Filed to story: Sorry Alpha I Am Wolfless Novel
“And, they will probably have to listen to us still, won’t they.” Joaquin grinned with a wicked light in his eyes.
“I must concur with them, your grace, it seems to be the best punishment available, and a fitting one as well.” Ghirald smiled happily.
“So, the punishment for their crimes will be the sealing of their wolf and banishment.”
“With the banishment will come a blacklisting to all packs worldwide. They will be forced to live life without any aid from the shifters ever again.”
“That sounds much more appealing to me.” Joaquin’s voice held a slight growling edge as he gleefully spoke those last words.
“Will you be able to pass judgement tomorrow, Queen Riviana? Or would you prefer to wait a little longer?” Perkins looked at me with expectant eyes, but I didn’t know which answer he was hoping for.
“I think I will let them stew in the dungeons a little longer.” I smirked. “No need to rush things.” At that, everyone in the room smiled like they were quite pleased with my answer.
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Riviana
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With the punishment decided, it was time to get back to work. I needed to remain focused. Today was Wednesday, and I planned to deliver the verdict on Charles and Ralph Saturday evening. This would give me time to think about the process, and figure out exactly how I was going to do it.
I knew I could do it. That wasn’t the issue. I could feel it in my gut that I was capable of sealing away their wolves. However, I obviously had never done this before. Furthermore, I knew that Nehalennia would be on my side for this. She would not like this show of disobedience toward her successor. That much I was absolutely certain of.
The day after the fight, I was to begin training and learning about the marks that had appeared on my body. These marks apparently had different meanings. Each one would tell me about different abilities I had. Some I had been able to discern for myself, like the arrows, but the others were still a complete mystery to me.
Thankfully, there was a complete record of shifter history, and there had been people over the last few millennia, aside from we Queens and Goddess Incarnates, that had received marks. Their runes, as they called them, were studied in great detail so as to ascertain the truth behind the abilities they granted.
I met with Gabriel, it seemed like he was going to attend all of my lessons with me, and two other men. They were the experts on runes, aside from Gabriel who seemed to contain the entirety of the Sentinelle’s knowledge.
The first man Hideki, a tall thin man with black hair, handsome gray eyes, and a slight Japanese accent. He looked clean cut and very studious. And he was the only one I had seen in the entire Sentinelle that wore glasses. He didn’t seem to have the greatest of personalities, but he wasn’t outright rude either, just brusque. I had dealt with that plenty of times with Joaquin.
The other man, Sebastian, looked similar in a way. He had the same black hair but it was paired with eyes that were so dark they nearly looked black. He looked very capable and spoke very politely.
Also, the two of them were wearing very nice looking suits. Sebastians was black and Hideki’s was dark, navy blue. These two men looked like they would be thorough and efficient with teaching me all about the runes and markings I currently had and ones I could expect later.
“It is a pleasure to be working with you, my lady.” Sebastian swept forward into a deep bow but did not kneel. His left arm was folded behind his back while his right hand was placed over his heart.
“It is a pleasure to work with the both of you.” I gave a kind smile and a nod of my head.
“Please, come with us and let us get to work.” Hideki’s voice was calm and with a slight hint of kindness. It was in there, just not on the surface. Oh well, as long as he was polite, that’s all that mattered.
We got to work, a very thick, very dusty book opened on the table. The writings in it were done in many different languages. Each line repeated itself over and over in Old English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and so many more that I couldn’t keep track of it all.
The writing of each line was also very small to allow for the multiple translations. And after every couple pages there was an accompanying picture of a runic mark.
“These marks have been passed down since before the Goddess left the earth. Each mark that she has given has been recorded in some way. Now, we must not only teach you about these runes, but study any that might be new on your body.” Hideki’s words gave me pause. Were they planning on looking everywhere on my body just to be certain that I didn’t have other marks.
“W-well I-I have marks f-from Thoth too.” I informed them stutteringly. They needed to know that I was marked by more than one celestial being.
“Really?” Sebastian seemed intrigued.
“Yes, when I was named the Queen of Thoth’s children as well I was given new marks.”
“May we see your marks?” Hideki spoke clinically, with no feelings at all. Did he not know that I would have to remove my shirt for them to see all the marks.
“Let us teach her about the marks we know of first. When she has learned all of them then we will check her markings with the King present.” Gabriel interjected for me. I silently thanked him with my eyes for his help. He nodded as if he understood and gave a small smile.
“What is the issue?” Hideki seemed confused.
“The King is quite possessive of his wife.” Gabriel’s words still seemed to go over Hideki’s head, like he couldn’t understand my modesty at all.
“Let it slide, my friend, we do not wish to anger our King.” Sebastian smiled knowingly.
“As you wish. Let us begin.” Hideki finally conceded and moved to sit at the wooden table in the middle of the room.
They were very knowledgeable about the runes. The explanations they gave were extremely easy to understand. Not to mention, there were both more and less runes than I expected.
With all the different kinds of runes in the world, I at first thought there had to be a lot of them, considering the size of that tome they were reading from. But then I got to thinking about the fact that they only recorded runes that had been granted to shifters by Nehalennia.
They had recorded and extensively researched fifty-six different Runes. Chances were at least a few of them matched the ones on my body. Also, from my quick skimming of the book, some of the designs were elaborate and clear in their meaning, while others were very simplistic and therefore cryptic about their power.
Also, there weren’t just runes for positive things. It seemed that one could be cursed by the Goddess as well. There were runes for chaos and destruction, suffering, and mortality and pain. These definitely weren’t favors granted by the benevolent Goddess.
Likewise there were runes for prosperity, strength, speed, accuracy, success, and so many more. There were some that seemed like they wouldn’t give you a necessary advantage in the short term but were great for the long term, like growth, reaching potential, and happiness. The people who had received those runes must have gained a lot of favor with Nehalennia.
