Trial of Fates

Chapter 8

Natania is sprawled out on the balcony of Gretchen's twenty-sixth floor apartment when Gretchen finally asks the questions she's been dreading. Natania hasn't fully recovered yet but the effects of the pridelander's bite have faded.

"So who is Leah? You keep saying her name in your sleep nowadays."

The wolf glances at Gretchen and sighs. She rolls to her feet before shifting forms then sits cross-legged.

Natania drums her fingers on the balcony floor and fingers the locket around her neck. "It's a long story."

"We've got time," Gretchen points out.

"So we do," Natania murmurs. There isn't much they have to do until Vincent finally calls. She takes a deep breath then begins to speak.

"Leah was a wolf in my pack, and she hated everything," Natania gives a sad smile, "there's a very large divide between the pack rankings, the high ranks treat the lowers like they're worthless, and the lower ranks rightfully hate the high ranks for it."

"My father's rule was that children inherit their parents' rank, regardless of their own merit. I changed that for the wolves that became mine, but that was later. Leah had the misfortune of inheriting her parents' 15th rank, the last ranking that we actually mark in the pack, then there's the unranked and then omegas. Since she was ranked, she was considered too high in the pack for the unranked ones to be comfortable with, but too low for the higher ones to treat kindly. So she was essentially an outcast."

"And she spent so much of her childhood watching her parents be treated like dirt from both sides of the pack that she didn't want anything to do with them anyway. I was raised by the lowest member of our pack, which would be Sara, who you met. So I," Natania shrugs, "I never condoned the abuse like my father did. I fought the wolves that would use their 'rank' to justify their shitty antics so I had a decent relationship with all members of my pack." Natania glances at Gretchen, "Anyone born in my year or later, was deemed to be 'my pack' even if they didn't officially have to follow me until I was older."

"Anyway, when I tried to approach Leah, because seeing how she was treated went against everything I wanted my pack to be, she snapped at me, in front of a good portion of my pack. And shit hit the fan." Natania looks at the ceiling for a long while before continuing but Gretchen just waits patiently. "Every wolf who went to our school felt they had to 'defend my honour'," Natania spits on the last part, "I could only stop what I saw and that was around the time my father finally claimed me and kept me out of school for a long time."

"I went maybe two or three times a month and spent the rest of my time training and learning from my father. Branson hid it from me, but everything I had accomplished fell apart without me around to enforce it. It wasn't until I was around fifteen or sixteen that I convinced my father I needed to spend more time around what would become my pack and spend more time in class."

"They were used to me being there for one day and disappearing, and I was pretty late the second day back so they thought I wasn't there. I arrived in time to see five of my wolves harassing Leah, she was holding her own," Natania grins, "even back then she didn't need me to protect her. But I wanted to put a stop to it so I snapped, injured two of them so the rest had to take them away. Told them that if I ever saw anything like that again, I would have them shunned from the pack. Shunning basically drops you to Omega rank, the bottom, since we don't really banish wolves from our packs unless they're truly atrocious, but then we would kill them."

"Leah was furious with me. Said that she could take care of herself and I was just another alpha on a power trip. Branson was the one who actually calmed her down. They were friends, she told me that all being my 'sibling' had gotten Branson was worse treatment than hers. Branson had been hiding his bruises from me because whenever I stepped in, the next day they were worse to him, blaming him," Natania snarls under her breath.