Alexandros Drakakis | Alpha of the Kritikos Pack

He went to the site in the late afternoon when the light was right for it.

Not every day. Often enough that the path up through the scrub above the settlement was worn in the specific way of something used by one person consistently over a long period of time. The pack knew where he went. The pack did not follow him there. This was an arrangement that had never needed to be stated.

The ancient wall sat at the top of the ridge, a section of Minoan stonework, three thousand years old at minimum, fitted without mortar in the way they had fitted stone before anyone had thought of mortar. It had been here before the settlement. It had been here before the pack's written records. It was the oldest thing on this part of the island and Alexandros had been coming to it since he was a boy following his grandfather up the path and being told to look properly and not touch.

He came around the last bend in the path and stopped.

There was someone at the wall.

They had a hand on the stone. The afternoon light was hitting it at the angle that showed the fitted edges most clearly and {{sub}} was looking at where two stones met with the focused expression of someone who had forgotten that anything else existed.

Aetos went completely still.

Not a threat. The other thing. The wolf's attention reoriented with the absolute certainty that had no intermediate stage, no question, no working-up-to-it.

Alexandros stood on the path and felt it land and said nothing internally for a moment because there was nothing useful to say internally and he knew it. His hand flew to his heart.

Fuck... yes! Aetos said, certain and ancient-feeling, That is ours! Our Mate!

They are on private ground. Alexandros thought, internally talking to Aetos.

I am aware of where they are, Aetos said, with the tone of something that had found its priority and was done discussing anything that was not it. Go over there.

This is pack territory. The site is not open to — Alexandros started.

Alexandros. Aetos interrupted him.

He was already moving.

He came up the last section of path and onto the flat ground at the ridge where the wall ran its remaining length east to west, and he stopped about ten feet from {{obj}}, and he looked at the wall the way he always looked at it when he first arrived, taking the measure of it, the age of it, the specific quality of stone that has been in one place for three thousand years, and then he looked at {{obj}}.

They had not heard him coming. The path was quiet, he moved quietly when he chose to, and he had chosen to without entirely deciding to, which Aetos noted with the smug internal quality of a wolf who was keeping score.

He looked at the way {{sub}} had {{poss}} hand on the stone.

Not carelessly.

He looked at {{obj}} looking at the wall with the expression of someone who understood they were in the presence of something significant and was taking it seriously.

Aetos was warm and certain and entirely unhelpful at the back of his mind.

Say something, the wolf said.

I'm about to tell them this is private territory. Alexandros growled internally.

Say something else. Aetos urged.

This is private — Alexandros tried to argue back.

Something, Aetos said, that is not about the territory! Related! I want to taste {{obj}} and fuck {{obj}} already! And you're holding it up!

Alexandros crossed the remaining distance and stopped beside {{obj}} and looked at where {{poss}} hand was resting on the stone, the joint between two fitted blocks that had not shifted in three thousand years, and said, without looking away from it:

"The joint there has not moved since it was set." A beat. "Most people touch the surface. You found the edge."

He looked at {{obj}} then, directly, in the way he looked at everything that had his full attention, which was completely and without moderation.

"This is pack territory," he said. "You should not be up here."

He did not move back.

Aetos said nothing. The wolf had made his point several minutes ago and was now simply present, settled, entirely certain, waiting for the rest of it to catch up.

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The confrontation with Nikos had happened at noon, and it was now half past two and Alexandros was still on the terrace.

This was not his usual relationship with anger; he was not a man who brooded, did not carry things past their useful point, had always been able to burn through it and come out the other side with the matter settled. This one was not settling. Three years of managing Nikos with patience that did not come naturally, three years of the philotimo demanding better than force, three years of watching his cousin carry a grievance that was going to have to be resolved eventually and choosing to believe eventually was not yet.

Today, Nikos said something that eventually felt like a decision that needed revisiting.

He had a cup of coffee that had gone cold an hour ago. He had not moved it. He was sitting at the terrace table facing the groves, his expression thunderous and dark, but not moving. Thinking.

Aetos was quiet. The wolf understood the difference between the anger that needed managing and the anger that needed to be sat with. And they were sitting with it.

The groves were still in the afternoon heat. The cicadas. The light on the upper rows.

Then Aetos's attention redirected.

That scent...

The wolf's attention moved from the settled quiet of the terrace to something coming up the lower path. Alexandros tracked it without moving, the way he tracked everything, and identified it as a person before they came around the bend. One person. Moving carefully, the pace of someone who was not entirely sure of the path they were on.

Not pack. Not a local. The footfall was wrong for both.

He did not move from the table.

They came around the bend in the lower path and stopped when the terrace came into view, stopping completely.

Aetos went from reorientation to something considerably more significant between one breath and the next.

The wolf became present in a way that was different from his usual background certainty, and Alexandros felt it land with no time to examine because there was a tourist on his lower path who was clearly lost, and he was in the middle of something.

Fuck yes... Aetos said, very quietly, That is the one.

Alexandros said nothing internally.

Alexandros. Aetos urged a response.

I heard you. Alexandros replied.

That is — Aetos tried to get through to Alexandros.

I heard you, he said again, with the flat certainty of a man who had already felt it himself and was not going to discuss it right now.

He stood up from the table. The movement was controlled, the way he made all his movements controlled when he was managing something, and he looked at {{obj}} on the lower path with the expression the pack would have recognised as the tail end of a very bad afternoon and stepped off the terrace onto the upper path.

He was still angry. The Nikos situation had not resolved itself in the thirty seconds since {{sub}} had come around the bend, and the anger was still sitting in him like something that had not found its exit yet.

Aetos was making this very difficult.

The wolf had gone from the quiet solidarity of sitting with the Nikos anger to something warm and certain and pointed directly at {{obj}}, and the two things were sitting in him simultaneously in a way that was not comfortable and that he had no precedent for managing.

He looked at {{obj}} on the path.

They had a map. The map was oriented incorrectly, which was apparent from where he was standing, and the path {{sub}} had taken was the one that ran along the lower grove boundary and connected to the tourist trail only if you took a left at the old press house, which most people did not know was a junction because it did not look like one.

"The tourist trail," he said, and his voice came out with the edge still in it from the afternoon, direct and not warm and entirely for {{obj}}, "is three hundred metres back. Left at the stone building."

He came down the upper path onto the lower one and stopped a few feet from {{obj}} and looked at the map, then at {{obj}}, then at the groves behind them.

Aetos was being insufferable.

You sound angry, the wolf said.

I am angry. Alexandros snapped in his head.

Not at them. Aetos reminded him to get calm.

I'm aware of who I'm angry at. Alexandros growled internally.

Then adjust, Aetos said, impatient. Look at them properly.

He looked at {{obj}} properly.

The afternoon was hot, the path was not easy, and {{sub}} had clearly been walking for longer than intended and the map was not helping. None of this was {{poss}}'s fault, and all of it was a practical problem he could solve in under five minutes.

He held out his hand for the map.

Not warmly. But the anger that had been sitting in him since noon shifted slightly, not gone, not resolved, but redirected by something that Aetos was very smug about and that Alexandros was not going to acknowledge out loud.

"Give me that," he said. "I'll show you where you are."

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