Isabel's Choice

Chapter 16 - Lars

We look at Ayn as if she would have sprouted horns.

"Excuse me?" My father uses the question which is reserved in our family only for potentially deadly situations. "Who are you and what have you done with my mate? Even before marking me and carrying my males, she had made me promise that none of them would have to fight me like I fought Xander?"

My grandfather Xander passed away when I was five, so I had only vague memories of a large-handed giant and a black wolf with bizarre violet eyes - like Eino's. 

Kari seldomly spoke about his dad and when he did, it was in the context of pack history discussions. I knew that he was an excellent diplomat and a loyal ally. My father never told us that he had to gain his right to hold his pack mind by fighting his Alpha.

"I am not sure," Ayn answers neutrally, "maybe she briefly died earlier, when the future Alpha of the Council's Peace and Security pack suggested that his first-born son rises an unplanned challenge."

"Touché, Luna, but I don't understand what your proposal is trying to achieve."

"Sven will not have the privilege his older brother had, to do proper Alpha training," my mother straightens her posture, resting her hands in her lap. "I have noticed that the secondments required for the Alpha training are not just an opportunity to learn other styles of fighting, but also to set the bases of future alliances."

I note she is intentionally allowing her witch accent to come through, vowels becoming softer, the R trilling just enough to make her sound unthreatening. 

"In the short term, Sven will not be able to compensate for not having completed them. He will be exposed to challenges and he will spend his resources trying to manage those that will be chewing at his borders.

And in all this time, he will be reduced to carrying the aura of a second-born who got the mind in a crisis. Not because he was truly capable of holding it, but just because he was...there, lucky enough to have found his mate.

The gossip will at first be external, but then it will slowly infiltrate the pack mind, weakening it from the inside."

She makes a brief pause, allowing us to ask clarification questions, but Kari gestures at her to continue.

"Now, if he were to defeat in combat his Alpha, a future Counsellor no less, he will step in his role from a completely different position. A much safer position."

Her fingers intertwine slightly, to form a small circle in her lap.

"The gossip will of course still exist, but the pack will be able to hold their ground in front of it, leaning in on the knowledge that their leader is as strong as their previous one."

My father, who has carefully listened to Ayn's arguments, closes his eyes as he sometimes does when he needs to prepare his response, but in this case, I don't understand what exactly he thinks he could prepare.

My witch mother has just demonstrated that she intimately understands not only the shifter's physiology but also their psychological workings. Her logic is iron-clad.

Her proposal is securing my brother's future, though it is devastating for me. The five months that remain from our alliance with Owen's pack are long. It might take Sven the double of that to claw his way to a victory in front of my dad.

"Oh come on, mom, it's shorter to wait for Eino here to come of age and allow him to get a chosen mate, than for Sven to rise." I cannot help verbalizing my frustration.

My brother shakes his head at my proposal. He doesn't feel like a future Alpha right now, his guilt feelings for having spilled my beans visible in the way he's crossing his arms tighter against himself.