Chapter Thirty-Three: Jack

I’ve put off this awkward conversation between Romulus and I off for long enough. It’s one that I’ve been intentionally avoided, leaving them to do as they please in this battle. He lost his family to Daffyd. Daffyd deserved what’s coming to him, and even if I did get into the mix, what would it really change? This war would continue with Agency intervention or not.

So, coming up on the grounds, standing opposite the small piece of land out in the distance, I wonder just how the conversation will go. Is he going to concede? Does he know he did wrong?

I get out of my luxury German automobile – which, I might add, did not have a good time driving down the muddy dirt roads – walking to the small pier and getting onto a rowboat. I light a smoke and begin rowing. Slowly at first. Testing the waters but realizing there wouldn’t actually be a current. This is more a pond than a lake, and nowhere near a river. So, I push on until I meet the shoreline. I walk past a wood cabin. Outside, an old man sits by the fire. He’s detached from the wolfpack, half-drunk already, no end in sight with how he’s hitting the bottle.

“Howdy,” I say, in a passing good gesture.

“Hi,” he replies. “What are you…come to ge…looking for…?” he slurs, the mixed mumbles of various chopped sentences thrown together. I wave him off with a dapper smile. I’ve never been one to handle drunk men very well.

The small heap of land that Romulus claimed when taking the peace grounds is no bigger than two hundred meters across and three hundred wide. It’s why I struggle to understand how I don’t see any of them. No signs of the wolves at all, apart from a few campsites that were very recently taken down. Maybe they’ve moved off the land. Maybe this is him trying to show some good faith after a disaster.

Well, we can hope, right?

“You know this is not the end, right?” the familiar voice, though forlorn, speaks out from behind me.

“What do you mean?” I stand up from my hunched position at one of the camp fires to turn and face him. He’s bruised and battered. His body covered in bandages. He’s not ashamed about the wounds. Why would one be? Displaying them openly as the alpha. Those who challenge, beware. I fought off my enemies and won.

“Why not?” I ask in true wonder.

“Because things don’t go the way you plan in war.” He leans against a tree, “When I claimed the peace grounds as my own, it was purely to send a message. One that worked for a while, but Daffyd has wizened up. Somehow, he’s just got the upper hand these days. We’re trapped in here. We can’t leave the forest. By day, there are the White Elephants, by night the vampires. My wolves are tired. We all understand, though, that you don’t give up because you’re tired.”

I didn’t realize why he was saying all this, but I feel it’s being put into place now. I take my father’s ring from my pocket and begin mindlessly fidgeting with it. A nervous habit I’ve taken up over the years.

“And that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To tell me to give up…” I can hear that he’s not himself. He hasn’t been since the death of his family, but things change. You adapt to the change, and so do they. He’s become the war hungry general now. So, when he breaks character into the more sympathetic wolf I once knew, I can tell something is off.

“Yes, that is why I’m here. Your actions in having the witches enter the battle have caused severe casualties in the city and around it. The implications do not only fall on you. When I became director, I was tasked to stop this war by any means. I knew that I would not be able to do so with words, so I let you go. Do as you pleased because I know that Daffyd was your redemption. I left it to be so. We had an understanding. A silent agreement between the three parties – you will not fight in the town or anywhere that could get a human killed unless it was their own foolish ambition to see it themselves, right?” He nods in agreement. “Well, now I’m coming to you and telling you that this is where it has to come to an end. The war has gone on too long. You’re on the way to facing a major defeat. You’ve killed normal, innocent people that have had nothing to do with this war from the start, and I can’t believe you didn’t traumatize the witch that had to do this bidding. Can you not see that this is hurting rather than helping?” I keep it calm, but I know he can tell there’s more underlying rage than I’m letting on.

“Can I be honest with you?” he asks me, pushing off the tree with the slightest wince of pain from the movement on the various cut up or bruised areas.

“Of course,” I reply.

“I honestly don’t care.” Not what I was expecting. “You don’t know what it feels like to have lost your family, let alone before your eyes. A child that truly had no part in this war to begin with. She was an accessory to a crime. She was going to be the salvation of my people. A unifying bond between witch and werewolf. The beacon of hope to lead both parties into a brighter future, and she was cut down and killed because Aliana didn’t want to kill a child. Do you know that kind of drive? I doubt it. This war will continue until Daffyd’s head is mine. He will suffer for his crimes against myself and my kind.”

What more can I say?