Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Rynn
My face collided with something hard and unforgiving on the other side. I bounced back, only for Bastian to catch me as he stepped out of the mirror.
“You are the clumsiest wolf I’ve ever met.” He chuckled, his hands still on my shoulders.
“Stop shoving me into things.” I elbowed him in the gut and he grunted, dropping his hands and stepping back slightly. I tilted my head so I could actually look at the owner of the chest that masqueraded as a stone wall. “And you are seriously too tall, Cade.”
The six-and-a-half-foot-tall ursanthrope smiled at me. “Have you considered growing more?”
I snorted, wincing slightly because my nose still smarted from where I’d smacked it into his chest. Cade was the only person I’d ever met who made Vail look small. Not only was he ridiculously tall, but he had a heavy, muscular build, even for a bear shifter.
“I was just about to come get you,” Cade said. “The Dragomir pack arrived early, and I don’t want to keep them waiting.
Tension flickered in his light brown eyes as he looked over my head, some wordless exchange occurring between him and Bastian. They did that frequently. The two of them had been friends long before they’d formed the Alpha pack.
At that moment, I realized I was sandwiched between them. Neither were touching me, but Velesians tended to run hot, so I could feel their body heat radiating out and caressing my skin.
I was both blessed and cursed with an overactive imagination. Before a stream of dirty thoughts could flood my mind, I quickly stepped to the side so I could see both of them. Neither of them were interested in me in that way, and I didn’t want to make things awkward.
Bastian gave me an amused look before glancing at Cade. “Where’s the pup?”
Only Bastian would call Ryker, who was twenty-three years old and considered one of the strongest and most vicious fighters in Lunaria, a pup.
It probably annoyed Ryker to no end, which meant it made me happy.
“He’s with the Dragomirs,” Cade strode out of the room and waited for us to do the same before locking the door.
With the mirror secured, we headed for the stairs that lead to the main part of the abandoned Fae castle that made up the bulk of the Alpha stronghold. There were several outer buildings with courtyards scattered between them and the thick perimeter wall.
It wasn’t the prettiest of the old Fae castles, but I was getting used to calling it home.
“Sure that was a good idea?” Bastian followed quickly after Cade. “We’ll be lucky if they’re not in an all-out brawl when we get back.”
I jogged up the stairs after them, for once in agreement with Bastian. Ryker had an uncanny ability to piss people off.
“Didn’t have a choice,” Cade grunted. “If I sent Ryker to fetch you two, he and Rynn would have been the ones in a brawl.”
“He’s not wrong,” I admitted. Nobody got under my skin faster than Ryker, not even Warrick. When Cade was home and not traveling, he insisted on us all having dinner together every night. At least once a week, dinner ended with Ryker and me rolling around the floor.
Not in a fun way. Well, not for me. He probably found it fun, the psychopath.
“The two of you are going to have to work your shit out eventually,” Bastian chided.
I almost made a comment on him and Warrick working out their shit but didn’t want to ruin Bastian’s mostly good mood. Especially not before this meeting, so I just hummed my agreement instead.
Unfortunately, Bastian didn’t let it go. “I’m a little surprised we didn’t come home to blood decorating the walls. What did you two do while we were away?”
I did my best to keep my expression blank. “I’m not Ryker’s keeper so I don’t know what he did, aside from occasionally annoying me while I was trying to get work done.”
“Did you look through those ledgers I left?” Cade asked.
“Yes, and I have some ideas. We can talk about them later today or tomorrow.” Nervousness made my stomach churn as we got closer to the meeting room. “I’m assuming Gavril is here . . . who did he bring with him?”
Packs varied in size, with some being small like the Alpha pack while others consisted of multiple clans, usually family units, and had a hundred or more pack members.
It was rare for packs to get much bigger than that because it strained the pack bonds.
If a pack was too large, some clans would split off to form their own pack.
The Dragomir pack consisted of three clans with roughly forty-three members, last I’d checked. I was only familiar with about half of them.
“Alexis and Remy,” Cade answered.
Remy wasn’t a surprise. He was Gavril’s nephew and second-in-command.
I’d known Remy my whole life, because not only were we the same age, but like me, he’d been raised as a representative for his pack and the Fervis Order.
