Vitaly S Alexius
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Where the Predators Prowl. Ch 69: Dust Bowl Dynasty
🕑 Added 2025-07-06 17:43:45 +0000 UTC"Candace," Goebel offered, "perhaps you should speak to your mother."
Candace crossed her arms. "Why? So she can tell me how disappointed she is? How I've ruined the Rhinehart name? How much prestige I cost her by running away this summer?"
"She's scared for you," Goebel replied. "The Magnetic Lynx isn't just another dungeon monster. She's... an infamous, unstoppable monster."
"Yeah, no shit," Candace snapped, but her tail had stopped its defiant swishing. “She scared she gonna lose her biggest investment, is what!”
"Candace," I said softly. "Maybe just talk to her."
The silver fox looked at me, then at her crying mother, her resolved expression wavering slightly.
“You might not get another chance for a bond,” I said.
With a deep sigh, she stood up.
"Fine," she pursed her lips. "But only because you asked, Alec."
She padded over to the booth occupied by Aelianne and slid in opposite to her. The older fox looked up, her makeup now a smudged, tear streaked mess.
"Is it true?" she asked with a hoarse voice. "Highway Sixty-Nine? The Lynx?"
"Yepperoni.” Candace nodded. “Goobs confirmed it, didn't he?”
"Why?" Aelianne pleaded. "Why would you bind yourself to... to a Quest that will get you killed?"
“To clarify—I bound myself to Alec a day before the Magnetic Lynx forced him into the whole highway quest biz,” Candace rolled her eyes. “Plus, I’d rather head into the heart of the highway than cower and wait for my inevitable slaying halfway around the world.”
Aelianne stared at her daughter.
"This Quest is something bigger than me, bigger than you, bigger than Rhinehart Industries. It’s something that matters,” Candace added. “To me.”
"What could possibly matter more than your life?" Aelianne let out.
"Love," Candace said simply.
Her mother blinked at her with red eyes.
“My life was forfeit long ago by you and your ‘look at my daughter showcases’. You bound me into a box of your expectations, put a celesteel-wire noose on my neck. I’ve been a dead girl walking for a long time, Aelianne,” Candace said sharply. “I’ve been doing Topaz.”
“I… know! We were going to help you, to fly you to… a resort this summer!” Her mother bubbled out.
“I don’t trust in your ‘help’, or your walled ‘resorts’,” Candace said. “I ran away, joined a biker gang to die in the Superstore just to avoid this fate. You get that, right?”
“I… I’m sorry,” I saw Aelianne reach across the table and grasp her daughter's paw, more tears running from her eyes. Candace didn't pull away. “Please, understand. I… I just wanted you to have… a bright future…”
“Perhaps, you convinced yourself that your intentions were noble,” Candace shrugged. “But you piled too much on my plate, bent me too much until I snapped. The end result of your careless parental machinations produced me. A rebellious Binder who was losing her sanity, who drowned herself in overpriced magic dust and ran away.”
Candace paused, recollecting her thoughts, “A Binder who went off from her drunk prad buddies one night in the Superstore Dungeon and found… A silver RV in a Topaz-half-dreaming stupor.”
I stared at Candace as did Kristi and Nessy.
Bulwichu? Did Candace find our domain without even intending to do so?
“I opened the door and… there was a crystal tree blooming inside it. Buried within its roots I found an old phone with a battery that held… infinity within it.”
Aelianne looked confused by Candace's rant, but our trio knew exactly what she was talking about.
“I didn’t know it then, thought it was just a hallucination, a whack dream… But that phone buried deep in crystal roots sang about him with an angelic voice,” Candace’s claw pointed at me. “Him. He's the only one who can stop the Lynx, the tree soul, the Slayer.”
"I don't understand what you're talking about. Tree? Slayer? What phone? Topaz visions aren’t real, Candace, you know that."
"It doesn't matter if you understand," Candace replied. "What matters is that I've found my happiness. My real purpose. My pack. My prad and human partners.”
The older fox opened her mouth.
"You never knew me," Candace continued. "You were too busy thinking of me as a commodity. Conceptual Binding magic is rare, so that made me an investment to grow, not a daughter to love."
"That's not true," Aelianne shook her head. "Everything I did—"
"Everything you did was about what I could do for the family business," Candace cut her off. "When was the last time you asked me what I wanted?"
Aelianne opened her mouth again, then closed it, unable to answer.
"I'll tell you what I want now," Candace leaned forward. "I want to be part of this pack. I want to help Alec complete his impossible Quest. I want to live my life without someone planning my every move."
"By rushing into Highway Sixty-Nine?" Aelianne scoffed through her tears. "That's not living, Candace. That's suicide."
"Maybe. But it's my choice. And I’m not rushing. There’s no specific deadline on this Quest. If it takes me a decade to help my pack and my Alpha to get ready to dive into looped hell, then so be it."
"And what about your father?" Aelianne asked. "Does he get any say in this?"
"Ian can barely remember I exist most days unless it's time to show me off to potential business partners."
