Sly as a Fox {Book One}

Chapter 38

Chapter 38

A/N: The picture above is of Raphael's mate, Michelle, or Mickey.

Alpha

noun

-the leader or highest ranking individual - or pair - in a dominance hierarchy

-the first; beginning

- used to designate the brightest star in a constellation

The sound of sleet tapping on my window was just incessant enough to hold my attention from sleep; not that I would have been able to sleep soundly without it.

Like I had seen a ghost, my face felt drained of blood ever since I learned the meaning of Dante's tattoo. I was trapped in a trance as a means of coping without any hope of escape. I was haunted by that single image of a fox head and I couldn't stop thinking about what Dante must have done to earn that initiation tattoo; or what he was still doing to keep it.

When he returned home covered in mud yesterday with a - more than likely - knife wound on his neck, I had been suspicious enough, but now with the knowledge of the person he had become, my heart lurched in my chest to consider the possibilities of what he was doing yesterday.

My big brother - the kid I forced to play Barbie dolls and would race bikes with - was a gang member. And he wasn't apart of just any gang, but a member of the most dangerous and notorious gang in the northeast. The "Fox Traps" was a name most anyone would recognize, but especially in this area with Boston being so close. They recruited mostly Volpes, as their name and emblem would suggest, and they had a deep-seated hatred for Lupos and packs. They were bloodthirsty, especially when it came to retribution for crimes committed against Volpes; the cold-blooded murder of Blithe's mother being a perfect example of what they were capable of.

What that meant for Dante and how deadly he was, I didn't know.

Was he a runner?

Did he sell drugs?

Did he hurt people?

Was he a hitman?

Had he ever killed anyone?

I hadn't realized I was crying until I felt wetness on my cheek. I sat up in my bed and wiped the stray tears from my face as a lonesome chill ran up my spine. I didn't know what to do with this information. If I told my parents, not only would it break their hearts, but it would ruin whatever potential brother-sister relationship was left to salvage with Dante and I. If I knew him well enough, Dante would run and not speak to us for stars know how long if things went badly, which was bound to be the case with a truth such as this. Nothing would be the same between any of us. It would be a giant bomb to our family and I wasn't sure if I was prepared to be the one to detonate it.

And that was without considering what would become of Blithe and I when he found out. He had come a long way in a short time with his view of Volpes, but I knew he still had a ways to go to truly overcome the thoughts he was raised to believe. All this time I had been trying to convince him that Volpes weren't these barbaric, back-stabbing creatures only to be proved wrong. I could only begin to imagine his reaction when he learned that his brother-in-law was a member of the same gang who slaughtered his mother.

I might not have been involved with this, but I had to wonder if my proximity to Dante would affect how Blithe perceived me and my family.

Would he look at me differently?

Would he be afraid of me?

More tears pricked at my eyes and I gave into their demands to overtake me, capturing my face in my hands to muffle my cries. My shoulders quaked with scarcely restrained sobs and I let them move through my body if only to release some of the tension that had been building inside of me. The ticking sound of the ice against the glass of my window was the only thing that masked my half-choked cries.