Dedicated to @EarlyDusk for giving me feedback on a couple of my chapters so far! Thanks :)

*****

It took him a very long time before he realised that with her around, he was handling himself quite well.

"So, how have you been?" I asked Francis, hugging him another time.
"I've been alright."
"That doesn't sound too convincing?" I put my hand on his shoulder. "Is everything okay? Have you met your mate yet? Do you feel like you belong in the Ratio quarters?" I started rambling with worry.
He only chuckled silently, but there was an undertone to it that I didn't like.
"It's what I wanted to talk about with you actually, the situation in the Ratio quarters."
"I thought you just talked about it with Aericon?"
"We did, but it wasn't as good of a talk as we'd hoped, so I was hoping that I could ask you to convince your soulmate that it would be a good idea."
"Ehm," I twirled my hair around my fingers slowly, and fumbled with my earring. "What exactly?"
He looked at me in surprise, but his eyes swirled with calculation, opportunities and a scary kind of hope. "He didn't tell you what we wanted?"
I hesitated slightly. "Well, he told be about the fact that you disagree with the Sensus way of ruling, but he didn't tell me what you wanted."
He sighed, shaking his head at me. "He really is keeping you in the dark, probably because he cares about you so much."
I cocked my head. "He cares about me?"
He laughed. "You can't tell?" He ruffled my hair joyfully. "The way he looks at you is almost mesmerising. He looks at you like you're his oxygen, his centre of gravity. It's endearing, really. He would do everything for you."
I sighed dreamily as I recalled those eyes. I couldn't really see what he just said, but I had always been a terrible judge of character and emotions, so I probably just couldn't see it because of, well, me being me. "Really?"
"Yes, really, Cara. If you told him to do something, he would run and never stop until he'd done it. It would come in handy for me if you could try to convince him of our ideas."
I smiled at him brightly, thankful for the things he'd just told me. "Alright, I will see what I can do, but only if you actually tell me your plans." I could do this for a friend right? He was my friend, after all. And besides the other Luna's I had met a few weeks ago, I didn't really have any friends.
He grinned boyishly. "Of course, thank you in advance, Cara."
I beamed at him happily. "Anything, although I need to be compliant with your ideas."
"Well, to put it bluntly, we plan on taking down the quarter system. We believe that no person should be kept from his or her family for over four years, with no way to see them outside the ceremony. This way mates are kept away from each other forcefully, some people never completely feel at home and interpack wolves never get a chance to leave for another pack. We want to change this. We want the smartest person, the best person, to rule the Sensus pack. Someone who can actually feel all emotions there are, is smart, and qualified for the job. A bit like in the Sapientiae pack actually, where the Alpha is chosen every four years based on a series of tests."
"The Alpha Trials, you mean?" I was shocked by his request, but tried to listen nonetheless. He nodded as an answer. I had heard from the Alpha Trials, although I never really followed the entire contest, even though people could watch it on the television.
"Exactly like the Alpha Trials," Francis said, while walking up to the tray a maid had just brought in to get himself – and me too – some tea. "The reason why the Sapientiae pack is often superior in certain aspects compared to other packs, is because their ruling system works so well, unlike in our pack. If the quarter system is taken down, and we introduce the Alpha Trials, all the pack members would benefit greatly. I mean an increase in tourism, business and intelligence. The economy would be boosted and in general, all pack members would have a better quality of life."
"Right," I said, already thinking about the consequences. Aericon and I had argued a lot about the differences of all pack quarter emotions. If we would mix everyone at once, people would get irritated at each other, and other problems would arise as well, problems Francis and his friends probably hadn't talked about yet, but problems Aericon had thought about carefully for a long time.
All the time, Francis had been looking at me intently, watching my reaction to his plan, hopeful, with the tea still in his hands. I sighed deeply. Francis was my friend, but I feared I couldn't help him with this. Aericon and I didn't have that good of a bond yet, and I didn't want to ruin everything now we were finally on a good path to happiness.
"I'm sorry, Francis," I murmured. "From what Aericon has told me, what we have been arguing about the past month, I reckon that your plan isn't going to work. There are too many risk factors that are involved in this plan, too many faults. Naturally, my mate knows this. I even think that in some ways, you do too. I won't try to convince the Alpha for you, knowing fully well that it wouldn't work anyway. I'm sorry, really."
For a minute, Francis just looked at me with a glint of disappointment in his eyes. He sighed, looking down and just gave me my tea with a sad face. "It's okay, Cara," he told me as we both sat down again and started sipping from our tea. "It's just I had really hoped this would have worked."
He stayed silent for a while, and we just stared at each other in complete silence, sometimes smiling softly at the sound of our slurping.
Until at once he started talking again. "Yhea, I had hoped this would've worked, so I wouldn't have to do this to you. If you had just convinced Aericon, I wouldn't have to go to these lengths to get what we want. But you already disagree from the start, so it didn't work."
He looked me dead in the eyes, as fear started to cripple me from the inside. Wait no, it wasn't fear. This numbing sensation in my body wasn't fear. It was something else.
"This will work, though. I will get what I want, and if this is the way, so be it."
I felt my entire body shut down slowly but surely, my voice being one of the first organs to disappoint me. Unable to speak, I could only watch as Francis opened the door and let some of his friends in, before my eyes closed on their own accord and refused to listen to my commands.
"She wouldn't cooperate. Just take her to the safe house, she won't struggle now."