Wolf Omega: Lykanos Chronicles 2

I stood in the salon, paralyzed with fear. It seemed we all were.

I was familiar with the violence of werewolves—we are all capable of it. But I’d never seen such brutality take place in the castle, and not within our family. Before this moment, I would never have believed it possible. Worse, none of us understood what had led to Sempronio’s outburst.

“Master?” Domenico and Zacharia both called after him.

Sempronio turned back with a rage-filled roar, delivering an unmistakable threat that froze their approach. The master paced back and forth like a hungry lion, looking off into the night as if waiting for its prey to expose itself. He seemed to wait for any sign that Duccio might return, but I sensed, as he must have, that our alpha was long gone from here.

In time, Sempronio stopped and trembled. His werewolf form fell away, leaving him naked in the cold, dark night. He shook if he were in pain and soon dropped to his knees. When I heard him suffering, I left the others instinctually to attend to him, ignoring their calls to stay.

“Father?” I whispered when I came upon him.

When he didn’t answer, I knelt down and placed my arms over his shoulders. Soon, Sempronio fell forward into my embrace and cried like a child with deep convulsive sobs, barely able to breathe, it seemed.

“Why would you do such a thing?”

I wanted to understand. No matter how terrifying I found his savagery, I was desperate to understand why Sempronio had moved to destroy his own son.

Without a word, I felt him enter my mind as he’d done on the first day we met. There, with gentle remedy, he gradually undid what Duccio had done to us all.

My memories of the day returned to me first as disjointed flashes, then as a warm current that flooded my vision. I remembered Duccio’s insistence that I would be his bride; Pompeia’s frozen stare when I confided in her; my shock at seeing the blood red dress Francesa held; the Milanese ambassador who joined us for dinner, the argument between father and son, and Duccio’s apology, meant to pacify and resolve the conflict he’d created.

My alpha had blocked my memories, just as I had seen him do to so many. Rather, he’d disassembled them, making them each impossible to recall in any comprehendible manner. Duccio had relieved his lycan family of the night’s entire experience. All but Sempronio, of course, who’s been driven into a rage by the deceptive manipulation.

Moments later, Pompeia arrived with a shawl she wrapped around Sempronio. We both helped him to his feet and led him back into the castle. There, once we placed him into bed, I attempted to explain the startling truth to the pack as best as I could.

Hard days passed by us. I attempted to explain the revelation Sempronio had uncovered in my mind, but the others met me with resounding disbelief. Ambrosius and Zacharia accused me of insubordination. But as I explained every detail of the night’s events, I found the telepathic transfer of my memories had the effect of reassembling many loose fragments within each of them. None was more astonished than Ambrosius to at last recall with vivid accuracy how Duccio had meant to promote me over him.

News of the inexplicable event might have passed quickly through the staff had we not all worked to prevent it. We couldn’t hide the destruction, but we struggled to mold opinions of its cause where we could. Those who had witnessed the event with their eyes insisted upon seeing two massive and fearsome beasts brawling destructively in the salon. Ambrosius insisted it was two wild men—that the thieves had entered the castle but turned on each other.

When the inexplicable damage to the dining room wall could not be explained away, Sempronio himself emerged from his night of solace. He performed the same trick upon those resistant minds by which Duccio had exploited his family.

I didn’t have to ask how it affected the master—performing this mysterious act. He was only too vocal about it days later when, upon his insistence, my lectures resumed.

We had just begun our appointment when, seeing his weariness, I stopped his recitation and implored him to share his burden. A light kiss to his cheek and a gentle squeeze of his hand, and his refusals melted away.

“My father called it mens permuntandis. It is a violation,” Sempronio insisted, “one I do not perform lightly.”

Its mere discussion seemed to eat at him.

“I do it only to protect the innocents under my care, not wipe my crimes away from those who should hold me accountable. I could never do it to those who love me.”

“You didn’t know that he was capable of this ability?” I asked.

I contemplated sharing all the instances I could remember of his using his skill—in Morbegno and Canzo, on his ship, or with Apolonia on Christmas Eve. But unsure of myself, I remained silent.

Sempronio took his time in finding the answer.

“I never considered it,” he finally admitted. “It is not unusual for a lycan of his age to develop that gift, but he and I never discussed it. And so it never occurred to me that it was time to counsel him on its greater meaning.”

Sempronio turned and winced in agitation. I sensed he stirred the emotion rather than any impatience with my question.