My uncle was the leader of the Valatieri pack, which was the top pack of the Narchis Order.
He rarely left Narchis territory and had instead sent his sister, my mother, to deal with the Fervis packs.
Once I’d been old enough, she had taken me with her on those trips so I could take over for her someday.
Remy’s father had played a similar role in his pack.
The result was that we’d spent a lot of time together as kids.
I’d learned later that there had been discussions about the two of us potentially creating our own pack, but neither of our families had been able to agree about whether that pack would be within the Fervis Order or the Narchis one.
I was glad it’d never come to fruition, because while I liked Remy and acknowledged he was roguishly handsome, there had never really been anything between us besides friendship.
Now he was mated to another ailuran, Marie, who was absolutely perfect for him.
Remy was fairly levelheaded and reasonable, but occasionally, he’d run his mouth or get a little too full of himself.
Marie kept him in line. Usually in a hilarious way. They were two of my favorite people in all of the Fervis Order and definitely within the Dragomir pack.
So while it wasn’t a surprise that Remy was here, it was very unexpected for Alexis to be. Where Remy was calm and collected, Alexis was vicious and underhanded. He was the pack enforcer. The one who was sent out to make problems disappear, not the person who came to delicate political meetings.
I also had a history with Alexis that the Alphas probably didn’t know about.
As far as I knew, only Gavril and Remy—and Marie by association—knew that, four years ago, Alexis had offered me a place in the Dragomir pack if I’d agreed to be his mate.
I’d turned him down because, even if I’d been interested in Alexis, which I absolutely wasn’t, it would have caused a massive rift between my pack and the Alpha pack.
My relationship with my family and pack as a whole was complicated, but not bad enough for me to put them in that situation.
Alexis hadn’t handled it well. He’d taken my rejection personally and had never missed an opportunity to hurt me since. With his words or his teeth. Our last encounter had been particularly bad. My heart raced a little faster. This meeting was going to be a disaster if I walked into that room.
Bastian and Cade both glanced over their shoulder, no doubt hearing how my heartbeat had suddenly picked up.
“I’m fine,” I lied, and the two of them frowned but looked away. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. It had been over a year since I’d seen Alexis. Maybe he’d finally let the past go.
We made it to the first floor and headed down the wide main hallway towards the front of the castle.
Like the Moroi Houses, this place had been built by the Fae.
Unlike the Moroi, we cared little about the luxuries and opulence the Fae had clearly loved.
Through random circumstances, we’d discovered that the climate control magically built into all the Fae castles worked regardless of the state of the outer walls.
Armed with that knowledge, most Velesians proceeded to knock down many of the non-load-bearing walls in the old Fae castles.
The wild always called to us. We accepted that it made sense to live inside, but being able to see the forests around us made it easier.
The Alpha pack had taken it a step further and let some of the wild in. Dark purple vines crept along most of the walls and across the ceiling. In the spring, they grew soft white blossoms that glowed at night.
Or at least that’s what Cade claimed. I’d moved here during late summer, so I’d missed it, and we were still almost two months away from spring.
Cade and Bastian turned another corner, and I followed silently, glancing to my right, where a large chunk of wall had been torn away.
A snow-covered forest looked back at me. I tried to focus on that and steadying my breaths to get my apprehension under control.
Bastian dropped back so he could walk beside me. “You going to be okay, Rynn?” he asked in a low tone. We were still a ways from the room where the Fervis pack waited for us, but Velesian hearing was no joke.
My minor freak-out a few minutes ago had obviously concerned him.
“Yes,” I said in an equally quiet tone. “I won’t mess this up.”
Rationally, I knew things had been deteriorating between the three Velesian Orders for a decade, if not longer.
It wasn’t my fault, but that did nothing to silence the voice in my head that pointed out my role in all this.
Not only had I been a political bargaining chip in securing an alliance between the Narchis Order and the Alpha pack—and the Order of Avala that always followed the Alphas’ lead—but my connection to Samara was well known.
Those two facts had made relations between the Fervis Order and the Alpha pack even more tense. We couldn’t afford for war to break out in our realm. Which meant this meeting had to go well.