“Good.Karma for cursing my family with a death curse for the past thousand years!”
“Exactly!” I yelled, matching his tone and not even caring that this shitshow had completely gone off the rails. “It was a thousand years ago! Get over it!”
He barked out a laugh at my bold statement and then shook his head at me. “Listen, Demi. I am still in charge for the next year or so, and I will make it mylastorder of business to make sure that no help ever goes to the Paladins from my hand.”
I dropped his phone on the desk and put my hands on my hips. “You would let thousands die because you’re still pissed my mom loved a Paladin before she even met you?”
Rage threaded into his eyes, yellow and orange bleeding through his blue until I was staring at his wolf.
“Your mother is my Meredith,” he said, and I frowned.
“What?”
He took in a deep breath and then released it, the colors in his eyes going back to blue. “She publicly humiliated me, just as Meredith did to you, and I’ll never forget that feeling. I… loved her. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, and if she didn’t want that, she should have dropped out of the mating year.”
Ouch. I knew what he was saying but he was wrong.
“Meredith didn’t humiliate me. Your son did. And you’re right, my mother should have dropped out, but she was poor and you dangled a free education carrot right before her nose. What did you expect?”
He looked at me like I was some wild beast who’d come in and attacked him. “People don’t talk to me like this.” He sounded flustered.
I imagine they didn’t. Everyone was scared of the alpha, even a timid one like him.
“I’m not afraid of you, sir. I want to have a good relationship with you. I want us to be a happy family. I want to give you grandkids and watch you play with them and invite you over for dinner without unsaid words between us. I want to be authentic around you. But you’re wrong on this. The Paladins aren’t your enemy.”
He opened his mouth to speak and I stopped him with my hand. “They’re not. Some old half witch from a thousand years ago is. They’re weak, they’re starving, and they’re paying for a thousand-year-old mistake. We have extra food to spare. I cannot sleep at night knowing that a few miles away, thousands of wolves are slowly dying when we could help them.”
He sighed. “I’m glad Sawyer chose you. He’ll need a strong woman to keep him in line if he is to be a successful alpha during these precarious times.”
I was going to take that as a compliment. He reached up and rubbed his temples. “You had to dangle my future grandchildren in front of me, didn’t you?” He grinned.
A smile pulled at my lips. “Just keeping it real, sir.”
“That healer Paladin must have really made an impression on you.”
Astra. Oh yes. That’s why he thought I was so passionate about helping the Paladins.
I nodded. “She’s barely sixteen and skin and bones. She risked her life to save Walsh in the dark fey lands.”
He rubbed at his face some more. “If I do this, it sends a message to our people. I cannot cover up this big of an operation. The food trucks, the military presence needed, it can’t be covered up. People will think the Paladins are no longer our enemy.”
“Well, sir, last I checked everyone else was against us. Maybe we have enough enemies? Maybe it’s time to make allies.”
He groaned, “Alright, Demi. Just this once.”
I flew across the table and hugged him with a squeal of happiness. His entire body froze for a moment, like he wasn’t sure how to hug someone, and then his arms came around me.
“Okay, okay. Go do the girly things while I work on this.” He let me go and I pulled back with a grin.
“Thank you, sir.” I turned on my heel and all but skipped out of the room. Hopefully, this would hold off the Paladins for a week, maybe two, until they could figure out another solution.
“Demi?” Curt called from the desk.
I looked over my shoulder at him and he was smiling. “I’m glad it’s you that my son is marrying. Since that first day at Delphi, when Sawyer told me he’d fallen in love at first sight with a blond goddess, I knew it was your mother’s daughter. She was the only wolf I’d outcasted in my entire term as alpha.”
Love at first sight? He told his dad that?
Swoon.
