Inevitably Yours

MICHAEL

I breathed in the air, cool and crisp for the season. The chill of winter hadn’t quite given way to the warmth of Spring, and it made me ache for simpler times, going to and from wrestling practice without a care in the world. It reminded me of coming outside in nothing but a singlet with the top pulled down and laying in the snow, watching the steam rise around me as people screamed about ‘hypothermia’ and other such nonsense. Instead of that, I was here to murder my father. Well, the man who “raised” me.

“He didn’t raise us,” Eros muttered. “We did that ourselves with some help from mom.”

I couldn’t argue with him there. I couldn’t think of a single lesson he taught me that meant anything now. Still, through everything he did to me, he was still the man I called my father for almost my entire life. He was all I knew. No matter how much I cringed inside when I saw that he was home after school, he was my dad.

It was all a blur, though. All there was now was my promise to myself to keep Quinn safe and the promise I made to be with her again. I’d failed her already, but I couldn’t this time, not again. She deserved more, and it was time I gave it to her. All of those years after I promised her I would come back, I finally had my feet back on Stary’s grounds for the first time. I was home.

“This is weird,” Nic linked me. “I haven’t been back here since I left.”

“Me either,” I commiserated. “I came close for the custody hearing, but I couldn’t actually come back. It killed me not running straight to her….”

“Today, Michael. After today, you’ll never have to be away from her again,” she comforted me.

It helped slow my heart down, but my stomach was doing flips inside of me. I couldn’t believe that today was both the day I challenged Lawrence and the day I would see her after all this time. First, I would have to earn it.

We’d been on the edge of the pack grounds since early morning. I wasn’t breaking any rules, and it let us recon the patrols and what we were getting into. I didn’t want to be escorted to the training grounds to be slaughtered, so we intended to bypass them altogether and show up where the challenge was supposed to occur. Lawrence’s theatrics making this the same day as Prom were not appreciated, but I didn’t know why I expected differently from him. This is one hundred percent something I should have seen coming.

Carefully, we made our way through the patrol zones. We skirted the guards, which wasn’t easy to do in the daylight. Luckily, our training paid off, and we were soon through them and into the pack lands. The urge to see Quinn was strong, but not only did I want to save her the despair of losing me after marking, but I also made a promise in exchange for her protection. I wouldn’t go back on that. It was nearing mid-morning by the time we reached the packhouse. I wanted to check in on the state of the pack, and what I saw broke my heart. Since we’d left, the packhouse was in ruins. Lawrence was allowing everything to fall into disrepair without my mom to keep things up to his standard. Moving around to the back, I could see a barely clothed woman lounging in a lawn chair in front of a pool filled with green scum and surrounded by overgrown grass. She had a glass pipe and a lighter in her hand and was completely oblivious to the world around her. From things my mom told me, I assumed this was an ex of his that he had never quite gotten rid of. By the looks of it, she had taken up residence when my mom left. She looked exactly like what Lawrence deserved. His car wasn’t out front, so he was probably waiting for me at the training grounds.

“What happened to the pack?” Nic linked me, looking at the pack house in disgust.

“Lawrence ran it into the ground after we left. They haven’t been having Founder’s Day celebrations, he’s taxing the pack into oblivion, and he’s a horrible Alpha. All he’s been focused on is getting us back. He doesn’t care about the pack.”

“Are you ready to do this?” she asked, looking around to make sure we still weren’t being followed.

“I have to, for Quinn and my pack.”

I could feel Eros pacing and ready in my head. As much as Eros wanted into the fight, I didn’t intend to shift. I preferred to fight on two legs instead of four. I also had my weapons and didn’t want to shove them in a bag.

“Let’s go,” I told Nic, moving past her and toward the training field. “We might as well get this over with.”

She stopped me, grabbing me by the elbow to spin me around, “Remember, Michael, you’re not alone. I’m here too.”

“I know,” I answered, not understanding why she was reminding me.

“When you get mad, you tend to try to do things on your own. Don’t repeat your dad’s mistake,” she was serious, and I could see the worry on her face.

I put my forehead to hers and then hugged her. “Together.”

“If you can’t kill him because of who he is to you, it doesn’t make you weak,” she said after a quiet moment as she stepped back to look up at me. “I’m willing to end it for you if it comes to it.”

“No,” I shook my head. “It has to be me.”

“It’s there if you need it then,” she said simply and walked in the direction I’d started.

–

Coming to the edge of the training grounds, everything was eerily silent. There were no warriors training, and there was no sign of anyone except him. He was standing smugly in the middle of the open grounds looking around occasionally. I knew there was no way he was alone, but neither was I. With one last squeeze of my hand and a wink, Nic disappeared into the woods to fulfill the role we’d been planning for all year.

“For Quinn,” she gave as a parting note.

“For Quinn,” I agreed.

