Rules

Naomi Lee, Ahroun Glass Walker “You're late.” I walk into the spacious loft apartment and toss my backpack onto the couch. Warm golden sunlight floods the place through floor-to-ceiling windows all along the west wall, and chilly air blows in from the open door that leads up to the roof. Can't accuse the old coot of being a shut-in, that's for damn sure.

“You're lying,” I reply with a grin, draping myself over the rest of the couch and putting my feet up on the back­ pack. “Just trying to piss me off, aren't you? I get how this works now, y'know. We've been at it for months, it ain't working anymore.”

“Well, that's the problem, isn't it? Shoes off the couch.” Grey-haired Tully comes in from the kitchen like fucking Mufasa surveying his kingdom and pushes my feet onto the floor with one hand as he passes by. He needs a beard trim, like always, but I know better than to tease him about it. Not that I always did. Live and learn.

“What problem? I don't see a problem.” I sit up and lean forward, resting my forearms on my knees. “You were supposed to teach me not to give in to Rage, and here I am. Not giving in to Rage.”

He waves his hand like he's waving away some rotten odor. “What are you, an idiot cub? Have you learned nothing?”

“Enlighten me, gramps.” He rounds on me, abrupt and fierce, clenching one fist. “You insufferable fool! You fail to rise to the feeblest bait and think you know something about Rage?” The last word comes out like a growl.

I slowly straighten up, hearing my pulse in my ears over the distant memory of half-remembered screams. “Say that again,” I dare him, my voice low and sharp.

“I should have known you couldn't hack it,” he spat back. “Your pride knows no bounds, rivaled only by your lust for blood. You never intended to learn a damn thing here, did you?”

My heart rate goes through the roof and I feel my nails digging into my thighs. Every muscle in my body is like an iron catapult ready to launch me. Pride? After what I did, after everything? After I crawled back to him on my belly like a goddamn worm and begged him to fix what was wrong with me? He knows what hell I go through every day, keeping my claws from tearing a bloody swath through every Wyrm-tainted piece of scum I pass on the streets, he knows!

I snarl at him. “What is this, Tully?” “You have only yourself to blame for your dismal failure, and you know it. And that's the part that really eats you up inside, isn't it? You'll never learn.”

And he turns away. I erase the space between us without even knowing I've done it. All I know is I'm seeing the world through a haze of red and turning him to face me before I slam him up against the wall with my clawed hand clamped around his throat. “Don't you fucking turn your back on me!”

For a second his eyes bulge with a fury he saves for the enemy, but I can't even register the wrongness of it before it fades, replaced with an intensity that drives straight into my gut. All that bile in his voice from a second ago is gone. He doesn't fight me. Instead his hands come up to grab my collar and pull me closer. Inches away, so close and vehement I can feel his spittle on my face, he hisses, “Stay with me, Naomi. Don't lose yourself. Stay right here with me. You can do it. You can do it! Come on!”

But he's wrong. When I come to, furniture and glass lay scattered around me like confetti and the full moon glares down at me from outside. Stuffing from the couch cushions is all over the place, all over the glossy hardwood floor that's gouged all to hell with jagged claw marks. Shit, what did I do? No, no no no… I scramble to my feet like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar and look around, wild. Room's trashed, but where's Tully?

I hear noise coming from up on the roof. Singing? No, howling. Howling, oh Jesus Christ, no. Still in Glabro, I tear through the ruined apartment to the stairs and charge up them, through the open door into the night.

Werewolves. All over the roof. The whole damn sept is up here, howling up at Luna's full face like a bunch of walking stereotypes. I search the gathering with mounting desperation until I see him. At first all the tension slides out of me and I slump with relief, 'til I notice what he's doing.

Tully's there, in Homid, walking through the howling wolves. I incongruously think of cartoon lions again, because I swear to God he looks like nothing more than Simba climbing fucking Pride Rock with all the animals bowing to him. A glint of moonlight on something bright pulls my attention to what he's carrying. His klaive.

“What the fuck, Tully?” It sounds more like a plea than an accusation, cutting through the solemn dirge.

He stops mid-step to turn halfway toward me. The rest of the sept doesn't even bat an eye. “Goodbye, Naomi,” he says, and the bastard has the gall to smile. He smiles. With a sudden lurch of my stomach that feels like it's giving up on gravity, I realize the truth.

“This was your plan? You son of a bitch.” He doesn't answer me. The furry, howling mass swallows him up as he changes form, grasping the klaive's hilt between his teeth. He leaps across the gap between rooftops and disappears into the dark. Off to be alone with his sword.

I'm shaking, as the song finally stops and the sept turns to look at me as one. Their eyes look eerie in the full moon's brilliance. “You all knew.” My voice sounds like fangs ripping at flesh. “You all fucking knew. But no, it had to be one last lesson.” I feel like my insides are about to boil out through every orifice in my body, but I wrap my arms around myself and struggle to stay lucid. I remember those screams, faint in my memory like a nightmare that was real. Waking up to the wrecked remains of Tully's loft. In retrospect, he must have knocked me out after I totaled his apartment. Losing it in the middle of my first fight against Wyrmspawn, my packmate having to drag me out of the room. Enough is enough.

Hindsight is 20 fucking 20, isn't it? With more clarity now I can recognize the sadness behind all that bullshit he was hurling at me earlier. None of it was real. I failed the test, but don't get me wrong, Tully, he was gonna do this whether I learned the lesson or not. He decided his time was up and he was done. He just wanted to give me one last chance. Or maybe two.

the test, but don't get me wrong, Tully, he was gonna do this whether I learned the lesson or not. He decided his time was up and he was done. He just wanted to give me one last chance. Or maybe two.

So, like he's showed me so many times before, I forge steel in my heart and I bottle up the Rage. I shove it down into the steadily-growing, gnawing black hole inside me and slam the vault door shut. It'll open again, but now's not the time. I finally get my breathing under control, and when I look up at the sept again, I feel regal. I'm goddamn Mufasa now. “Leave me alone,” I tell them. And they do.

The city might've had its fill of howling wolves already tonight, but fuck it. It'll have to deal with one more for a while.