There is not a moment in time where the injury of others becomes less meaningful to a man. One can grow numb to it in the heat of battle, they can begin to think around it as war wages and the necessity to survive takes over. Then, slowly, it begins to flood back as it is only human nature to want to prevent the suffering of others. What I had not been prepared for was the bloodlust that came so strongly with my newfound breeding. 

The desire was stronger than any I'd ever felt, a deep red pulsing with my pounding heart in the back of my mind that sought out vengeance, not for me, but for the threat of my family. I asked Verando to do this because I knew that, deep down, I would not be able to serve justly. I knew what my wolf wanted to do, this was no time for rookie mistakes. 

I had never been good at hurting people and knowing what I had asked this capable man to do would be a grave decision that I would live with for the rest of my life. We may envision the torment of others in our darkest times, yet seeing them coming to fruition before your very eyes, executed with surgical precision, I knew what I had requested would be carried out with the utmost care and thought. 

He did not like to see beings suffer, either. 

When it came to the protection of our family, every resource was a viable option. I had chosen the deadliest of weapons of this justice.

When I had met Verando, he was an incredible force of nature. Darkened by a past that my parents had tainted with their curse, his capability to produce punishment never ceased to amaze me. Gentle, charming, and undoubtedly cunning, the masterful mind of a born Alpha bore the harshest of consequences behind the veil of domestication. 

The weight of his father's influence lay heavy on his shoulders. The darkness that had been hidden away since his return from Spain would once more come to the surface. 

Seeing, knowing, what would occur, often lead me to wonder what the man saw in Helen as far as a future leader. I could hardly imagine her capable of my own capture, let alone that she would be able to enact punishment on others. The bloodline seemed to have this fatal flaw, an inability to step up to command until it was thrust upon them. Perhaps an overcorrection for Verando's own sire who sought nothing but power. 

He was nearing forty when I met him, and yet Sota still saw him as young and untested. Helen, only in her mid-twenties, paled in comparison with her soft upbringing. 

Using every ounce of my training, I sit, poised, at the table as I quietly finish my breakfast. The uneducated eye might believe it to be I'd hidden from the horrors of a trial but in fact, I wanted to display a lack of consideration. It was deserved, I remind myself. Think of the boys.

Echo was first, much as I had hoped this wouldn't take place in our home, we weren't back in our own time where a public sentence would be willfully accepted. It was a crime to do what we were set to commit though the penalty for lycan on lycan violence was a gray area given our status. I flipped through the potential laws we'd be breaking, trying to combat each one with a justifiable reason for retaliation. 

Each line justification dotted with another bite of fruit, not much longer and this would be behind us. I just had to be patient, think of our out and what we'd tell any unlikely witness should one of our many government-bound charges bear witness. 

As I formed my list, I watched as Leo entered, dragging a battered X uniformly bound. Behind him, Steffan followed clutching Keeta by the throat. I hear the slight inhale from Tiberius, yet he doesn't dare move. She was expendable, much as he might enjoy her company, she and X had been the ones to begin my involvement in the cause that lead to my kidnapping. 

"Your plan is to threaten me with strangers?" Echo spits, jerking against the iron grasp of the siren. Much as she probably could have outmatched him, the siren song lowly hummed in his throat kept all of our captives anchored in place.  

Verando unfolds a leather-bound pack on the counter, retrieving a sizeable blade with a deep swell for chopping. "No. I've already spoken to one of your informants, I've gathered all the information I feel I could gain. The loyalty of a neutral is not easily won because it truly can't be. You have none, it's not your fault, it's your nature."

It was almost a seductive tone, gentle, smooth, a placid nature hiding the intent within. His calm voice brought me careening back to those days where justice laid at the edge of a blade. Here, in modern times, we would once more serve medieval authority. Though he stood before me as a modern man, I couldn't help but see my warlord. 

Testing the blade with the nail of his thumb, he seems to approve as he exhales and retrieves a wooden spoon out of the drawer. "Torture does not gain information, pain puts people into a state of panic. The truth is easily muddied. While we're speaking the truth, I don't want your loyalty, I just want you to understand what will continue to happen if you proceed to cross me. Echo, there is nothing that I don't see, there is nothing that hides from me." 

Approaching the pair of captured traitors, he considers the spoon for a moment, almost bored with its simplicity as he turns it in his fingers. "Nobody is safe. Everyone is expendable. You'd do well to remember that." Cracking the head off the spoon, in a smooth motion, he plunges the makeshift stake into Keeta's heart. 

Her lips part as her body mummifies, she drops to her knees, falling to the floor in a heap of dried flesh and bone. 

