The Wilde Expedition

16. breakthrough

Copyright © 2015. All Rights Reserved.

〮CHAPTER SIXTEEN 〮

Mom knew I was going to the boarding school, so there was at least that. I had to give a little faith in her skepticism. She always was a skeptic. Don't fail me now, Mom.

If that fell through, winter break would be coming to an end at the end of this month. There'd be hundreds, thousands of kids here. Surely they'd explore a little? But, dammit, it was in the middle of the year. All the exploring happened in the beginning of the year, when people weren't familiar with the area.

But Alister... if that Beta deal was true, I might be able to reach out to him. I just wished he'd get back to school now rather than in a few weeks.

After the discussion in Prescott's office, madness ensued, but I couldn't remember much of it because I'd worked myself up into a rampage. I tried to kick down the door, kicked Beron in the nuts, and I went into Prescott's private quarters to see if there was a door in there (there wasn't). So I locked myself up in there and flipped his bed on its' side to barricade the door. That didn't seem like enough, so while Prescott was ordering Beron to grab the key, I hauled the dresser across the floor, pushing against it with my back on the side, until it settled in front of the sidelong bed.

Eventually they got through. Beron unlocked the door, and the two of them threw themselves against it, slowly but surely pushing the bed and the dresser out of the way. By that point I was in private bathroom, door locked, and shower door closed.

There wasn't a key into the bathroom.

So that was where I was now.

They talked for a while outside in Prescott's office, discussing their possibilities, arguing over the fact that he'd enlisted the help of Declan Walker. It was pretty easy for me to recall then who exactly this outlaw was. He was wanted not only by the lycanthrope community, but also the government, for the murder of dozens of people. Dad told me about it, because apparently all that shit happened right in our home state. Texas.

"He went off the deep end," he'd told me. "When he was twelve, he killed his dad and framed his brother. His mother was taken under the custody of a ward run by one of our kind, because she tried to call the police and tell them that her family were werewolves."

"Why would he kill his dad?" When I asked my dad this, I remembered he knelt his elbows on the table and pulled his hands through his hair.

"He was... not a kind person. He was an Alpha, and he abused his wife. I imagine Walker was trying to protect his mom, but when she was put in the ward, he ran from the government. He wound up in Texas in 2010."

Alphas didn't settle well as "lone rangers". They needed foundation, a group of people to build up from. Alone, he would attract strangers, call attention to himself, and turn people into casualties. It didn't help that this fellow Declan Walker killed his dad. Any trust he had with his father's pack most likely vanished when he pulled that stunt.

So what did he do when strangers started shifting? He killed them. If he didn't, and he up and left town, they'd be ravaged by an illness that couldn't be cured with human antibiotics or medicines. Some times, when the pain was too much, they'd kill themselves to be put out of the misery.

I knew that because Uncle Bennet went through it. He told me how dreadfully awful the illness is, and how it made his skin feel as though it was boiling off of his bones, and his insides burned like acid. He told me how it was all in his head, which was a horrible torture to endure in and of itself. The worst part was that he knew the cure, and those strangers Walker turned into lycanthropes, didn't.