“I underestimated you,” my mother tells me when she comes and climbs up onto the ledge where the king spends his leisure time in this cavern. She waits for me to notice her. She waits to be invited to approach. She even waits for me to invite her to sit, acknowledging my rank.
I thought that I would celebrate when this day came. Instead, I find that it feels nothing at all the way I thought it would. I didn’t expect that I’d feel nostalgia for what’s gone, because at least I knew it.
Everything ahead of me is unknown.
“Of course you underestimated me,” I reply to her as she sits. “But don’t worry, Mother. Everyone else did too.”
“It’s actually brilliant,” Johanna says, and if she heard the undercurrent of something like hurt in my voice, she brushes it aside. “You’ve quietly upended generations of tradition. Now, no matter what your intentions were, everything you’ve done your whole life will be viewed as strategy.”
I grin at her. “Maybe it has been.”
She sits next to me on the low-slung couch and looks out into the great cavern. I follow her gaze, tracking the electric lights that hang from cords attached to the rock walls by thick metal staples. According to the stories I’ve heard, even that was a fight. Old-school wolves thought electric lights were too human and would make wolves too soft.
Johanna isn’t only looking at light fixtures, of course. She’s looking around at the different family groups. Some of them are sitting together, talking quietly. Others are still rearranging their areas in the wake of so much shared space this past week. I see a few older females engaged in what looks like deep-cleaning, no doubt to get unwanted scents out.
“I’ve been pushing for so long, and it all happened so quickly, in the end,” Johanna says softly. Almost wistfully, I think, but that doesn’t sound like my mother at all. “Your brothers are off playing royal emissaries in far-off packs. They might as well be kings themselves, as close as they are to Ty. The packs will have to treat them as leaders. Meanwhile, you’ve managed to be accepted as our queen without lowering yourself to go through the mating ritual like everyone else.”
“Not all of us can fall in love the way you did,” I point out, mildly enough. “Besides, no one kidnaps their mates any longer. It’s pretty much frowned upon in polite pack circles.”
“I was not raised to expectlove,” my mother says with a short laugh. I think that she’s not going to look at me, but then she does. Her gaze is steady, and something about the resignation I see there makes my heart ache. “Your father was a fine, storied male. It was an honor to be chosen by him, and so I dedicated myself to making certain that hischoice was never questioned.” She nods as if that’s nothing more than common sense. “Still, it took us time to trust each other. And more time still to build some kind of friendship. I always thought your brothers understood this better than you. Now I wonder.”
“All of you had to go out and find mates or accept them when they turned up,” I remind her. “I have always known my mate. It has never been a question ofwho. Onlywhen.”
“I am trying to compliment you, Maddox,” my mother says after a moment, and again I think she sounds something likewistful. “You know that’s not something that comes easily to me.” Again, her gaze finds mine. “I apologize for assuming you didn’t know your own business. And for thinking that you would embarrass the family when, on the contrary, you have now elevated us beyond my wildest dreams. I would have said that no wolf could rule us all, but I believe Ty can. Particularly with you at his side.”
I reach down and pinch myself on my own inner thigh, hard. I’m sure that will wake me up, but it doesn’t. Johanna really said those things. Directly to me.
I’m not dreaming. I also have no idea how to respond to something so ... completely out of character.
Luckily, I don’t have to. It’s almost as if she hits a wall. As if she said too many supportive, evenlovingthings and has completely drained that battery. She stands up abruptly. I watch her visibly remember that there are no gray areas any longer when it comes to pack hierarchy and me. She blinks, then offers a bow.
I have the urge to tell her that bowing isn’t necessary, but I hold it back. The truth is, pomp and circumstance might not be necessary forme. What it does, though, is remind everyone else who I am.
Wolves like to push boundaries. They like to play games. If I allow them to do it with me, sooner or later, I’ll regret it.
I’m thinking about that when Connor approaches, and instead of jumping onto the ledge, he only leans against it to look up at me.
“You’ve all been hidden away for a while now,” I say, meaning the remaining high-ranking males in the pack. Off in their church,I assume, coming up with their world domination plans. “There’s no need to worry. I have things handled out here.”
“He knew you would,” Connor says.
I find myself looking at the leather cut he wears, giving epic biker chic. It’s also covered in badges that spell out his long service to this pack. His kills and his conquests. It’s not lost on me that he’s seen queens come and go. I’m lucky that he’s always seemed supportive of me—even when my own brothers and mother were not.
Today he gives me an approving nod. “He sent me to get you. Thinks you’ve been babysitting long enough.”
I laugh at that, though I don’t dispute it. I get up and jump off the ledge to stand beside him, still basically in last night’s clothes. And feeling it. I stole one of Ty’s T-shirts at some point and, as far as I know, left my jacket on the hilltop. Someone will scent me on it and return it, I’m sure. What I keep being shocked by is how hungover I feel when I had very little alcohol last night.
Everyone knows that hitting the cocktails hard is for after regime changes, notduring.
I follow Connor as he leads me through the cavern and then into the tunnels. This muddled, thick feeling reminds me of my party girl days, back in my first year in New York. I took Ty seriously when he told me to do my thing. I got out there and I did it. There wasn’t a club I didn’t hit. There wasn’t a bar I didn’t pour myself out of at some egregious hour. I danced and I drank and I indulged myself. I slept with hot girls, I kissed pretty boys, and I fucked dangerous men with the careless abandon of a girl who knewshewas always safe because she carried a wolf around with her.
I kept waiting for something—someone—to erase that imprint Ty had left inside me, but nothing did. Nothing and no one ever came close.
Nothing ever could, I came to realize that year.
That was why, when I came home that summer, I decided it was high time I saw what I was missing.
I’m so busy thinking about all that—about the way I walked into the den the night I got home and hurled myself straight into Ty’s arms—that it takes a moment to realize that Connor is taking an unusual turn. He’s walking away from the regular tunnels and getting into the deeper part of the den where most of the pack never comes at all.
