Wolf Omega: Lykanos Chronicles 2

Gabriella!

Pompeia’s telepathic voice called to me through the black night of the new moon. I stopped running through the forest, distracted from the sights and sounds I followed.

Unfocused and no longer hunting for other prey to slaughter, my body returned to its lycan form in seconds, and I stood naked and confused among the trees.

“Pompeia!” I called out, at once startled by it all.

In minutes, she closed on my position in the forest and approached me. Even under the dim starlight, I saw her astonished horror at finding me naked and covered in blood. The sight of her unmasked emotions drew a self-conscious plea when I remembered all my actions, free of the wolf’s singular focus.

It was all present in my mind, everything I’d done: my running from Pompeia’s command; my destruction of the inn; my slaughter of that murderous rapist; the delicious taste of his blood.

“Help me,” I whispered in the silence between us.

Pompeia unfastened her woolen cape and drew it to cover my body. She placed her arms around me as I shook, and the soothing sensation of being cared for in this simple manner became too much to resist. I wept in her arms until I could breathe again.

She guided me back to the country road where Maximo waited outside the carriage with the driver.

“Take us home,” Pompeia commanded as she whisked me inside the carriage.

Maximo stared silently in the darkness as we rode, no doubt wanting to know what had set me off to such destruction, but Pompeia offered him nothing. Not another word was spoken, not even when we arrived back at the castle.

She led me silently to my room and drew a warm bath for me. Pompeia gently wiped the blood from me like my mother might clean my body of soil after a romp in the mud. Even as she dressed me, I remained quietly exhausted, still absorbed by the violence I’d committed.

When I was presentable, Pompeia brought me to Duccio’s office.

We found Maximo departing—Duccio and Ambrosius having finished their debrief of him. I waited outside the doors as Pompeia entered to speak with them first.

“Are you all right?” Maximo asked me when the door shut.

I didn’t answer, the unexpected warmth in his eyes cutting me. Sensing my distress, he drew his arms around me and kissed my cheek. Again, I wept like a child and took to the tender comfort of his kindness. He held me silently for much longer than he should have, and I did nothing to resist his console.

“It will be all right,” he whispered, breaking away only when Pompeia re-emerged from Duccio’s office.

“They will see you now,” she said, leaving only when I’d turned to pass through the doors.

Duccio sat at his desk. Ambrosius stood by a bookshelf in the corner of the lavish study.

“I’m uncertain of how to proceed with you,” Duccio admitted, his deep voice colored by indecision. “Do you want to explain your actions?”

I felt unable to answer his question and only stared back in silence.

“Why did you leave Pompeia’s side?” Ambrosius asked with impatience.

“I heard someone in pain,” I answered feebly.

“Who?” Duccio asked.

“I don’t know—a woman. I heard her suffering, and I left Pompeia to find her. She was upstairs.”

“On the third floor of the inn?” Duccio asked.

I nodded.

“You heard her?” Ambrosius scowled. “You heard her screaming from the top floor of the inn?”

“Yes,” I confirmed. “I saw her pain in my mind. She was being harmed, and I ran up to help her.”

Ambrosius looked to Duccio with disbelief. The alpha kept his eyes on me.

“What did you see from the corridor when you arrived on the third floor?” Duccio asked gently.

“I saw what she saw,” I answered. “I saw her husband lying dead on the floor beside the bed. I heard the murderer grunting in her ear; I felt the blade at her throat; I felt her agony as he violated her; I smelled his feted breath.”

I shuddered at the memory, closing my eyes to hold back the tears and anger.

“And then it happened?” Duccio asked.

I nodded.

“Did you choose for it to happen?”

I shook my head limply but stopped when I considered his question.

“I started without my thinking about it,” I answered. “But when I felt the power, I...”

“You surrendered to it? You invited it?”

Again, I shook my head, uncertain of the most accurate response to Duccio’s question.

“I made it happen. I forced the transformation and relished in it. The power was intoxicating, and I drew it to me, knowing fully well that I meant to use it to destroy the man.”

I could not have been more honest. Ambrosius looked positively incredulous, though I could tell he held back his words. Duccio only stared in quiet appraisal.

A knock came from the door behind me, and it immediately opened.

Come, Father, Duccio called with his mind.

Sempronio’s entered and stood beside my chair.

“Forgive the hour,” Duccio offered.

“Indeed,” Sempronio answered curtly.

“Something has happened, and I expect you will wish to address it.”

“Oh?” the old man asked.

“Gabriella has disobeyed our orders. In plain sight of witnesses, she transformed, destroyed private property, and killed a man. Considering the circumstances, I would welcome your counsel.”

“Indeed?” said the man. “She is your pack member, your omega, is she not?”

“She is,” Duccio answered. “But she is also your pupil, and the circumstances are far more complicated than simple insubordination.”

“Indeed,” Sempronio said, and he turned to leave the room without another word.