Echo's body convulsed against the hold of the siren, as if she were slowly being turned into a statue demonstrated by her twitching top half yet immobile legs, "Are you insane?! Take this shit out on me, don't kill people who were just doing what they were told! I did it, alright? It was all my plan!"

Taking the blade, he slips it under X's shirt and slices the material through before jerking it off the mage's body. Fire scorches over the exposed skin, a subtle threat that leaves the warlord unimpressed. "People do ridiculous things for causes they find value in. Fear breeds a desire to snuff out the stimulant. But, consequence demands humility. I'm not going to hurt you, I'm going to hurt everyone you recruit to act against me." Tipping his chin, he gestures for Leo to turn the man around and promptly shoves him to his knees. Tilting his head back towards Echo, he glances her up and down. "Consequences."

A tremble runs through the captured man, he watches Echo, pleading with her to help him. "You promised they wouldn't retaliate." His mouth waters with that of a man who's sickened by his fate. I swallow back the discomfort, seeking the reassurance of stability from the kitchen island. 

Verando snorts, amused. "If she truly believed that, she would have done the dirty work herself. I'd say tell your friends but... well-" He shrugs, dismissively.

"You're the embodiment of light and you're going to kill a man in cold blood?" Echo commands, earning herself a sigh as Verando sets his jaw. A title thrust upon him, she would have done well to leave his failed upbringing out of this.

It was to provoke him, to take his attention off the floored man and put it on her, to punish her instead. "My father thought the same. Pity for you both I'm also neutral, never quite one or the other." Verando's voice lightens for only a moment as if he were pondering such an existence. The blade makes contact with flesh with a sickening thud, in a symphony of screams that only a dying man could produce the Viking warlord carves out the ancient blood eagle on the man's back. 

Lungs forcibly removed through the crushed ribs, death would follow quickly. Leo blinks back the blood spatter and I wonder if I'd gone too far, if I should stop this and take back my request for vengeance. It is Echo who hits the ground next, tears streaming down her face. "I asked you to take me." She sobs. Her eyes meet mine, red with tears, "Are you happy? Is this what you wanted? Is this what we deserve?"

Faster than I could blink, Verando crosses the space, clutching her jaw with a bloodied hand. "I don't want your happiness, your loyalty, all I ask is your acceptance of what will happen each and every time you consider stepping out of your place. If you want to play the game of Vikings, to hold true to your lineage and beat your drums of war, then you best make bloody well certain that you know your opponent. Do you understand?" 

He doesn't yell for he doesn't have to, a true alpha commands the attention of all beneath him with the weight of his tone.

Shutting her eyes and setting her jaw, she nods one time and he shoves her back to the ground. "Get them out of here." He gestures to the two. Steffan allows Leo to drag both Keeta and X to the backyard, skirting over to join me at my side. It is Kestrel's turn and I feel my body begin to shake. 

I want him to suffer, my wolf eggs on my warlord to rain down his retribution, and yet my lips part to plead with him to stop. 

The two-toned eyes meet my warlord's gaze, hardened as he grits his teeth. "The only one I care about is your blood, you won't hurt her."

Verando tilts his head in a controlled pop of his neck as he rolls his shoulders. "When I was your age, I was quite a bit more threatening though as I'm sure you know, I never had the structure to go up against the darkness that was your father. Yet, looks who's on the run and look who decides your fate. There is one more thing you care about, much as it might not be on your mind for it's never been taken from you. You rely on your strength, as did I. Humility is your lacking trait." He considers the word, nodding in agreement that he'd picked the right judgment. 

"Are you going to give me an inspirational speech?" Kestrel snarls. 

Taking a slow breath, Verando allows his wolf to come forward, the gray beast standing before the restrained man. His muzzle wrinkles, a quiver in his nose as his ears flick backward. "No, I'm going to give you some perspective." 

I look away as the wolf savages the man in a way that I had only envisioned my own husband's punishment had looked. Taking the right shoulder instead of the left, the cracking of bone under fangs satisfies and disgusts me. Verando is merciful, he didn't intend to kill Kestrel. With two bullets to the legs, the man would get away with fresh decimation to his shoulder and clavicle. Not irreparable but a hindrance to his career nonetheless. 

Releasing the man, who refused to even utter a single sound, he turns his attention to Helen who seems to be the most composed out of the three. With Echo sobbing, Kestrel attempting to stay conscious, and blood pooling on the tile floor, I keep my breathing steady. My nose is thick with the scent that drives my wolf wild in my mind. 

I look away not for my own well-being but to restrain the creature who's lured into a frenzy by my soulmate's display of power. 

