"But I digress," said the Elder, shaking himself out of whatever thoughts were going through his head like his wolf shook the water out of his fur. "What else brought you to our beautiful state?"
"The vampires," I said with a smile on my face. "I am afraid I don't trust them as much as the other Heads do."
"I assume that you are talking about all those dead wolves?" asked the Elder, and a serious look descended on his face.
"Yeah," I replied with a nod. "I have a feeling that most don't share, and with Vlad and his merry band of vampires now traveling the country with their blood circus, well, I am… worried," I continued, not sure what word I was looking for to express my feelings and remain diplomatic.
"When I saw all those wolves, I thought of the vampires, too," said Alpha Stephan as he stood beside his grandfather. "And now, with all the people disappearing whenever the circus is in town… well, I am a lowly Alpha, Head of only this state. It is not my place to accuse the Head of House Vampyre of anything."
"Exactly," I hummed with a smile. "It seems that Vlad is traumatized when it comes to the monster inside of him and, as such, is granted many… exceptions."
"Bah," spat the Elder, "We are who we were always meant to be. Not one of our monsters actually goes against our innate behavior. We wolves always put our families first, willing to defend them to the death. Yes, we looked after them, but that didn't mean that we didn't share their traits."
"And Vlad was always—?" I asked, not sure how Vlad actually was before the curse. I might have had a crush on him, but that didn't mean that I knew who he was deep down inside.
"Vlad was always someone who enjoyed the bloodlust, way before the vampire came into being. He tried to join in on our hunts a few times, but the way he would kill the prey made our stomachs turn. We swiftly sent him away, but I will always remember how he would drink the blood of the animals he killed." The old man shuttered as he was once again lost to the thoughts in his head.
"Vlad drank blood before he was a vampire?" I asked, shocked over that idea. It would never have even occurred to me that he would have done something like that.
"As I said, our monsters are not that far away from what we were like as humans," said the Elder with a long sigh. "Us wolves tried to stop the infection that was the vampires. For decades, we fought against them every chance we got. But in return, our Head simply turned a blind eye to our suffering."
"Lucas did?" asked Mathew, interrupting the conversation for the first time.
The two other wolves in the room simply snorted their disdain. "Lucas was good friends with Vlad even as the vampire under him ripped apart his wolves. He used the same old excuse… that Vlad's monster was riding him too hard… that we should just roll over and bare our necks for the vampires," sneered Alpha Stephan.
"Do you think he is trying to restart the wars?" I asked, and I could feel my monster start to stir inside of me at that thought. No, the universe would not be too happy if that were the case.
"I don't know if he wants to restart the wars or is simply building up his army. Either way, the wolves will not sit back and let him do whatever it is that he wants to do.
"Just one more question, Sir, and then we will be out of your hair," I said, looking at the old man in front of me. "What do you know about the oath breaker curse, and what could someone do to be able to break that curse?"
"An oath breaker curse? I haven't heard of that in years," chuckled the Elder as he looked at me with approval. "I take it you put one on someone?"
"Yeah," I said with a chagrined look on my face. "However, I am not the best at curses, so I did it without thinking," I continued, being completely honest.
"An oath breaker curse is something that would turn a creature against itself, for breaking an oath is the worst thing that any of us could do," started the elder as he looked off into the distance. "For one of us, it would mean always being able to feel your wolf; but never being able to bring it out again. It means that we would constantly feel it clawing at us for its freedom, but never being able to give it to them."
"In short, it would drive us completely insane until we killed ourselves just to get it to stop," finished Mathew, and all of the wolves shuddered at that very idea. Even Dem was looking a little pale.
"What would it mean for a vampire?" I asked, partially dreading the answer.
"It would mean constant hunger, but any blood he consumed would be like poison in his veins. He would be starving but never able to eat; until all he could do was lay down somewhere, a dried-out husk of how he once was and pray for death," said the older wolf as he looked at me seriously. "And there is no cure for an oath breaker curse."
"I think Pandora somehow managed to cure Vlad because the last time I saw him, he was back to his normal self. So to speak," I replied with a shake of my head. I was willing to put all of my money on the fact that Mother cured Vlad. I just couldn't think about what she would get out of it in the end.
"You don't understand. There is no way for Pandora to break the curse of another Gypsy, especially not your curses. So even if he looks normal on the outside, he is still dying of hunger on the inside," growled the Elder. "To be an oath breaker is one of the worst things anyone in any of the Houses could be. It doesn't just go away because Pandora says that it should."