Alpha's Duality (Black Moon Saga Book 4)

Last night, I dreamt of Emerick again. It’s been years since anyone has seen or heard from my twin, not since he somehow managed to escape the prison-like reform school where my parents sent him in hopes that it might help tame the natural darkness within him. In my dream, his dark, luxurious curls were still buzzed close to his scalp, the same hairstyle he wore the time that I thought I spotted him in the crowd gathered out back during Margot’s succession ceremony. I still can’t say for sure what that was all about. No one else could even see him, and all our father was able to tell me about the faint trace of his essence left behind was that it seemed to be contained to one tiny spot on the ground that wasn’t even big enough to contain a person. It was a trick, of course. Mind games are Emerick’s love language. We couldn’t figure him out then, and we haven’t gotten any closer to doing so now. I’ve been trying to convince myself that these dreams I’ve been having lately are just my mind playing tricks on me now the way he was doing then, but it doesn’t seem to be working. The dreams just keep coming, stealing more and more sleep from me. It almost feels like a warning, like the dreams are building toward something, but what? What message is my brain struggling to piece together, and where is it coming from? I only hope that it isn’t a sign of something even more distressing than the fact that we still have no idea how Emerick managed to breach Black Moon’s defensive warding to place that spell in the first place. Not much scares me more than that, other than the idea that I might have inherited yet another thing from my father: his prophetic visions, which have haunted his dreams for pretty much the entirety of my twenty-three years on this planet. The man hasn’t enjoyed a decent night of sleep since before I was born, and I’m starting to fear the same fate for me. As bad as that possibility seems, it’s still better than some of the others I’ve come up with to explain my problem. Namely, I can’t help but wonder if these dreams I’ve been having aren’t really dreams at all. Emerick is a rascal and my opposite in almost every way that he can be, save two. Like me, he is a powerful caster despite also being a hybrid werewolf, when most hybrid casters don’t turn out to be powerful enough to even cast a teleport spell. And secondly, we share a natural curiosity and drive to learn new things, traits which we have both inherited from our mother. He was never much for academics, but that doesn’t seem to have prevented him from becoming quite the scholar of magic in his time since leaving his formal education behind, if the rumors are to be believed. And believe them I must, considering how he has managed to stump even our father for this long, who is arguably the most powerful warlock that this world has ever seen. It would take not only a powerful caster to do that, but a crafty one. Emerick seems to approach magic in a way that even the great Eramund Brentwood has been unable to decipher over the course of the multiple years that he’s spent puzzling over it, and that’s no small feat to achieve. Despite my power and innate talents, I’ve never been able to best him myself, though that is probably largely due to the fact that we seem to think about magic in much the same way. I suppose that’s the trade-off for having been personally trained by the man in a lot of my craft. I haven’t yet figured out how to cast a spell in a way that he can neither detect nor counter, which in my mind not only gives Emerick a huge advantage against us but places him in a category all his own. A massive problem, that’s what he is, especially since he works for our enemies now. If we can’t even figure out how he does what he does, then we’re in trouble once Emerick and his Riptide pals decide to come after us directly again. We’ve been waiting and watching, but so far, they have yet to make another move on us for all these years, not since my time spent as a captive in Riptide. That we’ve noticed, anyway. And therein lies the trouble. With someone like Emerick on their side, there’s a good chance that we wouldn’t figure out that they were making their move until it was too late to stop them. I wouldn't put it past him to use his magic to somehow infiltrate my dreams, so I can't entirely rule out the possibility that my recent dreams about him might be nothing more than his latest trick. It would be nice, especially for my peace of mind, if we could have our own man on the inside the way that Grayson once offered, but of course, we declined that offer. At the time, it seemed too risky, but I find myself wondering more and more all the time if that wasn’t the wrong choice. Grayson would have been a gamble for sure, and I should hate the man considering what he once did to me, but I just can’t find it in me to hold that against him to the extent that one might expect. I would never go so far as to say that I’m glad that he once selfishly abducted me from a place that should have been a safehaven for me and then forced me to endure something that no one ever should, but I also can’t ignore the facts. For one, even Tian has been forced to admit that the man isn’t evil and that he never acted against me with intentional malice. He had his reasons for doing what he did, and though they were self-serving and put me in a regrettable amount of danger, he never meant me any harm. I say that he finds it regrettable with a high degree of certainty considering how he later sent me a birthday delivery declaring exactly that and attempting to make up for it by risking his own hide to pass us information that we so desperately had need of. Secondly, Grayson’s actions triggered the chain of events that followed, many of which probably would never have happened otherwise. Because of how he sent my life and my plans into such upheaval, I not only gained some valuable insight into what the psychotic vampire Raja was up to before she migrated to Black Moon and met an untimely end at the hands of my father, but I also met people like Remy, Brock, and Kendra and got a glimpse of what life is like for the people of Riptide. Any or all of that might prove to be helpful in the days to come. Margot may be our Alpha, and she may have gaggles of intelligent and well-informed advisors whispering in her ear, but she’s never been to Riptide. She doesn’t know what it’s like there. A place like that needs to be experienced firsthand for it to truly sink in just how bad of an outcome allowing Alpha Miles to win this underhanded game he’s been playing with us really is, and I now have that experience and even managed to bring someone who grew up there back with me. With me as Margot’s Delta and one of her advisors and Brock so close to our family now as well, I feel like that’s basically a massive silver lining to that whole kid-napping thing. The more you know, and all that. Plus, there's the part about hand-delivering Bethany's mate to her, someone we wouldn't even have known existed if I had never been dragged to Riptide. I could never regret meeting Brock and connecting him with people who helped him get out of that soul-crushing