I fight back a growl threatening to explode from my throat as I eyeball her hand, which is still resting on Julien’s arm.
“Meredith—”
“Julien, think of how it would look.” She gestures toward me. “You would set aside a profitable alliance, give up a proper Alpha Mate trained to assist in the running of a large pack, forthat, some unknown wolf who doesn’t even have a pack?”
She sort of has a point. I have no idea what the role of Alpha Mate really entails and the most I’m bringing to the table in mine and Julien’s relationship is a semi-stolen stack of money that probably wouldn’t even cover his hotel bill.
But that doesn’t mean I’m giving him up.
Meredith continues, “Your elders will not welcome a stripper—”
“Waiter,” I mutter, not sure why I’m bothering, since I doubt Meredith actually cares about the distinction. Also, there’s nothing wrong with being a stripper.
“Fine.Waiterthen.” Now that I’ve interjected myself into the conversation, she turns her full attention to me. “No matter your profession, Julien’s elders will not accept you. You bring no benefit to his pack and it will throw his pack into turmoil. Is that what you want for him?”
“No,” I say in a low voice. That’s definitely not what I want, since it’s everything my former pack’s cleric said I would bring to a pack as a male omega and the exact reason my former pack tried to kill me.
“Then don’t you think it would be best if you stepped aside?” Her tone is cajoling, placating, but her eyes are hard and cold as she advances toward me. She sees the cracks in my armor and she’s going for them. “You could still have him in secret, where expectations don’t matter.”
Ugh, it’s like every word she says stabs directly into my insecurities.
“I can’t imagine you’d enjoy the day-to-day operations of running a pack,” she says. “You can leave that to me and—”
“No,” I bite out. I force myself to meet her gaze, hoping my resolve will shine through in my eyes. “The odds are I probably won’t enjoy it, but I’ll learn. I don’t give things up just because they’re hard. Julien ismine.”
“No,” says not-Cameron. “He’s not.” The alpha shoots a pitying look at Julien. “I didn’t want to do it this way, but if you can’t see reason…” He pulls out a cell phone and appears to text someone.
Seconds later, four more shifters flood through the door and into the room. They’re dressed in some sort of uniform I don’t recognize, almost like… cops.
Dread coils in my stomach.
They move to surround me as one of them speaks, “Keir Anderson, by order of the triumvirate, you are hereby placed under arrest for revealing yourself to a human.”
Eighteen
Julien
Remydigshisfingersinto my upper arm, holding me in place as the praetorians—the agents of the triumvirate’s criminal justice system—practically drag Keir away. He looks so lost and confused…
I want nothing more than to growl and snarl at them for daring to lay hands on my mate, but that won’t do me or Keir any good. He’ll be safe in their hands for now. Even Rossi can’t get to Keir if he’s being held by the triumvirate.
“What did you do, Derek?” I ask after the praetorians are gone, my voice low and dangerous. I knew he wanted the mating alliance with my pack, but not desperately enough to resort to something like this.
Derek tilts his chin up. “What needed to be done. The boy was a danger to us all.”
Before I can respond to that, Meredith slides up beside me and runs her hand down my arm. “I’m sorry it had to come to this.”
I curl my fingers into my palms and breathe slowly through my nose. The only reason it ‘had to come to this’ is because her pack got greedy and Derek is too prideful to take losing gracefully.
Derek picks up the mating contract, then holds the stack of papers out to me. “Sign them. You don’t have to lose anything else.”
I fight the urge to snarl at him. He simply believes we’re going to pick up from where we left off like Keir meant nothing? Even if I hadn’t just told him the alliance was off, he went behind my back to have a prospective member of my pack—and my fated mate, though he doesn’t know that—arrested.
Derek continues, “You wouldn’t throw away a solid alliance for someone who’s as good as dead. You know what the punishment is for revealing yourself to a human.”
I take a slow, deep breath, fighting for control of my temper. Derek is just digging the hole deeper and deeper. The triumvirate is the highest authority when it comes to keeping our secret and they do not treat cases of exposure to humans lightly. Humans outnumber us and were they to find out shifters existed, we’d likely be hunted to extinction. Any shifter found guilty of purposely revealing themselves gets an automatic death sentence, a fact Derek is also clearly aware of.
And hestillhad Keir arrested.
