“No, Isadora. She admitted to it this afternoon when she was here.”
Sythe swallows thickly and looks away from me, unable to hold my gaze, to see the truth there. Grieves growls, even as he shakes his head. “We suspected that to be the case.”
“True,” our prime nods. “But having it confirmed is…”
Hard. For him.
Not for the rest of us.
It's only hard for us because it hurts him. To think his grandmother cares so little for his happiness is maddening.
I want to storm through the palace, barge into her room and snarl at her that she can’t get away with plotting against our omega, making threats against her. But that won’t actually accomplish anything.
“We should have looked into it sooner,” Grieves says. “As soon as we got back, we should have tried to figure out who was leaking information to the palace.Ishould have.” He swipes a hand down his face, the same weariness that I feel evident in him. We might not be suffering from RMD, but we’re still suffering. “It's my bloody job.”
Court claps a hand on his shoulder. Hard, if the way Grieves winces is any indication. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You were busy, hiding the fact that Pixie is our mate from us.”
The other alpha growls at him, but Court just stares him down. Fuck. We might never come back from this.
“What are we going to do?” Piers asks, diverting attention away from the alpha tantrum that was on the verge of occurring.
I shake my head. “There’s nothing to do.”
“Not until we know what she says, at least,” Forsythe adds. “Once she’s given the interview we’ll have a better idea of what to put into a press release as our response.”
“Our response?” Court asks incredulously. “Our response should be to back up whatever she fucking tells them. You know she’s not going to lie about it, or if she does it’s not going to be to tear us down, but to keep herself safe.”
This is true. Never once, in the time we spent with her, did Florence lie or manipulate. She didn’t tell us about her knee, but was it really any of our business?
“We’ll have to release a response,” Sythe says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We can talk about what that is as soon as we hear what she has to say. I’m certain my grandmother will have an opinion on the matter.”
Grieves is already shaking his head. “No. We aren’t going to let your grandmother dictate how we respond to our own bloody mate’s comments about us. I’ll put up with a lot of bullshit, but I’m not going to let them keep painting her as the villain in all this, when we know she’s the goddamn beam of sunshine that brightens up our miserable fucking lives. “
Forsythe stares at him for a long moment and then nods. “You’re right. Whatever our response is, we’ll keep separate from the monarchy’s.”
“And we’ll decide what it’s going to be together, right?” Piers presses.
Our prime nods. “Right. I won’t do anything without consulting you first. All of you.”
I blow out a breath and the rest of the pack relaxes. “Good,” Court nods, decisively. “That’s good. Progress I say. Not perfection.”
We all give him a questioning look and he shrugs. “It just means progress is better than nothing, right? We’re moving in the right direction as a pack, as her pack.”
Her pack. Florence’s pack.
My body has a visceral response to the idea of that. To the notion of being her pack. More so now than it ever has before, like it’s priming itself to be everything she needs and everything she wants.
I glance at Forsythe to find him staring out the window, hand tucked in his pockets and a furrow in his brow, as though he’s working on a complex math problem and can’t find the answer.
I want to shake him. To tell him it’s not that fucking hard.
Florence is ours. We are hers. The end.
But I know Forsythe and he needs to come to this conclusion on his own. He needs to weigh all the outcomes and realize she’s worth it.
He’ll get there.
I just hope it’s not too late when he does.
