and imagine a wall surrounding you, one you can’t even see the top of. The complicated part is remembering to keep the walls up, it will eventually be like breathing. But while you’re still learning, you’ll find they fall down quite often and most of the time without you even noticing. From here on out, you need to make it a priority to frquently check on those walls. Especially when you’re around enemies, or people you don’t know.”

I nod, and do as he says. Like he says, the wall and the thought containment come easy. Keep walls up, okay, doesn’t seem so hard. I nod at him, confirming I did what he asked.

“Very good. Aylin told me about how you were able to take away her sight and hearing yesterday, so let’s focus on things of that nature first. Do you remember what you did to make that happen?”

Another nod from me.

“Do it to me then” he says

I imagine a wire connecting his eyes and ears to his brain, and then I will the wire to snap. I know it works when his eyes widen and he stiffens. I let it go for a minute, before I reconnect the wire and he relaxes

“Now check your shields”

Fuck! They were down. What was that? Not even 4 minutes? I pull them back up and try to keep a little bit of awareness to them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, that’s how the rest of magic training went for the next week. At the end of the 3 hours on the first day, I’d been able to strip every sense, immobilize, manipulate nerve endings, and I even managed to slow down time by a few seconds. Throughout the week, dad made me focus on being able to do it to multiple people at a time, as well as being able to do it with a simple flick of the wrist or passing of a thought. At one point he mentioned that I had mind reading and mind control abilities but I wasn’t ready to dive into those yet, they made me....uneasy. Everytime I used my magic though, my shields fell. I managed to catch them here and there, but according to dad that’s more than enough to allow someone into my head. The thought made me restless, and that didn’t go away.

Where my dad was laid back and liked to joke around during my training, Aylin was the complete opposite. She was a hard ass, and beat my ass every single day. Yet somehow, her lessons were my favorite. Like her, I used my magic to secure the dagger to my thigh and the twin blades across my back, and whenever I needed them, I made them appear in my hands. She also taught me how to move my own body with my magic, I mastered doing backflips over her, which I’m not gonna lie made me feel cool as fuck. Where that was completely my magic at use, she showed me how just mixing my magic into my regular moves made me swifter, lighter, and more agile. I looked nowhere near as graceful as her, but I had to remind myself that it was literally week one. Everything came easy, except remembering to keep my damn walls up. I’d at least been able to keep them up a couple minutes into a battle, but that wouldn’t do me much good when it came time to need those walls.

After training, I immediately would go with the girls to wander around and explore. We only did a little every day, starting with the castle and we ended up in the village, but only for a short time. I was always too drained to do much else.

It became obvious I would need a lot more than a week of training, so when Sophie left to go home, the others decided they would go with. They leave tomorrow, and while I’m sad to see them go, I know they’re anxious to get home. The underworld didn’t call to them the way it did to me, the moon didn’t make them feel alive, and just being here didn’t make them feel lighter, more free. Roman and I would travel home with them, and I would, unfortunately, portal back here in the morning while Roman stayed behind and handled pack business.

I understood, and it gave me time to be with Aylin and Azrael, just the three of us, and also one on one. Where Azrael thrived under attention and socializing, Aylin wasn’t one for crowds, actually, that was an understatement, unless it involved Azrael, my dad, or me, she pretty much avoided them all together. She tolerated Roman, and they talked, but he overall kept out of her way. I think he sensed that she would need some time to get used to his constant presence. She handled meetings and town events just fine, but she was always at the head of the crowd, commanding them, but never mingled. No one expected it either, and not one person complained or said anything ill of her, it was clear they loved their soon to be queen.

I never stood with my family for anything public, it would be a death wish for anyone to betray my location to the vamps, or the fact that I was alive to Jeremiel, but that doesn’t mean it would stop some people. While it made me sad to not be able to scream from the rooftops that I have a family, I understood, and it gave me the disguise to hear what the villagers had to say about the royal family. Either they knew who I was and chose their words carefully around me, or my family was genuinely loved by all, because I never heard a nasty word about any of us.

It felt easy here, it felt like home, almost a little too much so. But at the same time, I was excited to get back to my pack, even though they didn’t know they were mine. Roman brought up telling them a couple times, and I agreed it was time. They didn’t need to know the details, but they should at least know their Alpha found his Luna. So that was the plan when we got home tomorrow, and to say I wasn’t shitting my pants would be a straight up lie. It didn’t help that I was so used to my magic and hardly an hour went by where I wasn’t using it for something. It was of course customary here, but if the pack caught wind of that before we told them and took control of the situation, yeah that could start some shit and create some distrust. I didn’t want to be the cause of that.