I lean heavily against the armrests on the chair and gulp in a few more breaths of air to steel myself.
“What do you mean Nocturna has fallen?” Lucien asks quietly, his voice serious and deadly.
“Killian has broken through our defenses. He overtook our camp. My Sovereign Alpha, the leader of our military, is dead. He has control of the front on our side.”
Venna lets out a pained noise. She stumbles, losing her balance, and ends up sitting down on the floor with her head in her hands.
Lucien sinks slowly back into his own chair as Saela wraps her arms around my neck, hugging her face into my shoulder. She crawls onto my lap, and I hold her tight against me.
My shirt grows damp, and I realize she’s crying. Am I crying, too? My hand goes up to my face and finds tears there.
I’m so shaken that it didn’t even register.
“Meryn—” Lucien starts, but I hold up a hand to cut him off.
I need to get in contact with the Alphas at the front. I need to know what’s happening. Who’s still alive.
Goddess,whydidn’t I see this coming? Why wasn’t I using foresight constantly to protect our troops? Why did I let myself get so distracted with Astreona that I lost focus?
Closing my eyes, I seek out Egith’s unique mental signature, paring down my thoughts until I’m narrowed in on just her. The bonds are in chaos after the death of the Sovereign Alpha, and I have to mentallypushthrough the turmoil.
When my thoughts finally touch hers, there’s a strain in her mind, the crisis still unfolding all around her.
“My queen,” Egith says, her thoughts tense and distracted and laden with pain.
“Are you safe?”
“I am,” Egith confirms. She shares glimpses of the scene around her—packmates racing ahead through woods and trees, several carrying wounded foot soldiers with them on their wolves.“The battle is lost. I’m in retreat with a group of survivors, but the situation here is still tenuous, Your Highness. I’ll reach out again soon once I have more to report.”
Before I can respond, our connection is cut off. Just a result of the extraordinary stress Egith is under, I hope, and not something new going wrong.
Either way, I need to let her focus on her surroundings, shouldn’t distract her further until she’s in a safe place.
I open my eyes. Lucien stares at me over my sister’s head, his expression unreadable.
Venna glances up from the floor. “Are they okay?”
“No.” Shifting Saela around on my lap—she’s really too big to be here these days—I say, “It appears I no longer have a country to offer you in our alliance, Lucien. My remaining troops are in retreat. If you would like to work together, I need your help more than ever, but Astreona will have to be the driving force.”
Lucien rises from his chair to pace back and forth behind the table. “What is he playing at? Why take the border from you? It’s been centuries of war, and my bastard of a brother hasn’t been able to successfully take any significant ground in Astreona, and that’s with a full army at his disposal. Surely he won’t try to accomplish that now, not with evenfewerBonded at his back.”
“I suspect this is more Killian’s doing than Alistair’s,” I tell him. “I don’t think he’ll press into Astreona. He wants to make me feel culpable for the loss of life so that I return to him.”
“Is it working?” Venna asks, a sharp edge to her voice.
Right now, it’s hard to feel anything beyond sorrow. But I refuse to let the blood that Killian caused stainmyhands.
I lift my chin. “No. Lucien, are you on our side, or are you not?” I hope desperation doesn’t color my voice, but without his support, there will be no recovering.
Lucien studies my face carefully before speaking. There’s something in his cunning eyes that I do not like.
At. All.
“We can keep our alliance,” he says.
The pause that comes afterward drags on for eternity. There are strings attached to that statement, but he’s not leaping to define them.
“If?” I finally relent.
