“He was not inherently evil. He retained enough of his mind and soul to send his two youngest children, still just babies, into hiding. He was still crafty enough to make a pact with a witch to seal up his vial of blood so that his descendants could access it and hopefully fulfill his dream of revenge.”
A man stood and raised a hand. “Sorry, my name’s Harvell, alpha of the Everglades pack. What you said a second ago—if all of that is true, why don’t we do it? Use Maddy as a weapon.”
Nico leveled a finger at him. “Be careful what you say next.”
Harvell raised his hands in surrender. “Listen, the royals want that vial, and you’re the only one who knows the location. Why don’t we take her there? Give her the vial, then turn her loose. It’ll be like dropping a nuclear bomb on them. If it gives her even half the power Edemas was said to have, it’s the best chance we have at beating them.”
I glanced across the room and caught Luis’s eye. He gave me a grim look and shook his head. Nico raised his hand again. “We don’t want an all-out war,” he said. “We still have to live in this world after all this is done.”
“The boy’s right,’’ a heavy voice called from the rear of the room. Heads craned, and eyes turned to see who spoke. I watched the old gator shifter stand. “Roderick’s the name. I know, over the years, this has been a wolf issue, but these royalsof yours have made it all of our issue. If we set loose some werewolf god or demon or whatever and go to war with them, all we’ll end up doing is massacring thousands of humans who’ve bought into their lies. Then what? We win, but the whole world is still terrified of us, and we’ll all still have to go into hiding. My kind lives in the swamps and bayous, but we aren’t savages. We have homes and houses, neighborhoods, and our children go to school. As scary as things are right now, I don’t want to ruin all our lives after this is over.”
Without another word, the old man sat down, and the room fell into a contemplative silence. Nico gave the man a nod and turned back to the crowd. “Roderick is right?—”
“Fuck that!” a younger alpha yelled as he stood. “I get that we don’t want a damned blood bath. I really do. I agree, but we all know where this started. The reason our lives have been turned upside down.” He turned to the back of the room, and his eyes locked on me. “The simplest fix is the one first mentioned. Maybe these royals had the right idea. If this vial of blood is as powerful as they say, then could it be possible that they’ve been doing the right thing by hunting down Edemas’s descendants?”
“Watch your mouth, Amadeus,” an older man beside him murmured in a warning. The man looked worried about what the younger alpha was going to say.
Amadeus shook his head. “No, I’m not watching my mouth. You all know it’s true, and you’re too scared of Nico to say it. Quick fix. Give his mate to the royals and wash our hands of this. Get back to normal life. Take?—”
Nico was on him in seconds, wrapping his hand around the younger man’s throat and lifting him into the air. His strength was as shocking as the rage on his face. A murmur of surprise spread through the crowd. Chairs slid across the floor, and other alphas stood and backed away. Amadeus hadn’t brought anentourage, which was probably good. Otherwise, it would have been chaos.
Nico growled in Amadeus’s face and said, “If anything happens to Maddy, you will be the first person I think of. I will come for you, and I will not be merciful when I ask for answers. Do you understand that?”
Even as he was being choked, Amadeus looked pissed. “I’m… no… ugh… snitch,” he hissed through his clenched throat. “It was… just… an… idea.”
Nico dropped the other alpha, who fell to a knee and coughed while rubbing his throat. Pointing to the door, he addressed the crowd. “If any other person has an issue with my mate, there’s the goddamned door. You can leave right now. And any who do, remember that you will have no help, no shelter, no protection from any member of the Lorenzo pack or any other alpha in this conclave.
“Get this in your minds now. We are here to form an alliance and to plan the downfall of the royals, not sell out our own.”
Amadeus stood and walked toward the door at the back. I wasn’t surprised to see him go, and most of the faces in the crowd looked as though they’d expected it. At the door, he turned back. “Like I said, I’m not a snitch, but you all caused this. All the shit that has come our way started with the Lorenzo pack, and I don’t trust them to handle this. I’ll protect my own pack. I don’t need you.”
