The Sentinels hans gruber's brother

"@Casmir!" The call was urgent but quiet - she could not risk howling and alerting Aria. Behati ran amongst the vast trunks, slaloming dramatically in the snow - nothing fresh had fallen for days, and pack activity had churned more frequented areas into dark slush. She had to relay the news, and ask him for a second time to choose freedom.

Cas extricated himself from the den where he had been teasing his sisters and trotted in the direction of Behati's frantic call. "what's up?" he asked, ears cupping forward. what had happened? "what's the matter?" last he'd known, she'd been with Aria -- what had happened now?

Casmir carried the scent of baby with him, and Behati shot an envious look over his shoulder. She desperately wanted to play with the new arrivals, but didn't know how to go about asking - or if it was even appropriate. A matter for another time - gotta keep the drama wagon freshly stocked.

"Aria..." Behati began, only then realizing that she was out of breath. She sucked in air and squeezed out words at the same time, ".. is Beta."

beta? Cas' ears flew back as he tried to make sense of it. Behati hated Aria, which explained why she was so frantic about it, but for the life of the boy, he couldn't figure why Lasher had made the pale girl a leader -- " .... over Pearl?" he blurted, speaking the latter half of his thought. "but she's been here longer." what was going on?

"EXACTLY!" Behati screeched. "We should tell her, right? I bet she'll be pissed." Which meant one more wolf in the Haters' Club. "Also.." the youth began, preparing to share the more sordid of the gossip she had learned. She paused, wrinkled her nose, and for a moment it seemed like she might actually do the right thing. She didn't, of course - hell hath no fury and all that. "I think.. I think she likes your dad," Behati whispered, failing to realize that she was talking herself into a corner. She could not explain her claim without incriminating Lasher right alongside Aria.

whatever argument Casmir could muster on behalf of Pearl was immediately forgotten in the wake of his girlfriend's new revelation. "what," came his voice, much harder and filled with ice than he had intended. his eyes narrowed suspiciously at Behati. "what sort of fucked up ... why would you say that?" his possessiveness over the pale girl was showing with each passing moment -- like the gossamer Omega, Cas could not clarify for fear of causing more strife between them, but the Mayfair could barely help himself.

Casmir was outraged - but not in the way she had hoped. Behati flattened her ears and leaned away. She felt attacked, and did the only natural thing in response - she defended herself. "She said so," the young girl retorted, rooting around in her memory for evidence. Horror swept across Behati's face when she realized her misstep. Aria hadn't admitted anything - not in so many words. Lasher, though. "She said 'I can't deny my attraction to you'," Behati revealed, putting the Alpha's words in the freshly crowned Beta's mouth and hoping that would be it - that Casmir would not ask what his father had supposedly said in response.

oh god

eee maybe mark M for language

disgust and dismay coloured Casmir's features -- he didn't care about Aria being elevated, or about Pearl's feelings. all he could think of was how Aria had curled into his chest, their exchanged kisses, the things she had said -- and this. and now this. fucking. shit. the edges of his lips began to tremble; he tore his eyes away from Behati and stared off into the distance until he was able to find whatever little bit of composure that he still held. 

she'd lied. she had cried with him, spoken in fierce whispers to him, and laid in his arms after it was all through. rage swirled bile into his mouth; his gut clenched, and he turned back to the gossamer woman with a harsh expression upon his face. "what -- what did my dad say?" was that why Aria had been made a beta? because she wanted to lay -- oh, god, he couldn't even consider it.

whatever irony was here, innate in the hypocrisy of his very visceral response to the news, Cas didn't recognize it.

Twitches and tension hinted at the storm that raged inside Casmir, but Behati couldn't even begin to understand what she had done - what she had destroyed. "N-nothing really," she stammered, frowning at Casmir's tone and the look in his eye "I mean.. he has a mate. Just like that she's a good pack member and worked hard and  deserves to be Beta." SO NOT TRUE. Behati was starting to regret ever mentioning it - she had not expected the news to go down like this. She searched the ground for inspiration, silvered yes snapping back up to Casmir's face with renewed intensity. "Look, Cas.. I'm sure everyone fancies your dad a little bit. He's handsome, like you. And I said she likes him - there isn't even anything going on!" Possibly true; Behati didn't have enough facts to call that one.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to Behati. She narrowed her eyes, muzzle rising. "Why does it matter, anyway?"

