Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
My thoughts flashed to my fight with Sebastian.
“You’ve seen me battle a phoenix when victory was anything but decided, and you didn’t intercede,” Austin continued. “This is just like that.”
He failed to mention that I couldn’t have interceded in his battle with Cyra. I hadn’t been strong enough to take her, or even to help him.
“You can also heal,” he said. “So, you have a better idea than most about how close a fight can get.”
“Is this another one of Niamh’s ideas?” I asked as quietly as I could, trying not to move my mouth. “Toss me into the fire?”
“No. This is training. There might be times when a challenge for me comes out of the blue. Maybe not even a challenge, but just an attack. You’ll be thrown into it just like you are now. The rules will still apply.”
Maybe I was biased, but I liked the gargoyle way of doing things much more than the shifter way. None of this felt natural. Leadership shouldn’t rely solely on strength and power. A good leader could still lead when they were older, as some gargoyles had proven. Hell, Mimi hadn’t been the strongest or most powerful, but the pack had helped her keep her placement anyway because she was excellent for their well-being. This just seemed barbaric.
But I nodded, because it wasn’t up to me to change this culture. That was up to Austin. He’d already loosened the pack mentality and blended much better with the gargoyles. Hopefully, he’d come to see that experience, intelligence, and logic went a lot further in a leadership role than strength and brawn.
“Right. Fine,” I said, doing a really good job of hiding my annoyance. Hopefully.
“Okay.”
Austin faced the others, who fanned out a little more, giving the challengers space. Aurora and the mammoth stripped off their clothes. Someone came forward to take them, and then the challengers nodded respectfully at each other. That was nice, at least. There was no animosity.
When they shifted, Aurora’s flash of light and heat was significantly brighter and hotter than the other’s.
“Wouldn’t males have an advantage over females with this system?” I couldn’t help but ask as Aurora morphed into a Siberian tiger like her dad. The other guy changed into a massive wolf, but his form wasn’t as large as hers. “And the type of animal? Wouldn’t this system pass up someone who’s extraordinary at organizing and leading and managing a pack because they turned into a…a deer, or something? Or even a smaller wolf than this guy?”
The wolf’s head lowered as he sized up Aurora, slinking around her as wolves so often did.
“Sometimes yes, and definitely yes,” Austin replied. “It’s something I’ve thought about because a situation like that has cropped up. Most packs are small, and the members of the hierarchy are mostly peacekeepers and enforcers. They’re extensions of the alpha, who needs to protect the pack against people trying to take it over. They hold power like a policeman might. The rest of the town is essentially just a town, part of a pack but not needing to challenge for the protective, peacekeeping role. As you saw with Kingsley’s pack, there are a great many more townspeople minding their own business than enforcers. Our setup here…is quite a bit different, especially concerning the various species we have cohabiting,” he continued with a faint shrug. “We need to stop thinking like a pack and a cairn and Ivy House, but rather as one big unit. For that, we’ll need a governing body. That body will have a different skill set than the peacekeepers and will need to elevate themselves in a different way.” He paused. “I just haven’t figured out how that’s going to work yet. I want us to talk to my brother about it, and maybe a couple of the other more levelheaded alphas too. I also want us to talk to some of the cairn leaders, if we can, to ask how their setup works. Tristan is very knowledgeable, but he didn’t hold the position. There’s a lot he doesn’t know. I want to ask the lead basajaunak…”
He trailed off.
“I’ve thought about it,” he finally said as Aurora started to circle the other shifter. “It’s reassuring that you have, too.”
I mean…I hadn’t until right this moment. I hadn’t had the time to really delve into and understand pack mechanics. I was trying to learn about it through Aurora, but there were only so many questions I’d thought to ask. She, growing up in the culture, often didn’t know what to cover other than the basics. She also didn’t ponder why they did certain things, and if those practices were the best way. If some things were even necessary.
I needed to better understand cairn life, too. I trained with the guardians, but I didn’t even know half of their names. I didn’t know how Tristan worked them into shape, what they did outside of training, what an entire cairn did outside of training…