Tempest

21 : Alpha of the Rogues

Dinner was set up at Daniel and Samantha's home, with just the mated couple, Tempest and Galan in attendance. The Beta had taken patrol duty with a number of the warriors and was currently unavailable.

"The kids are asleep now," Samantha told them. "It took me almost an hour to get them to sleep!" she moaned. Daniel chuckled and Samantha pouted and smacked him on the shoulder. Daniel caught her hand and kissed her palm, then her cheek. Sitting next to Daniel, who was a meter ninety of muscle, Samantha looked tiny at a meter sixty nine. Her blonde hair and green eyes were very different from his brown hair and gray eyes. What was apparent, however, was the devotion they clearly had for each other.

Watching them, Galan felt a twinge of jealousy. He cast a look at Tempest and noted that she had not missed the interaction between the two. There was a wistful look in her eye that she neutralised as soon as she noticed that he was watching her. They had spent some time with the kids, Jason and Amanda, aged six and three, respectively, before they sat down to eat. Tempest had played hide and seek with them for quite some time. Galan had watched them and had wondered what their kids would look like. He had pictured a little girl with dark hair like his and blue eyes like her mother. A little boy with her complexion and his tall build. He had considered other combinations and felt a need in his heart that he had never had before.

He wanted children with her.

He wanted a life with her.

"How did you and Tempest meet?" Galan asked, moving away from that thought which buzzed in his mind like a hive of bees. All eyes were on him as he finished speaking. Daniel looked towards Tempest and there was a fondness in his gaze that Galan did not miss.

"Well, Tempest here saved our lives. I will tell you the full story another time. What I need to understand now is why you came all this way to see us," Daniel said.

There had been an internal debate on how much to reveal to Daniel and Samantha. After much thinking, however, he had decided that he would have wanted to know the full truth without it being sugar coated. So he laid it out the way he would have wanted to hear it.

"There is a war coming," Galan said. "The Dark Druids are forming an army and want to annihilate all supernatural creatures. We need to know if you will fight with us against them."

Daniel raised an eyebrow and looked at Samantha. She looked back at him and sighed. Instead of responding to Galan's statement, he turned to face Tempest.

"You know we would do anything for you, Tempest, except this," Daniel said. "You know our reasons."

"I am aware, Daniel, but you need to understand that your people will not be immune to the danger that is coming. You need to realise that."

"What would we be fighting for exactly? A community of weres who have done nothing but shun and disrespect our people?" Daniel glared at Galan and his power started to pulse from him in angry waves.

Galan's anger started to rise as well at the way Daniel was speaking to his mate. "I would watch my tone if I were you," he said as he glared back at Daniel.

He heard both Samantha and Tempest sigh but he did not lower his eyes from the eyes of the man who was in front of him.

"What will you do, your majesty? Kill more of our people?" Daniel snarled.

As the two men stood up and leaned over the table towards each other Tempest and Samantha stood up too.

"Shall we do it your way or my way?" Tempest seemed to be asking Samantha.

"My way, darling," Samantha drawled. "I just replaced the furniture and your way will mean I have to replace everything. Again."

"Fair enough," Tempest said.

Out of the corner of his eye, Galan saw Samantha raise her hand. She snapped her fingers and then he was falling.

*

Tempest knew what was coming. Samantha's transportation spell took some getting used to. They arrived back in their cabin at the same time. She watched as Galan staggered and struggled to regain his footing. After a few seconds he gained his balance and turned to where she was now sitting.

"What the hell was that?" he asked.

"Consider it a time out. You were both out of line," Tempest told him.

"He had no right to speak to you like that," Galan said as he sat down, looking decidedly queasy.

Tempest was quiet for a while, watching her mate with a thoughtful look on her face. She was deciding what to tell him and after a while, she decided to tell it all.

"I met Samantha almost two decades ago. She found me alone in a cave. It was after I had left Aida and Samual to go out and look for my family. They had offered to come with me but I declined. I needed them safe and after much persuasion, they agreed to stay and help me from home. It was a dark time for me. I was struggling to find my family, and somewhere along the line I lost myself a little bit as well. I sank, and I sank hard. Not being able to reconnect with my mother took its toll on me and I felt like I was losing them all over again."

Tempest took a deep long breath and stood up, going to the window and looking outside as though facing him while she trusted him with her darkest secrets was hard for her to do.

"Samanatha tracked me to the cave. She came with about ten weres because they had never scented anyone like me before. They did not know what they would find. When she saw me, saw how wild I had become, how, feral, she sent her men outside." Tempest chuckled at the memory. "She was fearless. She knew I could kill her. She knew, yet she came in alone anyway. She calmed me down. To this day I do not quite know how she did it. She managed to get me out of the cave and back to her village. This village.

"She lived here with about sixty odd men, women and children at the time. What i didn't know then, was that she had lost her mate in a senseless attack by a group of Vampires. No-one knows why they attacked her village but when they were gone, the devastation that they had wrecked was beyond anything she had ever seen. She packed up what was left of the tribe and they came and settled here.

"She met Daniel pretty much the same way, without the cave but with a cliff this time. She talked him off of it and it wasn't too long after that they discovered they were second chance mates. They have lived here for decades, Galan, slowly growing their tribe. Not because they were getting ready for a war, but because the devastation caused by the unnatural wars, killings and abduction of supernatural creatures created a huge number of deaths which left families and mates torn apart.

"Rogues were created, Galan. Created through strange deaths and disappearances that separated loved ones. It didn't help that the Lycans and other weres attacked those who were pack less without affording them opportunities for assimilation into new packs."

Tempest finally turned away from the window and went and knelt next to Galan, taking his hand in hers. Blue eyes looked into brown and held.

"You need to understand why they are pissed," she said softly. "For years, Alphas across the Lycans and weres have indiscriminately killed rogues, not taking time to understand what was causing them and not caring to know. Rogues have been seen as vermin, the lowest of the weres. Undisciplined, untrainable. Broken. Samantha and Daniel saw something else within them and somehow, were able to turn that around. Now, however, their numbers are close to a thousand. Are you following me, Galan?"

Galan watched her with hooded eyes, everything finally coming together. He sighed and rubbed his eyes tiredly. A move that inexplicably pulled at her heart and made her want to hug him.

"I understand. So Daniel is indeed the Alpha of the Rogues?" he asked.

Tempest chuckled as she stood up and squeezed his hand before letting it go. "Oh, no, your highness. You have it all wrong. Samantha started all this. Technically she's the Alpha here."

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25 October 2020
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