situation, and Bethany seems pretty happy about it too. Then there’s the fact that if Grayson had never stolen me away and spent all those days in close confines with me, he never would have gotten to know me. He never would have learned anything about Black Moon from someone who lived there nor had any reason to think that my parents were anything other than what he had always been told from the perspective of their enemies. Enemies which they did not come into by any wrongdoing on their part, either. Alpha Miles loathes my mother and our pack just simply because we stand at odds with his own philosophies and beliefs about how packs should be run and where a woman’s place is in the pecking order, and he seems to feel that her power and influence threaten his. After having met me and maybe even bonded with me some, Grayson had a change of heart, and the information that he ended up passing along to us has already proved invaluable. I only wish that I could say that there will be plenty more where that came from. Our ignorance as far as Riptide and their goings on may just prove to be our downfall, and it’s a damn shame that we didn’t seize an opportunity for insider intel when it was presented to us. Which is what has been on my mind as I’ve been wandering the halls of the packhouse, seemingly unconsciously arriving at the very conclusion that my conscious mind has been actively trying to avoid thinking about. Emerick once claimed that he had already sent me the answer to all my questions, mocking me for all the “looking but not finding” that we’ve been doing, and I can't help but think about it now that he's haunting my dreams and taunting me there too, whether intentionally or not. I bet you wish you knew all the answers, but you can’t because I have them, his thoughtful, handwritten note claimed. The very same note that he left for me during Margot’s succession ceremony, just after I was inducted as her Delta. He was there that day, watching me somehow. I just know it, even if I can’t prove it. The note he left proves that he had some sort of access to me, even if the essence he left behind was too small for him to have been there himself. Look, and you will find. You just need to be looking in the right place, his note explained. It’s all in the eyes. I knew even then that he was talking about that mirror that he sent me on our eighteenth birthday. It's a dark, sinister old thing that's been enchanted with ancient, wicked magic. Our father has as much as forbidden me from ever even looking at let alone touching it, and rightly so. Whatever the mirror does, it seems to be intended as a trap for me to fall into. And more and more as the days pass without any of the same old mysteries inching even a little bit closer to being solved, what a tempting trap it makes indeed. I’m almost not surprised to discover that I’m once again standing outside the door that leads to my father’s private sanctuary. It’s not the first time, and it probably won’t be the last. Not that simply finding myself outside this door is a problem on its own. It's his workspace and the place where he spends a lot of his time, and that mirror isn’t the only thing he keeps in there. Besides, he keeps it behind some pretty substantial and impressive security and containment measures that I’m not even sure I’d be able to break into if I tried. I’d need his help, and that’s something I’ll never get without first convincing him that giving me access to that mirror is a good idea. That will never happen, so standing out here is nothing really. It’s not like it will lead to anything happening. The problem is more that I ended up here without meaning to. Again. I don’t even have any reason to be in this wing of the packhouse, and I have work that needs my attention waiting for me elsewhere. I only meant to step out of my office to stretch my legs for a moment. This fool’s errand that I can’t seem to get away from is just another symptom of a growing problem that I have no idea how to fix. Emerick has been taking up so much of my mental real estate lately that it’s becoming difficult to function. I’m not sleeping well, I’ve been distracted throughout the day and falling behind in even the more menial tasks on my cram-packed daily agenda, and if I don’t soon figure out what the issue is and find a solution, people will start to notice that there’s something off about their Delta. Since Pete is the only person who knows what’s been going on, he’s also been the one attempting to pick up my slack and support me through whatever this is, but having him shouldering my burdens like that isn’t sustainable long-term. He already has too many of his own responsibilities to contend with. And what if there is no getting through it? “Getting through” something implies that it’s a condition that has an end, but what if this isn't Emerick's doing at all and is just how I am now? Or worse yet, what if this is only the beginning, and soon I’ll be just like my father and have far more than my twin brother plaguing my every sleeping and waking thought? I never thought I’d say this, but my dad was lucky. Sure, he was the Alpha’s mate and had leadership responsibilities of his own, but he was one of three. Between the four of them, my parents always managed their duties and responsibilities in a way that kept him involved without overwhelming him by piling on too much when his mind was already too busy to handle it. He shouldered the lightest workload through most of their time in power, and he knows it. He’s grateful for it. Me, on the other hand, I only have Pete. He’s incredible, but he’s so much more than just the Delta’s mate. He has his own rank and position with the scouts, and that’s in addition to the Delta mate responsibilities. He shouldn’t have to take on any extra just because I am my father’s daughter, and my mind has now decided to start playing tricks on me. If I turn out to share my father's affliction, I may just have to step down as Delta. It wouldn’t be fair to Pete or the rest of the pack to allow my attention to continue to be so divided like this. They deserve better than that, and now is not the time for distractions. But if it does turn out to be Emerick's doing, then that's even worse. The implications of what he might be able to do and how he could potentially use me to hurt my pack by having such access to my mind are too overwhelming and frightening to even try to list and consider right now, and stepping down from my position would only be the beginning of the measures I'd need to take in that case. I suppose before I get too far ahead of myself with worry, since I’m already here and behind schedule anyway, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to take a few extra minutes and actually go inside to see my father for some advice about all this. Even if my situation is somewhat different than his was, there is no one else who could understand what I’ve been going through lately better than him. Besides, I could probably use a reminder of what a horrible, awful, no good, very bad idea it is to even consider looking into that mirror for answers, and there is no one better than Eramund Brentwood to gift me with that particular reality check.