SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Sixty-One
I took my freedom and escaped.
Henry and I stopped in Chicago for a few days’ rest, but I had no interest in the town. Before leaving New England, I had decided I wanted to make it all the way to the great western ocean, and I was too impatient to see it. Each mile that the trains carried us over felt like a hundred times the distance. When we finally set foot in San Francisco, we might as well have journeyed to the moon. It felt at least that far away.
The city’s delights—the food, the arts, and the people themselves—were beyond enchanting. Everything was both beautiful and new. Unlike the east, these rolling hills were alive with a modern aesthetic and a liberal sense of ingenuity. Even the Victorian buildings’ familiar designs were different, adorned in wild and vibrant colors, so very unlike the somber palettes of home.
I caught myself wishing Maximo could see it all with me before fighting back the tears. His young soul would have adored everything about this place.
What I was unprepared to encounter were the hundreds of lycan who filled the city and surrounding areas. After the scarcity of Washington, D.C., and New York, it was the last thing I expected to find. Much as Milan and Paris had been in my youth, the northern bay area had attracted enormous packs of werewolves. Sensing my age and power, their undisguised suspicion ensured they maintained a wide berth.
These lycan were even more atheistic than Sempronio had ever been, but they were young and devoid of his centuries of experience. Those few who engaged me insisted they’d left the east to be free of the religions and cultures of the past. Despite all I said to assure them of my intentions, my age represented those horrors too perfectly, in their estimation.
After years of attempting to engage and offer my peerage, I accepted defeat and headed south to the newer city of Los Angeles. In the city of angels, I found far fewer lycan with which to contend. However, though they were just as young, these were rogues and no less wary of my perceived strength.
Still, Henry and I grew comfortable in Southern California’s warm climate, and I remained there for many years, establishing myself among those humans who attracted me. The city’s motor cars made Henry painfully uncomfortable at first, and he fought my insistence that he get a license. It was a girlfriend of mine, Eleanor Richardson, who convinced him that motorcars were safe enough for us both. Instead, I should say she shamed Henry into accepting his fate. Eleanor had a car of her own and often picked me up on her way to our Women’s League meetings.
I was happy here, but this time spent purely among mortals more than ever highlighted what was missing from my life in Los Angeles. My attempts to take up a larger role as an omega, to give myself a greater purpose, always seemed thwarted by circumstance. I remained a guardian for humans who could not defend themselves, but being alone and still fearful of the past ensured this was never enough. Something always brought me back to the belief that I was not yet free to become someone greater.
I had neither seen nor heard from Duccio in twenty-eight years. I never changed my name nor hid my whereabouts. Nor did I think for a second he might be dead. I believed that I had convinced him of our temporary incompatibility, but I knew Duccio’s presumed disinterest was not because he’d released me.