“I did not pay attention,” he said. “You will not understand, child, but time moves differently for me. It races like fine sand through my fingers, and only when I force myself to stare at a single grain does its passage stand out to me. I trusted Alfredo, my Alfreduccio, but I did not think of his age, and its significance. You remember how difficult it was for you to fathom my age when I told you? For me, it’s just as challenging to think of Duccio’s century and a half. It is a time of my life I can barely still recall, much less understand deeply.

“I love you, child,” he continued, “but do not think I understand what eighteen means any longer. I have no ability to recollect those days in my life at all. I can’t see them comprehensively as you do, or understand their greater significance as you might twenty years from now. The grand epiphanies of my lifetime have overfilled the space in my memory. I rarely recall simple details without some larger event prompting their return. I’ve kept diaries over the centuries to log such details, mostly out of my determination to lose nothing. But my attempts were folly. I read those notes back centuries later and can’t account for a single detail on the page. They are written as if by a complete stranger; one who I shared minor commonalities with at the most.”

For a moment, I fancied that I might understand him, but I could sense Sempronio was prepared to correct me.

“May I read them?” I asked.

The master smiled through the depression in his gaze.

“I fear most have rotted away,” he said, looking among the towering stacks that surrounded his office. “Some scrolls might still open to you without falling apart, and you know enough Latin by now to decipher them. If you like, you may try one day when the weight of my assignments doesn’t weigh you down so. This study will always be open to you.”

His smile quickly faded, and a well of pain filled his eyes.

I placed my hands gently on his jaw and kissed his cheek again. Watching him suffer was agony for me.

“I thought he was the one,” Sempronio whispered.

“The one?”

“I thought Duccio would be the one who’d have the strength to take all of this from me.”

“Take what?” I asked. “The burden of being alpha of Castello Romeo?”

Tears fell from his weathered eyes, wetting his skin as they moved through the deep creases of his age.

“Any fool can be the alpha,” he answered sourly. “That is not our ultimate purpose. Alpha is the step between an administrator and a leader. I believed Duccio might become an omega.”

I shook my head, certain he had misspoken.

“Not like me, surely,” I attempted to correct him.

A weary disappointment broke on Sempronio’s face.

“You are not an omega, my beloved. Duccio called you that because the lycans of this age do no understand what the designation truly means. They believe that a lycan omega is the least of a pack’s members—like wolves in the forest—but the title designates the opposite.

“A lycan omega is the last, not the least. He is the last to dine in times of famine because he is the one most capable of surviving without nourishment. He is the last lycan an enemy pack could likely defeat. He is the eldest, and so the most powerful. The omega rears the pack’s young and thus is the architect of its future. The omega ensures its survival through time.”

The statement confounded me.

During his argument with Duccio, Sempronio had said bitterly that we were immortals, not dogs. I had thought his words were simply provocative verbiage—the ornaments of a stern down-dressing. But I saw now their true meaning. For lycans, greater strength comes only with age. It is the distinguishing mark of our survival.

“An omega is a teacher,” I whispered.

Sempronio sighed and allowed the beginnings of a smile to fight through his anguish.

“I have not wished to be alive in a very long time,” he confessed painfully. “I have made many attempts to raise a future omega for my house. But I’ve made an equal number of mistakes. I thought Duccio would be the one. I believed he’d overcome the impulsive confusions of youth; that he’d grown in strength and wisdom so that the modern world could no longer deceive him. But I have failed again.”

“Can’t you forgive him?” I asked.

“I have forgiven him. He’s my child, and nothing could bar him from my heart forever. But that doesn’t change the inescapable truth: Duccio will not be the next omega of this house.”

“But why can’t you give him another chance? Surely, he’s done nothing so horrible that he is beyond redemption. You always tell me that failure isn’t to be feared—that I should try to fail at something every day. Failure forces us to grow. It welcomes wisdom, you insist.”

Sempronio smiled through his tears, but he shook his head.

“It is not a matter of my wish or my acceptance. Duccio will not survive, Gabriella. He will not survive time itself. And that an omega’s true burden. I could forgive Duccio a thousand times, but it will not change who he is within. The odds are too against him. They will kill my boy, the Sforzas. Not directly, mind you—but by luring him to misperceive the world and time as they do. It is unavoidable.”

The master wiped at his eyes and sighed with self-impatience, then kissed my forehead.

“Perhaps you will 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 stood and gathered himself, pulling on his robes to adjust where sorrow had wrinkled his linens. He walked to his desk and examined a sheaf of notepaper, then nodded when he’d seemed to remember the subject of the day’s lecture.

“I will remain until my duty to our future is done.”