Jennifer Blake was taught something very basic as an English major: Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Even love stories.
But then, she'd already known that, really.
Before.
There was no one Kali had trusted more than Julia. No one she loved more. Their relationship was not that of the typical alpha and his or her druid, wherein the emissary stood like a lone advisor to the group, separate until times of crisis or decision.
The two were close enough to share an apartment. Kali brought Julia to every pack meeting, to every initiation of a new wolf. She'd even brought her to more than a few moonlight runs. Julia would perch herself under a tree and read while the wolves howled and roamed around her. She was safe in the knowledge that none would ever dare hurt her, for even at her most feral Kali would protect her emissary. Julia knew that the beautiful alpha would tear a soul apart for her. It both terrified and excited her.
She'd been raised in the practice of a gentle type of magic, connected to the earth and its cycles of life and death. Kali was a product of the earth, and though wild and fierce and occasionally more violent than absolutely necessary, Jennifer loved her for that.
She loved her more than she'd ever loved anyone, including herself.
During.
Julia watches silently as Kali falls slowly in love with Ennis. She knows this won't end well for her; she just fails to predict the extent of her downfall. It was unfathomable, at the time.
Her alpha – her queen, her love – doesn't even realize it, at first. It's a collection of smaller incidents that build to big ones. Kali starts asking Ennis what he thinks a beat before she asks Julia. She lets the fellow alpha make her dinner at his apartment a few times, and she grabs coffee with him twice a week. Maybe Kali is determined to defy all customs; it is not done for two alphas to be so…friendly.
Julia's birthday is on a full moon this year and she is not sharing her traditional slice of birthday cake under the stars with a furry Kali. Instead she sits in their apartment by herself and looks out the window. The moon is too garishly bright tonight, and she turns away. Goes to bed alone.
Kali is running with Ennis tonight.
She's not invited to their meeting with Deucalion and Talia. "It will be safer for you here," Kali says, like the apartment's still supposed to be Julia's home. Ennis stands silently at her side (Julia's place that's Julia's place) and regards her with a mixture of pity and hostility. "I don't know what might happen." Julia is sure this is true on some level. Kali's concern is probably genuine. But at the same time, what her alpha is really saying is that she's afraid she'd pick Ennis over Julia, if she had to save someone.
Kali was always a bit slow to pick up on emotions. Once she begins to realize what she's doing to her emissary, the guilt in her eyes is obvious. It doesn't make Julia feel any better: she does not want her alpha to feel pain, no matter how deeply she's been hurt by her. She's sure she'll feel that way forever, holding Kali above herself for the rest of her life. And while she may always come second to Ennis from now on, Julia is confident that Kali will still love her in her way. Will still keep her safe.
She is so, so terribly wrong.
After.
Julia Baccari has never been selfish in her life. Julia Baccari is dead.
Jennifer sometimes looks back on her – Julia's - past as if she is reading a story. A tragedy. The poor naïve ingénue falls in love with her big bad protector, not understanding that she is just a girl and of course the queen's going to find herself a king instead. And what queen wouldn't tear her world apart for the perfect king?
What queen wouldn't sacrifice even her most precious pawn?
But then. There's that tiny
tiny
tiny
spark of affection that kept Kali from delivering the final blow.
It is crueler, in a way. How Julia was left, raw and bleeding and so damn scared, dying alone. Crying because even through that her heart was breaking more than her body, crying even though the salty water burned her torn cheeks. Even through the pain she scraped and clawed and held tight to her life. Just before she reached the Nematon, she thought: but maybe I want to die.
Then she touched the tree's roots and thought: No, I want them to die.
It takes her a long time to heal. It is almost like being reborn, because she is unmoving for so long, wrapped in sheets and tangled in tubes and barely aware of the world around her. She is a new person when she emerges from her long sleep.
Or, not exactly a person.
A darach is the official word for it in her culture. Dark oak. Dark druid. Dark girl. They're just words.
She's powerful, that's all the matters. She knows what she has to do now. The Alpha pack is not natural, it's not right, it'sdestructive and they have to die. Even Kali.
Julia could not carry this mission through.
Julia would do exactly what Kali had done, and falter at the last moment, failing to deliver death's kiss to her beloved.
But Jennifer Blake?
Jennifer Blake does not care about Kali. She is just another alpha to her, and she will go down as easily as the rest, helpless on the night of the eclipse. Maybe she'll even beg for her life.
It means nothing to her.
She means nothing.
she doesn't still love her
and she will end this story.