“I’m not going to join Trinity.” Kalinda stood tall, her backup behind her.
“Then you’ll die,” Lennox said with a hiss.
“Wrong. I’m going to rule you.”
“You don’t rule the Trinity; you are ruled by us. You are meant to be at our beck and call to manage the mage-bloods as we see fit. That is your place,” Lennox argued.
“Tough shit I found out who I was, isn’t it? I am Kalinda Thorton of the Vasilios bloodline, and it seems you were the one to misunderstand. I have an honorary place on the National Council, and, as such, have the right to rule the Trinity. That is the position of the Ales, didn’t you know? Of course, you did, you lying shits. You never had the right to control me, and you never will.”
Like the complete boss she was, Kalinda stepped right up into Amalia’s face. “And the Fae beside me is Niamh Danaan of the Silver, as in Queen Niamh Danaan of the Silver.”
“Bow down, bitches,” Silva tossed out.
“Now, if you’d be so kind, I’d like to know where my office here is going to be. There are going to be changes around here, and fast. Encantado hasn’t been taken care of nearly the way it should, and I might as well start reading up on the laws now. Oh, and here is the letter from the National Council, if you need it.”
It probably wasn’t necessary for Kalinda to push said letter right into Lennox’s face and knock the man smooth over to the ground. It was even more crazy that she also stepped right over the stupefied mage like he wasn’t there.
Romano was going to bend that woman over every surface he could at his home and the Council mansion the minute he got the chance.
Romano hurried to his woman’s side, grabbing her arm when she wobbled a bit. Using her power against the three mages hadn’t been easy, no matter how she’d made it look. She breathed a sigh of relief at his touch.
“Thank you.”
“Always, Kalinda. I’ll be here whenever you need.”
Epilogue
Two months meant a lot of changes.
New onboarding for newly appointed residents of Encantado to help them find their way was well underway. A stimulus package provided funding for a time while they were looking for jobs to establish themselves. Kalinda had formulated a way for low-level mages to have apprenticeship programs under higher levels. If they chose not to, they would be hired under her company as couriers, by the Lombardi Pack Gardens Community Center, or within the Entertainment Zone.
Things weren’t completely smoothed out, and there were still kinks to the actualization of her plans, but Encantado was firmly behind the new ruling member of the Council sitting at the top of the Trinity. Choosing not to live within the mansion but on pack lands with her mate meant people got to know her and what the Council actually stood for.
She was freaking exhausted. For all intents and purposes, her position was three-fourths mayor and one-fourth babysitting. But Romano made it all worthwhile. He never let her forget to stop to relax, make love, and remember she was just a woman who’d assumed a role instead of the role consuming her.
He worked with his pack and had his men help her when she needed. Silva stayed beside her and helped her with her decisions. There was no better assistant, friend, or sister she could have. She couldn’t deny things had worked out better than she’d ever known. Kalinda’s Katering had gone global, thanks to the fact an Honorary National Council member owned it. She’d take it, no matter how it came. At this point, she figured she deserved it.
“Kalinda, where’s Zoey?”
Kalinda spun around at Silva’s frantic cry. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Silva still hadn’t spoken about what she’d seen in the Chaos Realm that seemed to break something in her. She was still the same snarky Fae, but there was an underlying thread of pain to her Kalinda couldn’t make go away. Now, every time something bad seemed to be happening, she worried if it was time for her to find out what happened.
“There’s this kid at the door. He’d come looking for Romano, but he’s not here. He says someone is missing.”
Kalinda hurried to the door, not sure who had shown up, but if one of the pups were missing, there was no one better than Zoey to find them with her earth magic. But Dominic was zealous about making sure his mate conserved her energy as her pregnancy advanced.
Who she found at the door made her freeze. “Lorenzo?”
The once scrawny kid had begun to fill out, slowly, since working for the Lombardi Pack and making his girlfriend Cin’s jewelry business a hot commodity. Right now, though, he was haggard, his clothes disheveled and his dark hair a mess like he’d run his fingers through it too much.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know where Heath is.”
“He’s always with you. When’s the last time you saw him?”
Kalinda was already moving, ushering Lorenzo through the door and into a chair at the kitchen table. While she waited for the young man to compose himself, she got him a glass of water and sent an S.O.S. text to Zoey with Lorenzo’s name. Dominic would let her come for that, Kalinda was sure.
