“Oh, for the love of God,” Luis hissed.
I shook my head. “No, too much time. We can’t risk floating on a boat for three weeks. We have to get there sooner. I’m sure this alpha convention has been reported. No way they don’t know we’ve all come together. Viola isn’t dumb enough to try to push anything right now. They’d be crazy to try something with over three dozen alphas in the same place. But we need to move quickly.”
Felipe sighed. “I have some connections. I’ll see what I can find. Maybe I can get us snuck into Canada, and we can fly out from there. Word is the Canadian government hasn’t gone on full lockdown like the U.S. has.”
I glanced at Luis. “What about Donatello? Do you think he’d help us again?”
Luis frowned and rubbed at the stubble on his face. “I don’t know. He owed me big and came through big. He may be ready to wash his hands of us. Things have gotten… more complicated, obviously. I’ll put some feelers out to him. It won’t be an immediate thing, though. It may take weeks of messaging to get him to even say no, much less say yes.”
Sighing, I put a hand on his shoulder. “Do what you can. All of you.” I looked at my three best friends in turn, hoping they understood the magnitude of what we were trying to do. “Turn over every rock, call in every favor. Hell, I’ll give up a kidney if I need to. Whatever it takes, we need to get to Croatia.”
They nodded grimly, then hurried off to start making phone calls. After they’d gone, I stood in the meeting hall for a few minutes. I stared at the four walls and wondered if this had all been pointless. I’d brought together more alphas than ever before. At no time in history had this many pack leaders been in the same place at the same time. Even with that, all we’d really done was make plans for escape, routes of evasion, and agreements to shelter refugees. It was almost like we’d already admitted defeat. Dejected, I left to finally find Maddy.
She was at home, sitting on the couch when I returned. Without a word, she came to me and wrapped me in a hug. I pushed my face into her hair and said, “Why didn’t you come to the meeting?”
Maddy pulled away and looked at me sheepishly. “I could tell how tense everyone was yesterday. They made it obvious they didn’t know how to act with me there. I figured you might get more done without me. If I’d told you beforehand, you would have talked me out of it.”
I opened my mouth to disagree, but she was right. I would have wanted her there with me. Still, it annoyed me that she thought she couldn’t come to something that was this important to us all. I cupped her cheek. “Maddy, this is your pack too.Your family was taken—you’re the one who was hunted first. You should be there. That way, you can tell all those alphas exactly what they need to do.”
She gave me a sad smile. “You don’t give yourself enough credit, Nico. You can handle things like this. I’ll just stay out of the way.”
That didn’t sit right with me. She was making herself sound like some kind of burden or hurdle for us to get over. I shook my head. “Don’t say that. You are not in the way. You never will be. If anything, you’releadingthe way.” I kissed her and could actually feel the way my words affected her. A warm, contented relief flooded through her, and I could sense it. It was so strange that I had to break the kiss and blink away the dizziness of vertigo it gave me. I smiled at her. “This connection thing is going to take some getting used to.”
Maddy burst out laughing. It was one of the first real belly laughs I’d heard from her since we got back from Europe. The sound was a welcome one and echoed through the house. “Okay,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if I’d actually get through to you. I could sense you there and knew you were stressing out. I don’t know how it works, but I gave it a shot.”
I grinned and put my forehead against hers. “It’s really freaking weird. But I like it.” I winked at her.
Knowing each other’s emotions and understanding what we experienced only solidified what I already knew. Our bond was stronger than any mating bond I’d ever seen or heard of. We were in this together. We were one, and we could do anything. It felt like we could even win against the impossible odds we were up against.
82
MADDY
Days had gone by. Four total days of discussion, argument, and gridlock. All those alphas, all the talking, and there still wasn’t a plan. No one could think of anything to do about the royals other than running and hiding. If I had a dollar for every different hideout or escape plan they’d come up with, I’d be able to buy lunch for everyone in that damned room. It was frustrating and depressing to see the kind of grip the royals had on all of us.
Over the last couple of days, I’d bounced around my own ideas about how to deal with Viola and her organization. Assassination seemed cathartic. Some type of computer hacking and truth reveal sounded easier than it probably was. A handful of other half-formed and partially realized plans were stewing in my head, but most were dismissed as easily as the first two.
Instead of thinking of the dozens of possible ways we could defeat the royals and the million ways they could beat us, I concentrated on quartering the boiled potatoes. Nico’s mom, Abi, and I were making side dishes for the cookout. We were in the process of making about ten gallons each of potato salad, coleslaw, and pasta salad. All the alphas had to go home thenext day, and Nico thought it would be a good idea to have a big goodbye party for everyone to cut the tension and exhaustion right before everyone left. Sebastian and Felipe had ventured into town and were buying a couple of hundred pounds of ground beef, and a hundred or so buns for the burgers Nico and his dad were going to make.
Abi was chopping onions and celery for the pasta salad. I was happy she’d actually come down on her own to help without me even asking. After our talk the other day, she’d started to come out of her shell a little more. She was far from the same person she’d been before, but she seemed to be getting better. As long as there were no setbacks, I thought she might come out okay. She’d even started eating, which was a good sign.
The back door opened, and one of the visiting alphas walked in. Nico had met with him one night a day or two ago. His name was Kayden. He was on the younger side to be an alpha, maybe twenty-five or twenty-six. He was tall and extremely good-looking, almost like a model. Abi clearly seemed to notice as well. Her eyes locked onto him as he strolled across the house toward the bathroom. Abi didn’t see me watching her, and she definitely was checking him out the shifter before glancing away quickly.
Abi’s face was flushed when I stepped over. “What was that all about?” I whispered, nodding toward the bathroom.
Abi stared down at the vegetables she was cutting and shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Didn’t look likenothing,” I said, nudging her in the ribs.
Abi put her knife down and looked up at me, her cheeks red with embarrassment. “He came in and caught my eye. I mean, I’m not blind—hewashot.”
I grinned at her. “Hot?”
She shrugged and went back to chopping. “Those jeans did make his ass look amazing.”
I went back to my work, smiling to myself. It was a silly conversation and harmless in the big scheme of things, but it made me inordinately happy. That was the old Abi. A little bit of who she’d used to be had peeked through. Hopefully, in a few more weeks, Abi would be back to her old self.
An hour later, the side dishes were ready, and Nico and his father started grilling the burgers not long after we finished in the kitchen. Luis and Felipe had brought along their grills to make sure there was enough cooking space. It was the normality of it all, more than anything else, that got me. We’d spent most of the last few weeks fighting, hiding, planning, and running that I’d almost forgotten whatreallife was supposed to be like.