Aelianne looked down, unable to deny her daughter’s words.
"I'm not asking for your blessing." Candace sighed. "I'm just asking you to accept that this is happening and that there’s nothing you can do about it."
"I can't," Aelianne whispered. "I can't accept that my only child is going to..."
"Die?" Candace finished for her. "News flash, mom—everyone dies in the end. The difference is what you do before that happens. You blew millions of dollars on tutors for me. This tutorage can at least serve a greater purpose now—saving Ferguson from the Butcher of Delvers.”
Aelianne wiped her eyes, smearing her expensive silver-black makeup further. "Your father will never agree to this."
"He doesn't have to," Candace replied. "I'm eighteen. I'm blood and soul bound to my pack now. It's done. Besides that, if you two want to throw some more resources and money at me to complete this mission, I won’t mind. I’m sure that our corpo stock and my value will go up once everyone learns that the great and brilliant Rhinehart princess is working hard on saving Ferguson from the Magnetic Lynx.”
"You think this is about money?” Mrs. Rhinehart asked. “About the company?"
"Isn't it always?" Candace replied.
"No," Aelianne let out. "Not this time." She gripped Candace's paw tightly. "Highway Sixty-Nine isn't just a dungeon, Candace. It's an infinite abomination. The Lynx killed hundreds of high-level delvers. Teams with decades more experience than you have. Teams with government and corporate backing and military-grade equipment."
“Ah,” Candace tilted her head. “But did these teams have me on them? Or a human who can’t die?” She glanced at me.
“You… This is insane!" Aelianne howled. "You can't possibly survive!"
"Mom," Candace said. "Listen to me. For once in your life, shut up and really bloody listen. My Alpha—" she gestured toward me, "—has a soul that defies normal classification. Our pack bond isn't just a normal connection. It's something... cosmic, something that stretches across dimensions, crosses the loop of bound time.”
Aelianne glanced at me.
"The nullifier failed," Candace continued. "Sniff Goobs for me—he’s batshit terrified of what he saw. That railgun should be able to dissolve all magic, yet it couldn't even touch what connects us. Doesn't that tell you something?"
Goebel glanced at us from behind his dark glasses.
"It tells me that you've gotten yourself into something dangerous," Aelianne replied. "Something unnatural."
"Or something powerful enough to stop the Lynx," Candace countered. "Something that might actually work."
Aelianne attempted to take another swig from her flask but it was clearly empty. She set it down with a defeated thud. "Your father will cut off your access to everything. The accounts, the properties, everything."
“And?” Candace pointed a white claw at Kristi. “One of my packmates is the Strand Prima. She can finance us just fine. I don’t actually need your financial support and if you fuck with me I will renounce Rhinehart Industries, say that you're impeding us from saving Ferguson in front of the press. Your stock will tank into the abyss and that’ll be that.”
“You… you can’t be serious!” Aelianne took a deep breath. "Your father will have a heart attack when he hears about this."
"Good thing we own three hospitals then," Candace quipped.
"This... human," Aelianne’s eyes trailed to me again. "Is he really worth throwing your life away for?"
"He's not just a human," Candace replied. "And I'm not throwing anything away. I'm saving myself."
"From what?!"
"From becoming a drug-addled shell," Candace stated. "From being nothing but a glorified magic tool for Rhinehart Industries to rent out to the highest bidder."
Aelianne flinched. "We never intended—"
"Oh please," Candace cut her off. "The binding contract with Stratos Omnicorp was already drawn up. I know about the papers in Dad's safe."
Her mother had the decency to look ashamed. "It was just a preliminary offer."
"For seven years of my services," Candace snapped. "Binding their products, their executives, their buildings, unbinding some family Scion from some stupid prison island. You were going to ship me off to their corporate headquarters like equipment!"
"It would have been a prestigious, well-paid position," Aelianne argued weakly.
“In another dimension,” Candace barked. “Working for cryptid monsters! I now know exactly what the Omnids are now, mother! They’re not pradavarians, not humans—they’re alien creatures who own our Earth!”
“W-what?” Aelianne choked. “No… I…”
“What? You didn't sell me out to tentacle beasts?” Candace arched an eyebrow.
“They… they’re not tentacle beasts,” Aelianne let out. “They’re… dragons.”
“What?” Candace laughed hollowly. “Like the dragons of Dragon Alley?”
“Obviously not!” Aelianne seemed to take offense at her daughter's words. “They're intelligent humanoids with lawyers and banks. They… they follow blood contracts to the latter, they’re exceptionally Lawful!”
“Whoopity doo,” Candace laughed. “That makes it so much better! Lawful-evil dragons with banks! What, they got a mountain of gold-style hoard n’ sheet in their bank vault?”
“Y-yes,” the older fox whispered with a tremble. “W-we have to work with them… T-they need your services.”
“What are we, fucking kobolds?!” Candace barked, slamming a fist into the table, making her mother flinch.