"And what of me?" She whispers, her voice small, eyes rimmed red yet face decided. She was no longer afraid, perhaps because she knew that her grandfather had little right to kill her. 

Shifting back into a man, I swallow at the image of his bloodied face and chest. His hands and arms smeared with red. The bright, stark glow of icy blue eyes meeting the same ones reflected back at him in the face of the young woman. Reaching around her to Marcello, he pulls a knife from the man's pocket. Marcello shoots him a warning glance but dares not interfere. 

Humans might not understand the ways of lycans but the ingrained fear of beasts that once fed upon them was quite alive in the electricity of the room. "What of you?" He dismisses, taking the knife, he grips her hand and spreads her fingers apart. In a swift motion, he slits her palm in a manner that is hardly a papercut. 

"Your punishment is the worst of them all, my favor." Dropping her hand, he wipes the blade off of her shirt and places it back in the holder on Marcello's belt. "The three of you will always be drawn together, I gave you the opportunity to sort it out yourselves and you've decided to act against me. I want them to know that for every crime that you commit, they will be punished. Perhaps it might motivate them to keep you in line."

Her lips part to argue, but judging by the looks of her companions, her fate was more readily sealed than any of them. They would not so easily forgive her for all they'd lost and all that she'd kept. "You're sentencing me to exile and possibly death."

"Not my problem. Let this be a lesson to all of you, if you're going to fuck with what's mine, you better have a damn good plan to kill me first." With a tilt of his head, he gestures to the door. "Get them out of my sight."

Tonic, Marcello and Tiberius depart out the front door to the awaiting car while Leo returns to the island, patting the blood off his face. "Anything else?" He asks, his voice stiff. 

"Tell Lotta and Landon that I need to see them, send a cleaning crew to take those two off and clean up this mess. I've got to get serious about finding Caspian-" As the words leave his lips, I stand and go to him, throwing my arms around him and shuddering at the tension that I find in his body. 

I couldn't lose him, not to this part of him that I'd tried so hard to fight through. "It's done." I tell him firmly, "It's done, no more." 

Exhaling firmly, his body rigid under my grasp, he nods to Leo who quickly departs. Stefan's eyes meet mine as he raids the closet for cleaning supplies to get to work on scrubbing the tile. I grip my warlord's arm, pulling him to the stairs where he reluctantly follows me to our bedroom. "Nic, we have to find Caspian before Kestrel does."

I shake my head, there had been so many things I thought that I wanted until this moment, seeing full force what I was asking of him and what I'd left behind. I could have one or the other, I couldn't have both and I chose Randy over Alpha a lifetime ago. "Kestrel is not going to go after Caspian and if he does, so be it. You did what I asked you to do, I'm doing the same. No more of this, I've had my glimpse back into what our lives would look like and I don't want it."

With a heavy sigh, he runs a hand through his hair though I quickly grip his wrist to stop him as the blood smears across his temple. "I wanted to kill them, I wanted to maim them, to truly hurt them when I saw you punish them. This has just further proved to me that I'm not ready for this. Let Lotta and Landon come, and then let us be done with this. They can't have you." I had been prepared to barter up my services but not his. 

I shoved my youthful self into the backlogs of my mind and slammed the door on him, letting the selfish blood of my wolf run hot in my veins. "I know we've talked about this but I'm telling you again, I want to be done. Our wedding is ours, no more political games, I want to raise our children and let this world do as it may."

His hand slips out of mine to touch my chin and I stop him once more, catching his eyes with my own. "If you're going to kiss me, kiss me as Randy, not as Alpha. If I have you now, it's going to bring back all those things I hated about myself and I won't subject you to that-" He bends to meet my lips, chaste and final. 

"I've not gone anywhere. You have every bit of me." He tilts his head to meet my gaze and I purse my lips to restrain my pounding pulse and raging desires. 

"You have the tolerance of a saint, or perhaps you know no one else would have you..." I mumble, shaking my head at myself. "How you could love me after all that I've put you through is beyond me."

With a small smirk, he considers this for a moment, if only to bait me into a small moment of panic. "I've waited my whole life for you, what is a few years to eternity? I told myself when I agreed to have you that I wouldn't dampen this part for you and I've tried to adhere to that. You've given far more than you've ever considered taking, my whole self is at your disposal." Brushing his nose against mine, I try and ignore the blood smeared across his face for a part of me longs to taste it. 

Turning my head to offer him my cheek, I inhale shakily. I needed to get him cleaned up and clear my head. How was it that the man could decimate villages and then cause my heart to race like a love-struck youth? "Let's get you cleaned up if you're going to talk to me like that, it pleases me to serve my Alpha." With a hint of sarcasm to lighten the mood, I direct him towards the bathroom.