Wolf Omega: Lykanos Chronicles 2

Once the ambassador had left the room, Sempronio took his usual chair at the table’s far end. He sat and stared across to Duccio, who had gone silent at the master’s arrival.

“Dionisio, would you please excuse us?” asked Sempronio. “There are pack matters we must discuss right away.”

“There’s nothing my son cannot stay to hear you say to me,” Duccio responded without emotion.

“Dionisio, there are things I must say to your father that I would not have his son bear witness to. Have your dinner served in my study and await me there.”

Dionisio exhaled with the severe concern we each felt and rose from his seat to take his leave.

Duccio laughed sardonically when the door closed again.

“So, I am not alpha of this house after all, then?” he asked with condescending wit.

“You are the alpha of this pack,” Sempronio answered, “though it seems you do not wish to be. I cannot account for your actions this evening. How much has Sforza paid you to sell your family to Milan?”

“I did no such thing,” Duccio responded with the same casual tone of the question.

“It’s been some time since I counseled you on the responsibilities and priorities of an alpha of this house. I wonder if you’ve forgotten some of them during the many years I’ve allowed you to assume the role. At the very least, I would hope you would recall your primary duty is to protect this house and the people who live under its roof?”

“I’ve done nothing but work to lead and protect us all,” Duccio answered.

“Perhaps I misunderstand. How does surrendering my house and children to the rule of your new master protect any of us?”

“The Sforzas have never posed a threat to this house,” said Duccio, the first hint of frustration coloring his tone.

“The destruction of Palatino’s autonomy and self-determination is the very definition of ‘threat.’ How have you reached a different conclusion?”

“We are outcasts,” Duccio leaned forward, lowering his voice almost to a whisper. “The only lycan who now pass through these doors are the ones born within our borders. It costs us nothing to bow our heads to satisfy the vanity of the Sforzas. What is a moment of feigned humility if it opens a hundred doors to us? Behind each may wait other lycan, like this one beside me, who wields the ancients’ same power. Is it not worth such a nominal price if those jewels might finally come to seek our guidance?

“Son, I have raised you like a gentleman. So much so, I fear you don’t understand the very nature of greed; of how it all but guarantees violence and oppression. But even you must understand the price Sforza demands of us is not simple humility.”

Sempronio looked at Pompeia, who hadn’t raised her eyes since she sat down. A moment of empathic tenderness came from the master that stopped his voice for a long while.

“You have a wife already, do you not?” Sempronio finally asked, returning his eyes to Duccio.

“Whom I love,” he answered.

“Whom you love so much that you would abandon her for your new master? Cast her aside? Betray and shame her among her family in her very home? All for... what? The chance to beg at Sforza’s table?”

Sempronio became visibly agitated for the first time and shifted impatiently in his chair.

“And Gabriella? You allow them to use this child to satisfy their mindless calculations. You know a Lycan’s gifts are not passed down by their parents, not in the fashion that fool would have you believe.”

“Are you not the son of two powerful lycan?” Duccio answered.

“I am!” the master rose his voice. “I’m the son of a senator of Rome and a nobleman’s daughter. And still, I was born with less power than Dionisio received from his human farmer parents. My strength came to me over oceans of time you can barely fathom. My father, who knew that the trick you wish to conjure is nothing but mindless folly, cultivated the seeds of my strength by preparing me to wait for centuries. As I have done with you!”

“Is it mindless?” Duccio countered. “I agree that our powers increase over time--that new gifts may arrive when we least expect them. But how can you not see that the gifts of the parent often come to their child? Are my eyes not blue like my mother’s? Do I not have my human father’s height and black hair? Is my voice not deep like his grandfather’s? Is it so far outside your realm of reason that Gabriella’s children will not inherit at least some of her strength? Would our union not give those same children an advantage others might never enjoy?”

“There’s hardly a chance you could ever produce a child with another lycan,” Sempronio answered, “even less that such a child would be a lycan. And at your age, you know this well enough. But still, you carry on with this farce.” “Would rather Gabriella’s children inherit her whelp lover’s pretty green eyes instead?”

I didn’t look to Maximo, not willing to see his reaction. It was enough to process that Duccio had known of our affair and still chose to come between us.

Sempronio didn’t flinch at Duccio’s remarks, but a repulsed half grin spread across his darkening face.

“You haven’t even the wisdom to keep your foolish tongue from insulting a soldier of this house in my presence,” Sempronio growled. “Even more cowardly, you mean to take this child from her lover when, at last, she’s found a modicum of the happiness she deserves. All for what? To make her your bitch slave? As if we’re dogs and not immortals—gifted among the greatest of men? You would ruin her life for a fool’s chance to strengthen your house in the eyes of my enemy? Do you understand that Gabriella cannot bear your children? Have you not witnessed her suffer enough anguish to satisfy you? Would you add your name to the list of men who have violated her?”

Duccio at once seemed struck by his father’s questions.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to stave off fresh tears. Sempronio had said aloud everything I’d felt in my heart this day, and his expression of protective anger left me vindicated and relieved. I didn’t care that he’d spoken this all in front of the pack. After suffering from my rage, I was happy for them to hear his every word.

