Page 13

“Sir, we really need to talk about what happened at the festival yesterday—”

This wretched headache eased up for just about five minutes yesterday, when I was in her presence. Breathing in her sweet, light scent. Something like the first run of maple sap in the spring, that clear syrup that comes from the first pull. Like butterscotch, vanilla extract, but from the other room.

So gentle, unassuming. Refreshing and real.

Now, though, with her locked away in this building and me locked away on the other side of it, the headache is slowly coming back. And Kellen sure is doing a good job of helping it along.

“Why not just allow the girl to be sacrificed?” Kellen goes on and on, the same arguments he’s let out in a solid stream for the past hour.

Denvil, Zade, and Brack are guests here in my castle, standing beside me at the front of the table. Even with them here, at my side, it’s hard for me to think about anything but the omega that is currently in this building.

In the guest wing, reserved for when we host alphas and leaders from other packs. It happens seldom enough—it’s not like foreign diplomats are itching at the chance to freeze their asses off in Kault. We don’t even have the fun, fluffy kind of snow for skiing. Our territory is less winter wonderland and more frigid tundra.

Kellen drones on about his displeasure with my actions at the festival. “Some omega from Gavyn’s little group? Do you really feel she was worth making a scene for?” He asks his rhetorical questions as he tucks his hands together in his ceremonial robes, the deep blue of the court adviser.

This room—with the high, vaulted ceilings and tall arched windows—was once my father’s throne room. He chose to sit on his throne at the front of the space and have his advisers fan out around him.

I chose to alter the space, adding a table so it would be more like a meeting space than a chance for me to deliver a lecture, commandments. Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe it’s just given the advisers the feeling that they can be more bold with me than they ever would have been with my father.

More than anything, I want to answer Kellen’s ridiculous rhetorical questions with my own deadpanned answers. Obviously, I thought it was worth it to stop the sacrifice. That’s the decision I made. She might be an omega, but she is still a shifter. A shifter from Gavyn’s pack, who might be able to give us some information about what he’s up to on the outskirts.

“And, sir, after the incantation was already read, it was terribly reckless to pull it like that!” Kellen’s voice borders on hysterical, and he even goes so far as to throw his hands and inch in the air, so his robe sleeves puff out. “What if the goats had not been brought? What if the goddesses had not accepted them?”

He has a point. All of that could have happened.

The truth is that I was thinking about nothing but her. I didn’t consider the possible ramifications of my actions. In that moment, I didn’t think about the goddesses or the people around me or even my three friends, completing a mission at my side.

The only thing I could think about was her.

But I can’t let them know that. As far as Kellen should know, I am a purposeful and precise strategic thinker.

“Kellen. I do not care.”

I enunciate each word, the impatience and frustration finally catching up with me. A few of the older advisers wince at my words. Of course I should care about the moon goddesses and the sacrifices they accept. I shouldn’t do anything to lose their favor.

Although I’m not entirely convinced we have their favor, anyway. Would a pack with their favor be the ones most targeted by theft? Would we be the ones losing more food from our stores at the start of the long winter?

The counselors are nervous enough that they won’t look at me directly, but upset enough to continue standing resolutely, shoulder-to-shoulder. Refusing to sit at the table with me because it’s not how things are done.

I did my best to get rid of the throne room, and yet here I am—the only one sitting. The only difference now is that I’m sitting on a throne with a table out in front of it.

My father never took orders from the advisers, but it’s not like my father ever did something they wouldn’t. They were aligned, so their suggestions were never more than a slight deviation from what he’d already decided to do.

“But sir,” Kellen begins again, and I stand from my place at the front of the room, waving my arm at them. “Your father would have—”

“I am not my father, am I? Perhaps that’s something you need to reflect on, Kellen. The leadership of this pack has changed, and so has what is and isn’t acceptable at the festivals. The other kings and I have decided—from now on, no shifters will be sacrificed. We are already struggling with a population problem. The last thing we should be doing is thinning the pack further.”

“Go.” Maybe I compel them slightly, maybe I don’t. Either way, they nod and turn, hurrying from the room. Their feet scrape like monks along the ground, and Kellen bows to me before he closes the door.

No doubt he is off to discuss me with the other men on the council, so they can talk about how far I have to come. How my father would feel about my decision-making as the king of this pack.

“So,” Zade says, raising an eyebrow and sliding out in front of me, planting one hand on the table. “We decided we would no longer allow shifter sacrifices, huh?”

I give him a look.

“What about humans?” Denvil asks, popping a sucker from his mouth and coming to lean next to Zade. “Those surely are still allowed, smelly little fuckers. What fun is a festival without a little human shitting themselves?”

“No,” Brack says it simply, coming to stand on the other side of the table, facing Zade and Denvil instead of me. Brack crosses his meaty, tattooed arms and levels a strict look at the other two. “No shifters, and no human sacrifices.”