Chapter 321: Stepdad Wants A Vasectomy

The gods had been split-screening it since the first domino. The show was a three-ring circus and every character was a clown.

Wine came out at twenty. The good shit at thirty. But today, the pantheon is doing tequila shots.

They canceled everything. Wars, orgies, therapy, that one guy’s eternal punishment. All of it. Every split screen slammed into one giant screen like the universe just hit "watch this, bitch."

Why?

Domino Seventy-Three was the closer. The final tile. The big one.

✦✦✦

Welcome to the season finale of The Real Alphas of Nyros.

On tonight’s episode: Stepdad and Dad meet at the gaslighting table in a chamber full of Alphas with the collective attention span of a concussed goldfish mainlining bath salts.

The Alphas thank you for watching. The Betas advise you to buckle the fuck up.

ROLL CALL:

Shadowfell:

"Big Nick Energy. Look it up."

The Blackmoor Twins:

"I didn’t draw on her. Do you want me to go back to the floor and show you AGAIN?"

Lunaris:

"I don’t work for the map. The map works for me. Cry about it to your beta."

Stonehowl:

"She did NOT call me dumb."

Ironmaw:

"I did the hokey pokey with my token and I turned myself around."

Ashwick:

"I WAS BY THE DOOR."

Ashfang:

"Four wives. Fourteen pups. And I still show up looking this damn good."

Veilcross:

"Twice I said I was leaving. I lied. Shut up."

Thornback:

"I switched sides and I’d do it again."

Redmoon:

"The Beta was SHOVED in a CLOSET."

Duskwin:

"I told Tharos to sit down before it was cool."

GUEST STARS:

Damon Tavian:

"I am that motherfucker."

Brennan Pike:

"Statistically one in every four spells explodes."

Reed Cross:

"You seem like you have a great personality, Alpha."

✦✦✦

DOMINO 73: THE LEGEND BEGINS

GREYHALL CROSSING — COUNCIL CHAMBER — 8:29 AM

Last night Renwick Lunaris sat at this table for four hours trying to finish one goddamn agenda. Hell took notes and put it on the brochure.

Four hours of blade-angle reenactments. Four hours of double-dipping debates. Four hours of forty-seven grown men who collectively possessed the attention span of puppies in a room full of socks.

They did not get through the agenda. The summit agenda was a corpse. Renwick had tried CPR. Shock paddles. Threats. Insults. Nation-shifting oratory. The agenda stayed dead. Every attempt to resuscitate it resulted in a new tangent about who drew on whom, which twin lost the bet, and whether the princess was double-dipping.

At 8:30 on the dot, he entered the chamber like he owned every motherfucker in there. Eight of his men flanked him. Some had traveled with him the day prior. Some had arrived with his daughter.

Every single one was a rookie. But you wouldn’t know it because their formation was immaculate. Gavyn the temp-Gamma was flanking his right. Door Kid was on his left. Big day for the boys.

The room fell silent.

Why?

Stepdad walked in. Dad did not. Forty-seven man-children died a little. Renwick drove his carriage over every single one of them. Backed the carriage up. And parked on Darwin.

Right as he sat, Darwin Blackmoor’s mouth was already in motion.

"Shadowfell?"

"Not here."

"Still."

"Still."

"Is he dead?"

"No."

"Injured?"

"No."

"Then where the hell—"

"His business is his business. Mine is running this table. Yours is sitting in that chair and finding the strength to shut up for longer than three seconds. We’re all working on something today."

"Lunaris, we can’t keep running this summit without the man who called it."

"And yet here we are. Running it. Without him. Consistently. Next question."

"Is he coming back?" Veilcross asked it like a man who already knew the answer and was asking purely to make it everyone’s problem.

"When he’s done."

"Done with WHAT?" Thornback jumped in. "The man called a continental summit and has attended one session of it."

"And in that one session he accomplished more than this table has in a decade. I’d say he’s earned the absence."

"That’s not how summits WORK, Lunaris."

"It is now. Sit down."

He cut his hand and slid his token into the map with zero ceremony. The energy of a stepdad who just cancelled the birthday magician and replaced it with a PowerPoint about financial responsibility.

Lunaris lit up with a healthy, average glow.

The Alphas went around. Ironmaw was last. Before he cut himself, he was pulling his token out, putting it back in, pulling it out again.

"Does anyone else’s token feel different since last night?" he asked.

Seven Alphas immediately pulled their tokens to check. Their territories went dark.

Renwick closed his eyes. The darkness behind his eyelids was the most peaceful place he had occupied since Velkaris.

He had kept his seven hundred fifty million in gold, survived dragons, murdered a son, stabbed a Beta, signed a widow’s contract he hadn’t realized was technically a marriage license if the Alpha winds up not being dead, and outplayed every political adversary on two continents.

This room broke him.

The fires of ambition that had been burning since he was fifteen years old had been drowned by Darwin Blackmoor’s blade angle and Veilcross’s inability to stay seated for longer than eleven goddamn seconds.

Redmoon, from the boys club, leaned over. "Renwick. Do you want me to take over?"

"No," Renwick lied. "I’m resting my eyes."

"You’ve been resting your eyes for forty-five seconds."

"It hasn’t been long enough."

"Darwin is about to get up again."

Renwick’s eyes opened. Sure enough, Darwin Blackmoor was rising from his chair with the unmistakable posture of a man who was going to demonstrate his blade angle for the tenth consecutive time.

"SIT DOWN, DARWIN."

Darwin froze mid-rise. The Alpha of the western Blackmoor territories looked like a scolded teen whose vape fell out of his hoodie in church. He sat.

The victory lasted one second.

Cause of death?

Veilcross started talking.

"I still think we need to revisit Shadowfell’s absence. His chair has been empty for—"

"I swear on every god in every kingdom," Renwick said, voice so low it qualified as geology, "if any man in this chamber mentions the empty chair, the double-dipping, the blade angle, or the word ’princess’ in the next sixty seconds, I will adjourn this summit, burn this table, and go home."

Silence. Sweet, merciful, overdue silence. Six seconds of it. A personal record for this lot.

Will it stick?

The gods leaned forward with their empty grape bowls. Then the doors opened and every deity in the pantheon exhaled, "There it is."