He shoved through the door. Francisca leaned close to my ear and whispered, “What a little bitch. Good riddance.”
The meeting continued for another two hours, and thankfully, it didn’t devolve into more shouting and fighting. There did seem to be some consensus that Nico was right. It looked like all the other alphas in attendance were in agreement to let Nico lead them. Nico’s pack was one of the three biggest and most powerful in the entire country, and the fact thathe’d already aligned with Javi’s pack only made us stronger. Everyone in the room was a shifter, and if there was one thing they did, it was to defer to the most powerful. They could see the strength, intensity, and authority Nico had now that he’d taken me as a mate. He was far and above the most capable alpha in the room. Even the other alphas could see that and understood their best chance at survival was to follow his lead.
The meeting adjourned for the day, and I immediately left to go to the creek in the woods. As I walked, I stewed on what I’d heard in that room. Now that the meeting was over, all I could think about was what they’d said about me. I was surprised at how much it had hurt me. The way they’d talked about me like I was either a weapon to be used or a sacrifice to be made, shouldn’t have stung as it did but I couldn’t hide my feelings from myself.
Since this had begun, I’d been called an abomination and told I shouldn’t exist more times than I cared to admit. Hearing it all over again was like rubbing salt in an almost-healed wound. I hadn’t asked for this. I hadn’t asked to exist.
When I got to the creek, I flopped down on the ground. The air was cool right by the water, and I tried to zone out as I tossed small stones into the stream. Eventually, my mind drifted to my birth mother. I hadn’t thought about her much since we got home. Now I wondered where she was and what she was doing. Had she managed to escape that night? Or did Viola still have her? That didn’t seem right. If Viola still had her, I had no doubt she’d have tried to use her against me. My birth mother was the only trump card the royals had. No, I told myself, she’d gotten away. How? I’d probably never know. If she’d managed to keep the fact that she was a shifter hidden for all these years, she probably had a lot of tricks up her sleeve. It was a hope I clung to, even though, in my deepest heart, I wondered if I was wrong.It was hard to think of a way she could have escaped. That wasn’t something I wanted to think about, though.
I sat there for several hours before getting up and strolling along the stream. As I walked, I sent Nico a text, letting him know not to worry about me. Eventually, the stream led me to a big pond, almost the size of a small lake. The sun had set moments before, and the moon was rising as I lay down in the moss, relaxing and trying to think of better things.
The moon was waning, and the yellowish half-circle was like a magnet for my eyes. It gave me a strange comfort. I had no idea how we were going to fix things. It all seemed so big now, so overwhelming. Whatever we did, I wanted it done soon. I had been plagued with dark thoughts for a few days now. Things were going to get bad. I had no idea how this would end, and that was terrifying.
I raised my hands, letting the light of the moon turn them into a silhouette. My hands slowly morphed into claws. Not the simple paws of a wolf but the claws of a werewolf. I reminded myself that I was not a murderer. Still, I would happily tear every royal to shreds if it meant I could protect my family.
81
NICO
Almost all the alphas had stayed on our property for the night. No one felt safe staying at a hotel in Clearidge. You’d never know if the front desk attendant or housekeeper was an anti-shifter bigot. You might go to sleep at night and wake up to a silver bullet slamming into your chest or a machete across your throat. So, we’d given them all the fields at the back of our lands to camp out in. Most slept in their cars, but some had brought campers and tents. It probably could have been like a festive occasion if there hadn’t been so much at stake.
Maddy had returned late the night before. It had taken all my control not to go out into the woods to find her. We’d increased the exterior patrols, added fencing all along our border, and installed dozens of new cameras, but the thought of her being out of my sight worried me more than I wanted to admit.
The next morning, as all the alphas filed in for a second day of planning, I couldn’t see Maddy anywhere. I didn’t let it get to me at first. She’d probably slept in since she’d been out late, but once everyone was there and Maddy still hadn’t shown up, I started to worry. I pulled Luis aside. “Can you go find Maddy? She should be here for this,” I whispered.
Luis nodded. “Yeah. Your house?”