“To think I should live to feel disgusted by my own son,” Sempronio added, “whom I have entrusted with everything I’ve ever created or held dear. You disappoint me beyond measure.”

Duccio remained silent for some time, watching Sempronio with exhaustion I only presumed I understood.

“Forgive me, father,” he said after some time. “You are right—I have failed you. I have failed us all. I made decisions I realize now were far from benign. I will write Sforza in the morning to decline his offer.”

Sempronio didn’t respond but remained a statue of disapproval.

“I would ask forgiveness from you all,” Duccio continued, “particularly Gabriella and my wife. I feel... I don’t know what I feel. I am mortified in a way that I cannot explain. I can’t account for how such obvious points escaped me. Perhaps in my long wish to have us welcomed from afar, I turned a blind eye to anything that stood in my way. My behavior is now painfully clear to me. I apologize for embarrassing all of us.”

Duccio turned to Pompeia with pain in his eyes.

“I can only beg your forgiveness, though I understand now that I do not deserve it.”

Her face remained a mask for some time, but then emotion flooded her eyes, and she placed her hand on his.

“Very well,” Sempronio spoke for us all. “Let us begin dinner and place this unfortunate moment behind us.”

Duccio seemed relieved, and before he spoke again, he looked to me to offer a silent apology with his eyes.

“Father, may I invite Dionisio back to join us?” Duccio asked.

Sempronio answered only with a slight nod of his head.

Shortly after Duccio rose to step away, the footmen returned to serve the first course of our meal. We had just started to dine by the time Duccio returned with his son, their arms locked together with affection.

It relieved me to see Dionisio back with us. The man’s smile naturally released much of the built-up tension in the room, and his laughter was the first to finally fill the night.

By the time we’d made it into the main course, no one seemed concerned with how the night had begun. The men laughed as they always had, enjoying their wine and each other’s company. Pompeia spoke to me about an exhibit of new art from Florence she wanted to take me to see. She seemed unprepared for how I became quietly emotional in my relief to have her sweetness return.

When dessert was served, I took note of my dress’s color and tried to remember something meaningful about it. I sighed in mild frustration when I couldn’t, feeling lost. The memory seemed to be at the tip of my tongue but unreachable. Lifting the wine that I’d ignored during most of the evening, I became incensed by the point that hung just outside my reach. Whatever it was, the purpose of my dress escaped me.

Then I felt something else—something familiar upon which I could not place my finger. It was almost as if I was falling. The undefinable sensation made me feel I was not in control. Looking down the table to Sempronio, I realized he was experiencing the same feeling. I heard it like a soothing rhythm that pulled us both backward in our chairs.

Sempronio’s eyes shifted away from their laughter over Dionisio’s scandalous jokes. The master seemed to search around for something his eyes couldn’t find. Suddenly, they fell upon me, and the very air in the room changed.

Sempronio rose from his chair with inexplicable outrage, sending his chair back to crash on the floor with a physicality I’d never before seen from him.

“You DARE!!!” he shouted.

I turned to Duccio on my immediate right and found a look of undisguised malice that stared across at his father.

Sempronio became his werewolf form with blinding speed, ripping loudly at his simple tunic and releasing it all to shreds. He stood with his extraordinary body of silver hair that gleamed in the candlelight and his dark, ferocious eyes that stared down across the room. The change took my breath away, and I stared in disbelief at his unexpected explosion.

Duccio rose from his seat and transformed just as quickly to meet Sempronio’s challenge.

Maximo and I attempted to rise away from the table, but we both stumbled back in the chaos.

Duccio charged across the table. He made it only two feet before Sempronio roared and assaulted his son with unseen energy that blasted the alpha back across the room.

With a perfect rage, Sempronio pinned Duccio’s massive body against the groaning wall that cracked as if it would shatter. The master’s immeasurable power held Duccio in suspense with such strength that he could hardly open his jaw to scream in agony.

Sempronio leaped across the table to stand before his son and stared with undisguised fury, though I still could not understand why. Pompeia begged Sempronio in vain to stop. Instead, he increased the invisible energy to blast Duccio’s body through the wall.

The plaster exploded beyond into the salon, drawing screams from all. The staff fled in chaos, first from the roaring sound and debris that flew through the outer room and then from seeing two monstrous beasts entangled in a violent rage.

Ambrosius and Zacharia rose to follow the cataclysm. They barely made it out of the dining room in time to see Sempronio grab Duccio with his talons and throw him through the salon’s stained glass wall. When the thousand glass fragments finally landed in a dangerous clatter, he leaped into the night after his son and set upon him, pounding and slashing with demonic anger.

When Sempronio stopped for a moment, Duccio seemed to gather his bearings and grab ahold of his father to wrestle him to the ground. But the attempt proved folly as Sempronio seized hold of Duccio’s shoulder and ripped his right arm from his body with a disgusting crack.

Duccio howled in agony, his body jerking involuntarily to release himself from Sempronio’s grasp, scuttling backward with his three remaining limbs.

The master threw Duccio’s bloody arm at him and screamed, “Get out of this house, and never show your face in my realm again! Flee to your master before I kill you, slave! Run to Milan while I allow you to keep your legs!