Wolf Omega: Lykanos Chronicles 2

The hours and days after Maximo’s murder were filled with nothing but despair. The exhaustion that overtook me made little of anything possible. I tried to apply the rational logic that Sempronio would’ve expected of me, but I couldn’t complete a single complex thought within the numbing depression that ensued. All I felt certain of was that I’d made this nightmare happen by a hundred decisions I couldn’t undo.

I remembered back to that day years earlier, when I first rode the train from Washington to New York. Duccio had appeared in the dining lounge car and allowed me to approach him after ages. I wanted him to account for his crimes; to offer me some justification for the suffering he caused.

“Do you yet know what it’s like to regret a decision so despicable and ruinous that it haunts your every waking day?” he’d asked.

The question had seemed little more than melodrama. I told him I didn’t know and offered some flippant remark about how I’d done nothing so despicable as he.

“You will,” Duccio had said. “When that day comes, you’ll try everything you can think of to undo it. But you’ll learn there’s really no such thing as redemption. You can never undo what you’ve done, and there’s no way to repair the damage. Your only solace will be to choose something else to do with the time left to you.”

Stuck now within my void of despair, his words haunted me. I had asked for an apology, though I’d known how meaningless such a thing was after so much time had passed by. With the shoe on the other foot, with no one left to apologize to, my regrets were equally useless. They became a prison, forcing me to live each moment without the slightest hope of relief. Indeed, I couldn’t undo what I had done.

On the third night after Max’s slaughter, I found myself in my house’s cellar room, where I stored Sempronio’s journals. There were a simple desk and chair in the center of the small space, and I lit three short candles on a plate to provide me with light.

I didn’t search for something specific. Though there were passages about despair, I only wanted to hear the master’s voice again. I needed his voice to guide me, to yell at me, to tell me how disappointed he was—anything that might save my tortured mind.

I had no one else in the world to speak with, no one to whom I could tell the horrors I’d endured.

“Mistress?” Henry’s voice came from the open door. “May I turn in for the night?”

“Of course, Henry. Thank you.”

He’d barely turned when I stopped him.

“Wait a moment, please.”

“Yes, mistress?”

Would I really do this thing? I stared at a face as young as mine looked when fresh from the bath. I might style myself as a lady twice my age, but my skin appeared identical to Henry’s. He was the exact age I was when I started this journey. How desperate was I, in the clutches of my depression, to expect that the boy might offer me something that even a brilliant teacher had failed to impart? Had Sempronio ever looked to me, to a child, for insight into his own mind, as I meant to do now?

On the surface of his thoughts, I found the altered threads floating with obvious markers of mutilation. I saw where both by Duccio and myself had unnaturally tied them together. I couldn’t untie them all; I wouldn’t allow him to remember the corpses or the blood he’d helped me wash clean. Nor would I let him recall how the men from the mortuary prepared the bodies to appear like death had taken them serenely. How they sewed Maximo’s decapitated head back to his neck, or painted over Michaelson’s head wound, or embalmed them both on the kitchen counter. Those horrific details would drive Henry mad.

I wanted him to remember Duccio’s anger and rage, what little of it he saw. Also, his lascivious behavior in this house during the past week.

“I’m afraid I’ve failed my husband.”

There was a glimmer of recognition from Henry’s eyes, and he was at once embarrassed.

“You know what I’ve done. Now, I’m all alone, but for you and Elizabeth.”

Painfully uncomfortable, he wanted to withdraw.

“I don’t know what to do, Henry. My betrayal killed the baron. Learning of it murdered him just as effectively as a knife to his chest would have. I think I should take my own life and follow Max to the grave. I don’t see how else I can escape from all I’ve done.”

“No,” Henry advanced anxiously as if I held a venomous serpent to my chest like the ladies of old. “That’s a mistake.”

His determination surprised me.

“You’re in mourning, is all. The master wouldn’t want you to harm yourself. He wouldn’t even want you to suffer over his passing. You’re still very young.”

He said the last bit with another glimmer as if recognizing just how young I still looked for the first time.

“But I’m tired, Henry. I don’t know how much longer I want to live without him. What right do I have to continue, knowing what I’ve done? Knowing that I’ve no right to this life.”

“You forget yourself, Mistress.”

It seemed to take him considerable fortitude to say this.

“You forget your importance to the rest of us. Think of all the people who rely upon your Christian kindness. How many institutions that serve the needy are open because of your generosity? How many soup kitchens did my mother accompany you to? I wouldn’t even—.”

His voice caught, and I saw tears fighting their way out as his jaw quivered.

“I would’ve grown up in an orphanage if it weren’t for your kindness. I’d probably be dead now.”

Henry covered his face in shame.

I rose from the table and placed my arms around him, resting my head against his shoulder. The sound of his grieving sent me back to that Autumn day when I was eighteen.

The master had dried his eyes in annoyance at his own despair. He had kissed me on the forehead and looked into my eyes.

“Perhaps you’ll be an omega one day, child. I hope it will be you. But if that’s not to be, I am prepared. Whether a century or a millennium, I will wait for the next omega to come and allow me to lay down my burdens.”

Sempronio’s writings lay on the table beside me and all around in my private library. I was not the omega he had hoped for, but I was the only omega left. Worse, I had yet to bring another lycan safely into our world. I ignored each opportunity that came to me in France for reasons you might imagine. But I was an omega. Duccio had ensured it by taking the master’s head, and by sending me his works.

“I will remain until my duty to our future is done.” They were the master’s last words to me, and after two centuries, I understood their true meaning. I must fight to ensure the survival of his legacy with my dying breath. And death was coming no time soon for one as strong as me.

I accompanied Maximo’s body home via train days later, having wired Richards in advance to arrange a funeral. In truth, the ceremony would be for Richards himself or any other human acquaintances that wished to pay their respects. I presumed there were few.

Immortality requires that mortal relationships be relatively brief. One cannot appear to be a thirty-year-old man to the same eyes forever. It was often easier to avoid entanglements altogether than do all that must be done to accommodate them over time.

Richards was grateful to see Henry on the train with Elizabeth and me. He took the young man’s hand affectionately when we stepped down from the train.

“I left a boy at the house to receive you, so you needn’t wait for us to retrieve the master’s remains.”

The two men from Callahan Brothers mortuary stood a respectful distance away, and I sensed that Richards expected Henry to stay to help.

“No, that’s fine,” I assured him. “I don’t plan to return to New York for some time, so I’ve brought several cases and a large crate with me. Elizabeth and I will stay with you until all of it’s secured.”

He nodded and returned his attention to Henry as they both waited for the remaining passengers to disembark.

I’d already contacted my agent to place my New York house for sale. I’d sent a note to Duccio that morning to inform him I was returning to Washington with Maximo’s remains to see to his last rest. I added that I would likely remain in Washington for the foreseeable future but offered that he was welcome to join me if it suited him.

It wasn’t a rouse or a gamble. I had no say in how Duccio might respond. He might arrive tomorrow or in a year. My actions were hardly an influence. At most, my return to Washington made seeing me more inconvenient than when I lived mere blocks away from him down Fifth Avenue.

I had a singular purpose again: I would endure. I would survive as long as it took, and remembering Sempronio’s prediction, I knew that I could outlive Duccio. Understanding now that I cared too much about the man for my wolf to find the strength to destroy him, I settled for my only other choice.

Let me be the most boring lover who ever walked this earth.

Surely he would tire of me soon enough if I stifled the things about me that enlivened him most. I’d wait as long as it took to be free of him.