Behati stammered, trying to explain, and in that chaos, called his dad handsome. she tried to save the situation, but Aria's betrayal, coupled with his own girlfriend's assessment of his father, was a little too much for the boy and he snapped like a violin bow in the sweaty hands of a first chair solo'ing in front of a 600-person audience. "why does everyone i like have a boner for my dad!?" he shouted, not realizing in his anger that he had answered Behati's question. what was wrong with him? why wasn't he, Casmir Mayfair, enough?

"Why does everyone i like have a boner for my dad!?"

The was like a flash bomb. Behati's world became a white haze; an intense ringing crowded all other sounds from her ears. She sat, staring, waiting for the feeling to pass. When her senses were eventually returned to her, Behati did not know which burned fiercer - the hurt or the hate.

"Everyone?" she repeated. The word was ice.

her word was chilly like an antarctic kiss, but Casmir was too deep in his anger to realize that he was literally digging a grave for himself. to be honest, he was pretty much standing in it now. "everyone!" he railed at her, pacing back and forth in the snow as he struggled with all these stupid emotions that kept piling you. "you!" he snapped pointedly, stopping to bore a hole through Behati. "you said my dad was HOT!" 


not really but he didn't care.

"and Aria ---!" the tiny sector of Cas' teenage brain that wasn't dedicated to ogling girls or rolling his eyes at the parental units shyly engaged, and his eyes widened. it was at this moment that Cas realized .... He'd Fucked Up. slamming into the proverbial wall, his gaze was much more sheepish as he looked back at Behati.

she looked angrier than Leo watching someone else take his rightful Oscar for the 80th time. 

"i mean ..."

Behati could feel her heart harden in her chest. A deathly calm had possessed her, like a co-captain taking over when his partner has clearly had one too many tiny bottles of vodka. Every blink was slow, deliberate. Casmir continued to spit and roar - until, eventually, a moment of clarity found its way through the smoke and hit its mark. "I did. He is. And so is Aria, right? She's pretty. Don't you think she's pretty?" If looks could kill, Casmir would be a pile of finely sliced ham and hair.

her eyes were like a thousand ninja throwing stars, all aimed for his dumb ass. "Behati," he begged, just a hint of a whine in his voice. "like ... yeah ...  she is." but that wasn't the point. "but i'm with you, okay?" he didn't even know why he was pleading, only that he had lost Aria, and to his fucking dad, of any wolf in Donnelaith. he couldn't lose Behati too. "i'm just ... angry. she lied. she said so many things." none of this was helping, he knew and his girlfriend's admission that Lasher was a hot bit of meat just hurt more.

Behati's nose had risen so high that she had to physically look down at him. "What things?" she pressed without missing a beat. Had they shared a sweet little heart-to-heart together on his birthday? Was Casmir even part of the Awkward Virgin Club any more, or had he taken a couple of runs down the Arc de Triomphe that Aria called a vagina?

"she said she was the only one for me! she said she wanted me, even though i was with you!" he was sitting now, weighted down like atlas with the weight of all the drama in his world. "i like you both, all right?" he admitted with a long sigh. "and ... and i was going to talk to you about it, about ... i don't even fucking know anymore." he didn't want her to leave, and yet. "god. everything is so fucked up. now you hate me."

but what was tantamount was that Aria had fuckin' lied. she'd lied like Bill Clinton. she'd lied like congressmen toe-tapping in the bathroom. she had lied like Hillary Clinton (two-for-one) after Benghazi. and what's more, she had picked the one person in the entire pack -- no, the entire world -- who it wasn't okay to pick. 

Cas sulked, but snuck guilty glances at Behati. she had to be hurting too, and it was all his fault.

Behati responded with silence and a distant stare, and Casmir wasn't going to get more out of her than that - at least not for the time being. Without so much as a look, the caramel girl pushed past him and disappeared.