The instant I do, horrible emotion floods my heart and streaks through my veins. My bones are heavy. My blood is on fire. There’s a vacancy in my chest like someone’s carved out all my organs and left the cavity exposed in a howling winter wind.
The worst part is that I’ve felt something like this before. When I was younger.
When Dad…
It’s grief. From the entire pack, all impacting me at once.
And beyond that, rage. Anassa’s anger impacts me like a devouring wildfire, incinerating everything that’s left after the grief. I choke and thud against the wall, using it to keep my balance as my vision falters.
Anassa’s voice is a savage, spitting sound.“While your pack suffered, you blocked us out for human pleasure.”
Those last two words cause a sickening lump to form in my throat, like the mere thought makes her want to vomit. I grunt and grip my head. I want to defend myself, but it’s difficult to even remember my own name through this storm of emotion.
Blinking rapidly, I straighten just in time to see Egith standing in the center of the room, her expression devastated. All around her, my packmates are in various states of distress. Some look despondent. Some look furious. Some weep quietly.
The warm, safe, happy room I was in last night is very, very far away all of a sudden.
“Where have you been?” Egith asks cooly. I flinch at the edge in her voice. Everyone turns to look at me.Everyone.
“I…” I manage to force past the lump in my throat. But whatever pathetic defense I was about to mount, it dies and rots in my throat when I see Izabel’s face.
She’s crying. Her grief finds me through the pack bond. It’s a question, asked over and over.What now? What now?
The words are like bone-breaking blows. Anassa’s continued fury burns down the garden Killian planted in my heart. Izabel’s tears salt the earth.
Egith straightens, her dark eyes tired. “Last night, during a Siphon assault in Grunfall, Strategos Alpha Markos was killed.”
My mind reels as the wave of grief rises up in me again, spreading across the bond. Alpha Markos Blackwood—the leader of our whole pack. Egith’s direct superior, with whom she’s probably very close.
When the leader in charge of our strategy is killed… what happens to the war?
“What?” I say, the word coming out choked. “How?”
At this, Egith’s lips purse and she crosses her arms over her chest. “I already gave the pack a full debrief. You missed it. I guess you were too busy… entertaining royals.”
The implication makes my face burn. I can see clearly what she’s thinking; what everyone here is thinking. That my relationship with Killian is no different from Audelie’s with the king. That I’m spreading my legs to improve my standing in the social hierarchy here.
My eyes dart over to Izabel. She looks away.Fuck, does she think that, too?
Anassa bites at my consciousness, gnawing at the open wounds.
Around me, the smiles of my packmates who were enjoying the ball just hours ago are gone, replaced by grimaces and narrowed eyes. They’re looking at me differently.
They see me as some callous ladder-climber who would shut out her pack for a chance to impress the crown. Status is important here, but the pack comes first, always. And people who can’t understand that won’t make it through training; I’ve learned that lesson well.
Grief rolls through the pack bond again, a hurt which now encroaches like a deadly illness, infiltrating every part of me.
My hands start to tremble, and I have to clutch them into fists to hide it.
Egith steps closer to me, so close that I can make out her pupils and feel her body heat. Her voice carries a warning, pitched low so only I can hear her.
“The Sovereign Alpha herself is coming here from the front to discuss the situation with the king while the direwolves select our next leader. While she’s here, she’s going to expect to see that the Strategos Rawbonds are unified, cohesive. Ready to jump into battle when they graduate training. If she senses that anyone is not fitting into the pack at this juncture…”
She doesn’t finish her thought. She doesn’t have to.
The threat is astoundingly clear.
If I cannot mend my reputation with the pack, the Sovereign Alpha may take me out herself.
