The Alpha Emperor’s Resurrection

5: Talia

I felt like a tourist wandering around the streets of Rome with Aurelia beside me. I had known the city intimately once, and it was deeply unsettling that it was still so familiar to me when it was nothing like it had been when I was taken there as a captive from my homeland.

My stomach dropped when I remembered my first day in Rome. The city had been overwhelming to me - I didn’t even know the language when I arrived, and I had never been around so many people before.

I had been purchased to serve as a Courtesan for the Emperor, and my fate had been sealed in the shadow of the grandiose marble archway Aurelia had only fond memories of.

That’s why she was so eager to drag me over to it.

I could still read the Latin script that was etched into the stone as clearly as it had been back then, but I couldn’t stand being in that particular shadow again, and I dragged Aurelia into a café to get away from it.

She had a broad smile on her face when she sat down opposite me, and I shook my head because I knew exactly what she was going to suggest; she pulled something from her pocket, and put it on the table between us.

I didn’t look at it.

“We’re not going to the Colosseum,” I stated, blankly.

Seeing it from the outside was one thing, but I didn’t need to be reminded of it in any more detail.

She looked crestfallen.

“Please?”

She didn’t elaborate, but she sounded so disappointed that I groaned and pulled the tickets across the table.

She very rarely asked anything of me, and the look in her eyes reminded me too much of her father for me to deny her something so simple.

For some reason, it was truly important to her.

I looked down at the tickets, and groaned again when I saw she had booked us on to a guided tour of the place, but I pushed my feelings aside despite my better judgment, and allowed her to drag me to the ruins.

We listened to an enthusiastic young man talk about the history of the building, but Aurelia was speaking to me silently; she was reminiscing about the place, and the time she had spent at the Arena growing up.

She didn't know that I had fought her father in the sand beneath our feet, once, or that I had awoken alone and afraid in the room the tour guide described as a temporary holding cell for prisoners sent to the Arena as punishment when I was first transformed into a werewolf; her memories of the Colosseum were of the times she had gone to watch the fights with Caius, and sat on his knee as they watched them together. She didn't know how difficult it had been for me the first time I walked up those steps with thousands of people watching my every move.

My eyes glazed over as I lost myself in the memories, and I was barely aware of the things Aurelia was saying to me as she looked around at the rows of empty seats.

'Do you miss him?'

My breath caught in my throat and my chest tightened. Of course, I missed him; I had never stopped missing him.

I nodded subtly - I couldn't answer any other way without her seeing how difficult I was finding this, and I didn't want to ruin a moment that was so comforting to her.

'Do you think he would have—'

'—please stop.' I glanced at her, and she gave up on pressing me to reminisce.

The tour guide explained in an exhaustingly overenthusiastic tone that men had faced wild animals in the Arena, and he tried to get people to guess which creatures had been unleashed. It was a game that nobody wanted to play.

"Wolves," Aurelia threw the word out casually when the rest of the group remained awkwardly silent, and the tour guide nodded with a broad smile as if she was lucky with her guess.

He thought he had memorized all the facts about this place, but he would never know the truth about it.

He followed up with a well-practiced speech about how animals fought against men in the sand, but most of what he said was wrong, and it was amusing to hear him tell us so much utter nonsense so confidently.

"Now, I would like you to imagine that you are an ancient Roman who has just witnessed one of the most spectacular events this city has ever seen..."

I rolled my eyes and stopped forcing myself to listen to him.

Aurelia nudged me and smiled faintly.

'I don't think that will be too much of a challenge.'

I shrugged; I had never thought of myself as a Roman, no matter how long I lived there for.

The tour guide went on and on about the Gladiators, and how the fights would have been brutal, but the way he described them as celebrities - the bad-boy rock stars of their day - was one of the few things he almost got right.

I thought about the groups of young women who used to shadow them and do whatever they could to catch their attention, and their behavior was admittedly akin to modern-day groupies.

The Gladiators weren't all like that, though; even if a few of them took advantage of those young women, they were often reserved and dedicated to their profession.

"They were a superstitious bunch," he continued, and his mocking tone was becoming infuriating. “Some of them even believed that sacrifices would keep them safe, and they had their own private temple near the Arena so they could ask for help."

'He is doing Nemesis a great disservice.'

My eyes widened and my blood ran cold as I looked around in search of whoever had just made themselves known to me.

Aurelia wasn't bothered; the thought had been intended for me alone, and she had no idea there was somebody else in the crowd with an intimate knowledge of what the Arena had really been like.

I caught sight of the woman in the little group we had been following - it was the young Priestess who had helped me in a moment of desperation at the temple of Nemesis. I hadn’t thought of her for centuries.

She hadn't been there at the start of the tour, and I shuddered at the fact I hadn't noticed her before.

She was wearing a black sundress with a fashionable gold belt, and it was eerily reminiscent of the robes she had worn when she served as a Priestess, but she didn't look out of place in the group as far as anybody else was concerned.

She smiled when I locked eyes with her, and my stomach twisted uncomfortably.

I didn't know what she was; she didn’t smell like a werewolf, and Aurelia and I were the only wolves left from our long-lived bloodline anyway, but the Priestess was alive and as youthful as ever.

She had seemed wise beyond her years when I encountered her all those years ago, and it made perfect sense now.

I pulled Aurelia away from the tour abruptly as soon as it was over.

"Where are you—"

"—we need to leave."

She furrowed her brow and crossed her arms in protest, but she didn't argue and she followed me through the streets without questioning me.

I knew where I was going, and I didn't have to think about how to get there.

It was only when we got to the ruins of the temple to Nemesis that I stopped to think about whether it was a good idea.

"You should wait here," I instructed, with no further explanation.

Caius definitely wouldn’t have been happy about me dragging our only child into the temple with me when I might have been leading her into the path of someone truly dangerous, but it felt ridiculous to say that to her.

Aurelia took a defiant step toward the crumbling entrance of the temple, and I knew she wasn't going to listen to me no matter what I told her.

"Are you going to tell me what this is about?" she folded her arms and looked around, as if there might be a clue amongst the ruins. She didn't question the fact that we were the only people there, despite how busy the rest of the sites around the temple were.

There was no time for me to attempt to explain myself, anyway.

"Empress..."

A title I had not held for an eternity, spoken in a language I hadn't heard in aeons.

"Priestess."

I didn't know how else to address the young woman now she had spoken to me directly, and the hint of uncertainty in my voice made her smile.

"I have a name," she continued to talk to me in Latin, and it did nothing to ease my apprehension.

"Nemesis..."

She laughed, but didn't correct me; as far as I was concerned, she was either a physical vessel for the Goddess, or a harbinger of death.

"Do you have an offering for the Goddess?"

She had asked me that once before, on the day I had come to her temple desperate for help.

"Nothing tangible,” I responded. It was the same answer I had given her back then. "...but... we both know symbolic offerings can be more valuable to the Goddess than material things."

I had given up my innocence, and the last vestiges of my humanity, for the strength I needed to live my life as a werewolf in a world I didn’t understand.

The Priestess’ hands were clasped loosely in front of her, and she nodded slowly.

"Absolutely."

"You brought me here for a reason," I took a step closer to her, but I wasn't trying to intimidate her, and she was stoic and unflinching. "What am I supposed to sacrifice?"

I glanced at Aurelia, but the Priestess shook her head.

"Nothing tangible."

I relaxed slightly, but I was still frustrated by the fact that she was being so cryptic, and I snapped at her.

"Then what? What do you want from me? What am I supposed to offer Her?"

"That depends," she smiled, and her eyes fixed on mine in a way that made me shudder. 'What would you be willing to give to get him back?'