A bow of respect, I realize, meant for Anassa. I watch as Anassa bows in return, extending one paw and dipping her head low to the ground.
Then Siegrid fixes her piercing gaze on me. I’m run through instantly. No, it’s more like she’s cut me open and is probing around to study my insides.
She’s an apex predator judging whether the cut of meat before her is worthy.
I have the distinct sense that she’s assessing me—weighing my value. Probably figuring out how she wants to punish me. I have no idea how I’m meant to behave before the Sovereign Alpha.
Should I treat her like a queen? Throw myself to the floor and grovel for my life?
Awkwardly, I bend forward in a bow. It was apparently the wrong move, judging by the disdainful huff it earns.
“Stand, girl.”
Her voice is slightly raspy, but it carries through the room like a freezing wind. My entire body reacts, hair rising, muscles twitching. I stand.
She’s still staring. I can barely look at her. It’s like trying to force myself to look directly at the sun. I can only manage a few seconds at a time. And I’m…small, in this room.
“In all my time as a Bonded soldier, as the Daemos Alpha, and then as Sovereign Alpha,” she says, “I have never seen anything like…this.”
Siegrid’s voice has a sharp edge to it. It causes a bizarre impulse in me to check to see if I’m bleeding, as though her cutting words have wounded me physically. The worst part is that I suddenly know why she was looking at me that way—assessing and judging.
The irritation in her voice is clear.
This, said with contempt. My relationship with Killian, she means. A Rawbond dallying with the crown prince.
She steps to the edge of the dais, looking down at me. “This has all been very unusual, girl, and you are drawing unnecessary attention to yourself.” Attention? What the hell does that mean? “But what’s done is done, I suppose,” Siegrid says with a weary sigh.
I feel the sudden, uncontrollable need to explain myself to her. I stumble through words, though my thoughts come out fractured.
“Please, Sovereign Alpha. The prince and I started seeing each other long before I became Bonded. I know I shouldn’t have kept it from?—”
“What are you rambling about?” Siegrid interrupts, her voice extinguishing mine.
“Um.” My brain isn’t working. My heart thunders in my ears. All I can see is her intense gaze. “The crown prince and I are together?” I offer hesitantly. “That’s what you?—”
“I am not here to talk to you about your love life, youchild,” she snaps, mouth twisting with displeasure.
Her voice is calm and measured, but her fury is anything but. It explodes through her, Siegrid’s face contorting into an expression of pure rage that makes me want to curl into a ball.
A white-out blizzard is howling around me, blinding me to everything, even what’s right in front of my eyes. “I’m sorry, but then why did you call me?”
Siegrid raises her face and pulls her broad shoulders back.
“The Strategos direwolves have convened and chosen their next leader. Anassa. You are the new Strategos Alpha.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I’d be more composed if someone had brought an actual metal club down over my skull.
The words send a reverberation of emotion through me—fear, confusion, resistance. It shatters through my body, rattling my bones, weakening my muscles, weighing me down like shackles at my ankles and a collar around my throat.
I can’t entirely process Siegrid’s words, at first.
Strategos Alpha.
And she’s looking directly at me, her severe expression unchanging. If she’s waiting for me to fight through this mire of shock, she’ll be waiting a long, long while.
The room starts to tilt around me. If it keeps on like this, I’ll start to slip, to fall. I’m being told I’m meant to lead anentirepack? I…
