Is There Really a “Threat”or Does President Nightwolf Just Hate Love (For Everybody Except Him)?
Tiara Greenwolf, This Century’s First She-Wolf Queen, Has Not One, But Two Fated Mates.
How to Go[copyrighted music license lapsed]Back in Time!Top 8 Things to Do If You Find Yourself Stuck In Another Time Period!!!
Her Viking Wolves:Why President Nightwolf Wouldn’t Be Who He Was—or Even Born—Without His Time-Traveling Werewolf Parents. Now He’s Attempting to Black Box All the Gates.
Are the Fated Gates Alien Fertility Portals?One Norwegian Professor Thinks So
What Happened to Ola Greenwolf?The North Dakota Queen and Cousin of President Nightwolf—Also One of His Fiercest Detractors—Was Kidnapped Under Suspicious Circumstances, and Her Body Was Never Found. Did President Nightwolf Have Something to Do With Her Mysterious Disappearance?
Government-Mandated Retraction and Apology:President Nightwolf Had Nothing to Do With Ola Greenwolf’s Kidnapping or Death
Resignation:Well, Friends, I Guess This Is Goodbye
Kiwi,the purple koala baby hovered over each option, asking, “This one? This one? How about this one? We can give you all the holoimmersives for free when you sign up for a year ofWolfNet Gazette!”
Sadie didn’t know which one to pick. She’d already read every entry in Dorie’s fated portal series since yesterday at the lake. Twice. Reassuring herself over and over again that she’d done the right thing, and that Dorie would survive—wherever she was. But…
What if I killed her?
“There you are! Sades, c’mon, what are you doing?” Naomi demanded, walking right up to the bench Sadie was sitting on in the waiting room of the hybrid secret kingdom’s sanctuary temple.
Caught. Sadie sighed. Less than a day since the lake, and she was already falling apart. She’d thought she’d have more time before Naomi found her here, perusing Dorie Scotswolf’s old news site.
Technically, Naomi couldn’t see the holophone’s projection with the privacy filter on, but knowing Sadie too well, she asked, “Are you still obsessing over that reporter?”
That reporter.
If Naomi hadn’t chickened out at the last minute on pushing Dorie to fulfill the Prophecy, Sadie would have wondered if her best friend had crossed the line from bitterness into sociopathy.
But Sadie had seen right through Naomi’s act yesterday. She knew her best friend wouldn’t have baited Dorie like that if she hadn’t needed to shore herself up to do the last thing the Final Prophecy required. Naomi had needed the excuse. Had wanted Dorie angry enough to come at her. And even then, Sadie had seen the struggle in her eyes.
Which was why, at the last minute, she’d taken it upon herself to push Dorie into the Three Gods Lake.
However, the morning after taking on that burden for her best friend’s sake, Sadie was too tired to put up with Naomi’s crap.
“Yes, I’m still upset about pushing your niece—the innocent girl I met twenty years ago, who had nothing to do with Bloody February—into a lake.”
She could still feel Dorie’s weight tipping back under her hands.
Naomi visibly bristled, her thin shoulders going up like a cat’s.
But then they deflated, and a little bit of the razor-sharp glint faded from her eyes. “I’m... I’m sorry. I know that was hard. I’m not sure I would have been able to…”
“I didn’t know I could,” Sadie whispered, voice ravaged. She switched off the holo screen. “I just wanted to reassure myself that she’d be able to survive… wherever she is.”
“She’s strong.” Naomi took Sadie’s free hand. “She wouldn’t have come at me like that if she wasn’t. She’s got steel in her. Just like Tara. Just like I used to…” Naomi’s eyes went hollow and distant. “Before.”
Naomi was right. Sadie had slipped the artifact into the younger female's duffel, the discovery of which in the Mountain Fortress's underbelly had ultimately convinced them that the Final Prophecy was meant for Dorie. Sadie had tried to prepare the she-wolf the best she could, given how little she knew about what was supposed to happen after they delivered her to the fating portal beneath Three Gods Lake as instructed.
Still, Sadie shook her head. “What if we misread the prophecy? What if this doesn’t change anything?”
Naomi shook her head, too. “She was in the prophecy, Sades. The instructions were clear as day.”
Technically, Sadie knew this. She’d even brought the Shadow King with her to the sanctuary city to look it over himself, to make sure she and Naomi weren’t being delusional.
But that hadn’t stopped her from sneaking out of her room at the wolves’ single secret kingdom castle and coming to the sanctuary kingdom’s emerald temple to request another meeting with the head cleric.