Aelianne glancing nervously at the Scrutimancer dog and Security shark.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Candace hissed through gritted teeth, eyes flashing silver. "Am I embarrassing you by discussing our family's dragon servitude over breakfast in front of our employees? How inconvenient for you."
"You don't understand the arrangements," Aelianne murmured. "The treaties have existed for generations. Every major corporation has to—"
"Has to what? Offer up their children?" Candace scoffed. "You know what? I don't care.”
“Candace, you don’t understand,” Aelianne whisper-hissed. “The Omnids…”
“I’ll figure out what the Omnids are when I go to Omnithornia with my pack,” Candace stated sharply. “I’ll see what’s what myself, maybe visit the Stratos Omnicorp headquarters, tell them to fuck off in person.”
Aelianne’s gray eyes bulged wide.
“If they have a problem with it, they can take it up with the Magnetic Lynx,” Candace growled. “So can you and Ian. File an appeal to Highway Sixty-Nine to release me from this Quest with your fancy ass lawyers. See how well that works out for you.”
Aelianne swallowed nervously. For a long moment, she simply stared at her daughter, as if seeing her clearly for the first time.
"So that's it then?" she finally asked.
“Das it,” Candace affirmed. “Ye. I made my choice four months ago when I ran away. This just reinforces it. A final nail in the coffin as it were.”
The older fox woman sniffed.
“It's not personal,” Candace shrugged. “Well, okay, it's a little personal. But mostly, it's about finding something to live for. My pack. My Slayer. My tree.”
She shot a gray-eyed glance my way.
Her mother's eyes closed briefly. When they opened again, something had shifted in them.
"Very well," she sighed. "I won't cut you off. Not yet. You'll retain access to your accounts."
Candace's ears perked up slightly.
"On one condition," Aelianne continued, raising a single claw. "You come home for dinner sometime this week. Bring your... pack. Let your father meet them."
"You want to parade us in front of Dad like some circus act?" Candace asked skeptically.
"I don’t want to be a broken telephone and describe all of this to him," Aelianne replied. "Ian needs to hear it himself. That you're serious about this. That it's not just another rebellious phase where you run away to do dungeoneering with four other girls."
The fox girl hesitated, glancing back at us, biting her lower lip. "Will there be cake?"
A tiny smile cracked through Aelianne's ocean of despair. "Your father's birthday happened recently, you missed it. There will certainly be cake to catch up. Our best Culinimancer will make one."
"Chocolate mousse with raspberry filling?"
"I'll tell chef Rosa, yes."
Candace drummed her claws on the table, considering. "Fine. But no cheeky shenanigans trying to get me to sign blood contracts with interdimensional dragons."
"Noted." Aelianne straightened her suit jacket and wiped her face with a small handkerchief from her pocket, attempting to regain some dignity. "And Candace? At least try not to antagonize the Omnids when you visit their Earth. They take offense easily."
"No promises," Candace grinned. She slid out of the booth and returned to us, fluffy tail swishing.
Aelianne stood as well, addressing her security detail. "Makki, bring the car around."
The shark woman nodded and headed for the exit. Goebel lingered behind.
"Mrs. Rhinehart," he said carefully, "about what I saw in the nullifier field..."
"Not here," she cut him off sharply. "We'll discuss it later."
She approached our table, most of her corporate queen mask back on. "Mr. Foster."
"Yes?" I looked up at her.
"If any harm comes to my daughter, I will hold you personally responsible." She pulled a business card from her jacket and placed it on the table. "My private number. Should you need... resources for your Quest."
I picked up the card. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet," she replied coolly. "Consider it an investment in Ferguson's future." Her eyes lingered on Candace for another moment before she departed. The barrier shield held by the shark collapsed and the bell above the door jingled behind the business fox and her entourage.
Candace plopped back into her seat next to me. "That went better than expected."
"She cares about you," I observed.
"In her own weird, corporate way, yeah," Candace agreed, burrowing into my side. "You really freaked her out with the whole 'Lynx will tear everyone apart' speech. Good job and many thanks."
I noticed that Adelle had her arms crossed.
“Sorry Ads,” Candace detached herself from me slightly. “I know how much you hate this social shit, but it had to happen.”
“We done with the parental drama then?” The cheetah asked with a hopeful look.
“For now,” Candace nodded. “Let’s go to the swankiest mall district Ferguson offers. We need more nice clothes n’ stuff.”
“Dragon Alley?” Nessy asked, tail starting to wag again.
“Yeah,” the fox smiled slyly at me. “Let's take our lovely human to Dragon Alley.”
I stared between the grinning fox and husky. “A mall date sounds good right now. So is this like a dragon-themed mall or something?”
“Yeah,” Kristi scoffed. “Sure.”
“What?” I turned to the raptor.
“Imagine the biggest possible number of dragons,” she said.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Now throw that out the window,” Kristi said. “Cus’ Dragon Alley has more.”
Comments
Viktor
We are in for a lot of dinners in the near future! I can totally imagine that either the Strands or the Rhinehearts have a stupidly long table making the vibes kinda odd :p
Voidseeker2
Thanks for the chapter