I could not help but be amused by the master’s grumpy departure, and I watched him go. When I turned back to find Duccio’s eyes on me again, he cocked his head at my inaction.

“Go,” he said with impatient eyes.

When I finally understood his meaning, I rose quickly to depart the room to follow Sempronio, closing the door behind me.

In the hallway, I caught up to the master as quickly as possible and remained just a couple of feet behind him. We traveled this way in silence through the castle until we arrived at his study.

The room was brightly lit as if the man had been up instead of resting when Pompeia no doubt delivered Duccio’s call.

When Sempronio sat down at his desk, he nodded at the chair before him for me to do the same.

“So, then... You survived?”

His was a patient question, as was everything the man had ever asked me. But I hadn’t considered my experience from that viewpoint.

“I’m alive, still,” I said.

“That’s not what I asked. Not two months ago, you insisted your abuses had not broken you, and you pleaded for your vovkulaka, for a hundred lifetimes. ‘I will not be destroyed,’ you insisted, moving my heart and quieting my reason. So then, tell me. Did you survive?”

His question silenced me, and I looked to the wall absently to consider his greater meaning for some time.

“Yes,” I said at last.

He didn’t respond, but I could see he expected far more.

“Not a single one of those considerations passed my mind as it happened. I heard the call for help from the woman’s mind, then I ran to her without taking my leave of Pompeia, thinking nothing of what the consequences might be. I knew only that I must save that woman’s life. I felt not the slightest fear during that time—not with my wolf to charge forward, and not until Pompeia eventually pulled me out of my rage. And then, I cared mostly for how I had betrayed her or violated our laws. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that I must do it, that I must slay the evildoer.

“Even now, I can’t conceive of choosing a different course of action. So, perhaps that is the genuine answer to your question. I must not be broken, for I certainly survived.”

“Indeed,” he concurred, and I smiled at his single word catchphrase for the night.

“Then I suspect our next lessons must focus on self-control,” Sempronio said, returning my smile. “That is if you ever want Duccio to allow you out of this house again.”

My head was swimming as I walked alone through the castle back to my room. Sempronio and I would resume my studies in the morning, a little later on the hour’s account.

“A mind without proper sleep can learn nothing,” he insisted.

I arrived at my door to find it slightly ajar. Pompeia had entered and was seated on one of the armchairs in my small drawing-room study. She stared into the fireplace that Francesca lit each evening for me. She only noticed me when I shut the door behind me.

“What did they say?” she whispered with deep concern when her eyes fell on me.

“Nothing much,” I assured her. “They only asked me questions to confirm what you and Maximo had reported to them. Then Sempronio came to counsel them and took me to his rooms to do the same. I don’t believe they mean to discipline me in any other way.”

Pompeia exhaled with relief.

“I told them what I experienced and told them the truth that I didn’t mean to disregard their or your orders.”

“But what did happen?” she asked.

I recanted it all for her, explaining my experience of events, perhaps with even greater insight as I understood it more deeply the further I discussed it.

“You can hear them?” Pompeia asked with wonder.

“Just as I can hear you all,” I answered. “It began with Francesca the day I arrived. I could hear her feelings about my clothes and the marks on my body when she undressed me for the bath. In my mind, I could see the images coming through her eyes. But tonight, it was all so much more.

“I was called by that woman’s suffering. I saw her agony from the tavern in deep shades of red, and as I drew nearer to her, I could see through her eyes, hear her assailants voice, smell his breath, and feel the pain of her suffering as he attacked her. And my wolf came without a thought from me. I never called her forth, but when she arrived, I embraced everything about her.”

Pompeia was absorbed by my descriptions, which also came from me visually to her mind.

“Sempronio said that most of us do not experience this telepathy, as he does, until we are much older.”

“I’ve never heard them,” she confessed. “I didn’t believe such a thing was possible, even when Sempronio told me years ago. But there’s no doubt of it. Even Duccio does not yet hear the thoughts of men like that.”

Sempronio had told me the same. I shook my head, thinking of what I’d seen Duccio do with Father Piero and the sailors aboard his barge. He had coaxed their very perceptions of me, causing the priest to surrender me over to him. The sailors had taken no notice of the peasant rags I wore when he introduced me as his cousin. Surely, such manipulation meant he could hear them telepathically. Perhaps I misunderstood it, and I made no move to contradict Pompeia.

“You believe me,” I asked, “that I didn’t mean to disobey you.”

“Yes,” she assured me. “Even as it happened, I realized something larger was a work. I just couldn’t understand what had drawn you to leave us. The only other concern was that other houses might hear back of how Duccio had massacred people in Cantú.”

“The master will begin to instruct me on the discipline of self-control in the morning. He assures me that I will be ready by the time I am assigned to leave here again.”

Pompeia nodded, again relieved that all was well. She moved to give me a sisterly hug, then kissed my cheek before bidding me goodnight.

Before I fell asleep, I thought of Savia and Mother, wondering if they knew that I was still alive.