The People's Alpha ✔

16: Small Talk

The song is Two Against Nature by Steely Dan. 

"It's a vampire's car."

"Says the guy with a Zirconian architect's car."

Okay, that was a good one.

We were standing in the expansive lobby of the hall, with the other alphas and betas and aide-de-camps and whatnot. The smell of fresh paint still hung in the air. Attractive waitresses served canapes and crystal flutes of champagne.

Thurgood was alone. The Willow pack beta had long vowed never to set foot in the Sunshine Beach Pack again, owing to some past history he steadfastly refused to talk about.

We were looking down at the parking lot spread out in front of us through the enormous glass facade, framed by the blue waters of the lake and the mountains beyond. Almost lost amongst the sea of black SUVs, a shark-finned Cadillac and a metallic-brown French goddess were parked together, chrome gleaming in the sun.

"It was a bargain. One elderly owner since new, no rust, runs sweet as a nut, everything works except for the cruise control."

"Look, Thurgood. All Cadillacs are vampire cars. People are going to see you driving around in that thing and automatically assume that your boot is filled with dead bodies and jerrycans of blood.

Thurgood chuckled. "They won't. They love it. All the kids want to go for a ride in it. It was a good deal, I'm telling you."

"Don't come crying to me when your own pack members start pelting your car with garlic."

I looked around the room. Brian was talking to some of the leadership from the Kuruman pack, all the way from the Northern Cape in South Africa. There were hundreds of other delegates from packs around the world, most of whom I only ever saw at this time of the year. This was the only time of the year we ever saw most of them. And for good reason.

The talk was polite and even-pitched, but it was all too obviously a facade. People shot dark glances and glowered at each other in between the niceties. The simmering tension was palpable. There were already some minor scuffles breaking out in the distant corners of the room.

Most of the others looked at least a generation younger than we were. I immediately thought of Evan. He wanted nothing to do with this. Not that I had ever expected him to inherit my role.

"We really are getting old." I redirected my gaze to the champagne flute in my hand. "Give it a few more years. Then we'll shove off, make way for some new blood, retire to somewhere sunny, sip pina coladas on the beach."

Thurgood's eyes traced the path of a yacht making its way across the azure waters of the lake. There was a beautiful she-wolf on the deck, her gaze directed at some distant point opposite to our location, dress billowing in the gentle afternoon breeze.

Back inside the foyer, Wethermore was over in the corner, entertaining the delegation from Tennessee. Age had hollowed his figure, but he was still the same person who had led the Golden Fir Pack for over three of its greatest decades, who had been one of the driving forces behind the formation of the Organisation of Pan-Lycan Unity, the same person who had led the Independent Territories to peace after the turmoil of the 1990s.

"There's still some way to go before we become truly hopeless salvage cases. Who said you can't teach an old wolf new tricks?"

Two black four wheel drives with Zirconian plates pulled up to the porte-cochere outside the foyer, closely followed by a Mercedes S600 Guard limousine, and even more black four wheel drives. The Zirconians were here.

The man who got out was the Mercedes was the type whose face you would forget while talking to him. He barely glanced at us. He was the Zirconian Minister for Defense, although most people still thought of him as the Minister for Internal Affairs, a position he had vacated three years prior.