“What are you doing, Meg?” my pat asks, coming up to her. Their entire lounge watches her with confusion.
My mat draws herself up straight, pushing her shoulders back. “I have issued Sinclair a challenge.”
Immediately, shock ripples over the lounge, and everyone’s eyes dart from me to my mother.
“You issued a challenge without informing me? To our own daughter?”my pat asks. His tone isn’t outraged like a father or co-leader should be, but at least he’s here. At least he’s questioning her, even if his voice is filled with confusion instead of anger.
“Don’t question me,” she snaps. “I know what’s best for our lounge.”
“By hurting your own daughter and trying to stake claim to what isn’t yours?” Dinah calls out. “How much longer are we going to follow a matriarch like this?” she asks the lounge, her arms raised in question.
The lounge starts speaking out all at once, and even though their words can’t be picked apart in the crowd, their meaning is clear: They are over my mat’s shit. I suspect maybe they have been for a while now.
My pat raises his hand to get them to settle down. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him behave like an alpha. And even though the gesture is simple, it holds a lot of weight for everyone, because they all shut up. Red eyes on his mate, my pat shakes his head. “Meg, stop this nonsense. Rescind the challenge on Sinclair and let’s go home.”
He starts to step forward to tug on her arm, but she wrenches away from his grasp. “No! Now is the time! Sinclair can’t shift,” she says, pointing at my anklet. “Think what we can do with this lounge,” she tells him imploringly. “It’s the largest one in the world.” Her green eyes are deep set with envy. “This is our chance.”
My pat looks at her like he can’t wrap his head around her power-hungry words. “But...it’s ourdaughter.”
My mat levels him with a glare. “This is why I lead our lounge. You’re not an alpha. You don’t understand.”
“Enough, Meg,” Dinah calls out. “The lounge doesn’t support this challenge. Rescind it.”
My former lounge all begin to murmur at the clear disrespect Dinah just showed my mat by using her name instead of her title. My eyes dart between my old lounge, my pat, and my mat. The tension is so thick in the air, it feels like it’s wrapped around my neck like a noose. Rook is at my side, incredibly tense, his body poised like he’s ready to grab me and get me away from here.
“You issued a challenge, knowing Sinclair was at a disadvantage?” someone asks from behind me, the disgust clear in their tone.
My mat bristles, and her eyes narrow as she tries to identify who just said that. I feel the people behind me move closer together, and their solidarity warms me. Renewed mumbles of judgement and shock ripple through the surrounding crowd, and my mat tracks the noise like it’sthe waveat some sporting event.
I can practically see the list she’s making in her head of all the people she’ll have to get rid of in this new lounge when she wins.
“We would never follow a matriarch that picks on the weak!” someone from my new lounge declares, and others all around us voice their agreement and nod their heads.
“We would never follow a matriarch that chooses power over their own child either!” another cockatrice calls out.
“You’re acting like a backstabbing Drake!” a female shouts out from somewhere across from me.
Every cockatrice present spits on the ground at the same time.
Fucking Drakes.
My mat’s eyebrows shoot up in shock and quickly drop back down into a scowl at the insult. She surveys the crowd’s vitriol with calculating green eyes. I had this whole speech prepared about my mat getting her lounge into debt and trouble. About how she sold me to save her ass, knowing that she was going to dishonor the agreement and try to take over this lounge and all of their assets instead of honoring what she agreed to. But from the look of things, I don’t need to give it.
The cockatrices from both lounges are oozing plenty of judgement and antipathy out into the atmosphere, and I know my mat can feel it. She’s not stupid. She only chooses battles she knows she can win, and this challenge just got a hell of a lot more complicated. She may beat me, but if the entire lounge turns their back on her because of it, she’ll have lost in the end. If they won’t accept her leadership, she’s powerless, and that’s not something she’d set herself up for.
“I’m only doing what your alpha was going to do to me. Do you really think he wasn’t going to turn on me?” she defends.
“I haven’t issued a challenge and had no intention of doing so,” Rook counters, and my mat glares at him. I almost feel bad for not letting Rook carry out his initial plans for her. I’m the one that made him agree to leave her alone. I guess this will teach me to be too generous by giving the benefit of the doubtand forgiveness.
Rook watches everything like a hawk. Power and tension radiate off of him like steam, and I wish I could grab his hand and whisper that it’s all okay. The plan is working. My mat wants to challenge me, I can see it in her eyes, but we’re tying her hands. This is exactly what I was hoping would happen.
My mat has been operating in the shadows for way too long. People who witness shady things are threatened to stay silent about them or are exiled before they can speak out. She’s had a stranglehold on everyone and what they know, but that just changed. If she continues to challenge me, she’ll be held accountable for it.
It’s funny, all cockatrice talk about Alpha Bowen like he’s the worst of the worst, when really, he’s just strong. Leaders like my mat are the ones that need to be taken out, not him.
The anger in my mat’s eyes dims, and her shoulders fall slightly. She knows this isn’t going to go down the way she wanted. Frustration and resignation fill her green eyes, and I swallow down the sigh of relief that wants to rush out of my lips. I hoped against hope that this would work, but there were no guarantees.
“I rescind my challenge,” my mat calls out begrudgingly. No one says anything, but there’s a palpable exhale and release of tension in everyone that’s gathered around.
