The Wilde Expedition

5. beast of nature

Copyright © 2015. All Rights Reserved.

〮CHAPTER FIVE 〮

 For the remainder of the week, I spent a lot of time studying the names and faces of the attendees, a process that became annual as a response to my lack of knowledge of lycanthrope family names. We'd already received the RSVPs over two months prior, so we could arrange for the dinner attendants, the capacity of the ballroom, and other necessities involving the events for the week.

Originally, when Mom and Dad (and everyone else who thought they had a say in the gala) created the outline for every gala following the first, it was planned to be three days. Three days was determined too short to fit in the events, as well as for me to get to know every single attendant. Half the time, I didn't even come in contact with a few. Some just came to observe from afar, and speculate the probability of a full-fledged female lycanthrope who never went through the ritual. It seemed impossible—it'd never occurred before.

The first year of the ball could have been a complete disaster, had Aunt Amaya not been apart of the planning committee. However, we overbooked the party and we thought not everyone would RSVP, but when given the chance to see the anomaly that was me, no fellow lycanthrope could turn it down. Not only were we overcapacity, but the dance was so packed that almost no one saw the guy lurking around with a set of throwing knives under his suit. An old-fashioned route for assassination, and it nearly succeeded had I not dodged the "bullet", so to speak.

After that, security increased, and the number of people invited decreased. For the past four years this thing has been going on, and every time there would be a problem that seemed huge and unfixable at the time, but in light of the disaster that was the first year, nothing seemed quite so terrible in hindsight.

I had my dresses tailored earlier in the week by Heather in town, and since then I'd practiced etiquette, my French (there were a few guests from France this year, so I needed to brush up a bit), and walk around in heels to get used to it. I had to visit the council at the end of the week to discuss the plan of action, which included discussion on the plane ride, the arrival, the hotel and any other facilities that were going to be in use. Normally these meetings consisted of everyone that was going on the trip, but every year Mom sat in just to ensure that her only daughter was in good hands.

This year, neither Charlie nor Alister were joining us.

For an hour each day, I visited Grace at the dance studio where we practiced ballroom dancing—everything I would need to know to impress my suitors. How to act as if I was graceful, elegant, and yet powerful to assert my dominance. If they couldn't handle the last part, they got a big red 'X' through their profile on the list of RSVPs Vincent kept close to his chest.

While many of the council members initially agreed that a female Alpha was a terrible mistake, their observations changed, and they preferred to keep the female Alpha position. It was why second sons of Alphas were requested to attend. It made the air of the room tense with sizzling, uncontrolled energy. They leaked their animalistic power everywhere, and it was a good thing we restricted the gala festivities to one week. Anything more, and my own dominance wouldn't be able to mask the fact that the workers at the hotel and the surrounding facilities would turn up sick, and later, as monstrous wolves.

Prior to Mom's reign, lycanthropes were traditionally males, and any male at any time could turn up in the wild as apart of the wilderness—this beast of nature that escaped through the human psyche in a physical form. Naturally, any human could, but it tends to require tremendous amounts of testosterone that females lack, and a generally broader physique to account for the shift. However, it was always possible that, through the ritual developed at the beginning of lycanthrope times, that Alpha females were able to transform. It would require the willingness of their parter, an Alpha, to perform the ritual.