I stood at the edge of the woods, watching Lawrence intently. I’d brought my swords, but I wasn’t sure if he intended to fight in the old way or if he’d call me a coward for bringing them. I didn’t care; I would kill him either way.

“I smell you, pup,” he called out boastfully. “Smells like fear and weakness, just like I tried to smother out of you as a kid. Guess I failed at that, or we wouldn’t be here, would we?”

My chest tightened as I was taken back to the pillows, the darkness.

“You didn’t have me then,” Eros interjected. “The only darkness will be whatever corner of hell they put him in when we’re done.”

Resting my hands on the pommels of my swords, I thought back to when I’d been given them.

–

“I have something for you, Michael,” my dad told me excitedly, knocking on my door. “Meet me out back with Nic!”

It was late, and I was talking to Quinn on the phone. I couldn’t imagine what my dad possibly had for me with the sundown. With a hurried apology, I told Quinn I would call her the next day while lamenting the loss of her voice for the night.

Nic had fallen asleep on the couch during our movie night earlier, so I covered her up and went to bed to talk to Quinn for the night. I gently roused her, and she protested, not wanting to leave the warm embrace of her blanket.

“Hey, I don’t know what’s up, but my dad’s all excited and wants to see us out back.”

“Ughhhh, okay,” she whined, getting up and rubbing her bleary eyes.

We trudged outside, both tired from the day. That changed when we saw what was lying on the table before my dad as he watched with a huge smile. On one side was a rolled package that was thin and long; on the other was a square folded cloth that was about 2 feet in width and length.

“Is that what I think it is?” I asked my dad, walking forward to unroll the longer wrapped package.

“They are,” he confirmed with a nod. “They came personally delivered by the smith’s courier. He wanted to get them to us as soon as they were ready.”

With a flick of his wrist, he unbound what was hidden within the thick cloth, and it rolled open toward me to reveal the two swords I had helped design before ordering them. To say they were gorgeous was an understatement.

One sword had a pommel with an inlaid sapphire. Dark blue leather wrapped down the handle towards the hilt. It was sheathed in a silver and deep blue scabbard that matched the hilt. I reached out to take it in my hand, unsheathing it to look at the blade. The blade had a slight curve and displayed an etched wolf with what I assumed was sapphire inlay to make it blue. I could carry Quinn into battle with me now. I didn’t know why, but that thought gave me an immeasurable amount of relief.

“Saphir,” I said aloud, holding the sword in front of me.

“Sapphire?” my dad asked.

I nodded in response, “It’s the name of Quinn’s wolf, and it’s Saphir in Gaelic. I thought it fit.”

I laid the sword down and picked up the other. This one was the same length and weight and felt well balanced in my hand. Instead of a jeweled pommel like Saphir, this one ended in the head of a wolf in a gunmetal grey finish. A grey-washed leather wrapped the handle down to the hilt, and the scabbard was made of the same color combination. When I unsheathed it, another wolf adorned the blade. This time, it was my personal depiction of Eros. I’d decided to name this one Diagnè. We’d laughed about Eros being named after the Greek god of s*x, and dia gnè was “God of s*x” in Gaelic. My dad’s side eye meant he knew what I was going for, but he didn’t want to say anything in front of Nic. Little did he know, she thought it was hilarious and fitting. Now, I could take not only Quinn into battle with me but Eros.

Nic walked over to the other package while I was lost in wonderment at my own. I set down my second sword to watch her reaction to what was inside. She opened the heavy fabric like a book. Inside at the top laid two karambits, a type of curved knife with a metal ring at the end of the handle that your index finger slid into. She’d given measurements of her hands, but after answering a few questions, she let the smith do what he wanted. She ended up with twin knives, with beautiful rippled Damascus blades. The blades were shaped like leaves with a curve cut into one side; I’d asked for that detail. The handles were made of a stained dark brown wood that suited the knives. They fit into her hands like she’d been born with them, and for the first time, I was glad she was coming with me. She looked ready, even if she hadn’t trained near as much as I had. Her job wouldn’t be to fight Lawrence, though, so I felt confident she could do what we planned. Laid out beneath the karambits were eight leaf-shaped kunai or Japanese throwing knives. I was impressed with the detail the smith put into the leaf portions; they had real veins and wrinkles. She’d really taken to kunai during training, and I watched as she set one of the karambits down to send a kunai whizzing towards one of the targets across the yard, where it landed with a solid THUNK. Our excitement was palpable, and we spent the next few hours on the training grounds until the sun announced we’d stayed up through the night. When we finally collapsed, I could only think of how I hoped I’d get to share nights like this with Quinn. After everything, all of this had to amount to something.

–

I snapped myself out of thoughts of the night I’d first held the swords now strapped to my waist and steeled myself for what I had to do now. My stomach was in knots at the thought of Quinn probably getting to her first period in school, having no idea that our lives were about to change forever. I stepped into the light of the morning sun to face him. It was now or never.