Chapter 2 #3
“Might I speak with Rynn for a moment?” Remy asked.
In an instant, the Alphas tensed around me, and Alexis stopped in his tracks, causing Gavril to pause midway and turn so he could give his second a questioning look.
“Yes,” I said quickly. “We can grab some food from the kitchen. I meant to swing by there on my way here.”
Bastian’s head swung towards me, his eyes narrowed, sensing the lie. Damn it.
Before anyone else could say anything, I darted towards Remy and grabbed his hand, pulling him out of the room in much the same way Ryker had dragged me in here.
A deep growl followed us, and I quickly dropped Remy’s hand. He continued to follow me into the hallway, muttering under his breath about how I was trying to get him killed. Cade or Bastian must have done something to calm or at least contain Ryker because the possessive lycan didn’t come after us.
Neither of us said anything as we made our way farther into the ancient castle.
Based on how Remy looked around, I suspected he’d never been this far into the Alpha pack stronghold.
I winced internally, since Bastian would probably lecture me about this later.
The Alpha pack valued their privacy. Unlike other packs, they didn’t have any lower-ranking packs to help them with important but more menial tasks like cooking, food storage, and general maintenance.
Most high-ranking packs had at least one or two of these vassal packs to help with such things in exchange for protection and prestige.
I didn’t know if the Alphas had always been this private or if they’d become that way after Ryker had joined their pack, but they didn’t allow any other packs to stay here and always kept visitors in that front meeting room.
And here I was, taking Remy, a high-ranking member of a pack that’d been fairly hostile over the past decade, farther into their home.
Our home. Damn it.
Ryker was no doubt livid right now. I hadn’t been thinking when I’d grabbed Remy, I’d just wanted to get him out of the room so I could find out what he wanted to tell me. Gavril had been out of line calling Ryker rabid, but that didn’t change the fact that Ryker wasn’t like other Velesians.
I only knew a little of his story because Cade had told me the bare minimum for my own safety when I’d moved in.
All the Moon Blessed had lingering problems from the original spell that had turned the humans into Moroi, Furies, and Velesians.
The Moroi suffered from bloodlust, and if they went too far, they never came back from their blood-crazed hunger.
Furies could lose themselves to their rage.
At which point, they went insane and slaughtered everything around them until someone put them out of their misery.
It was a little different for the Velsians.
We didn’t go mad and we didn’t become mindless killing machines.
If we lost our humanity, we simply stayed in our animal forms and gradually forgot we’d ever been human to begin with.
We referred to it as giving into the call, because the wild was always whispering in our ear.
Those lost Velesians usually just melted into the forest and didn’t go out of their way to attack us. Though a small percentage of them became extremely aggressive, not unlike the howlers that occasionally went rabid. Calling a Velesian rabid was one of the highest insults one could use.
Ten years ago, Warrick had stumbled on a pack of these lost Velesians in the mountains. Or what was left of them anyway. They’d been slaughtered by wraiths, and he’d arrived just in time to save the one survivor.
A young wolf with a silvery coat and ice-blue eyes.
The first time Ryker had shifted to his human form had been that night. It was unheard of for Velesians who were lost to the wild to regain their humanity, which made Ryker an odd case.
Warrick had taken the scrawny preteen lycan to the stronghold where Cade and Bastian had gradually nursed him back to health and taught him how to speak in addition to living in a normal Velesian pack. It took years, but he’d eventually settled into life with the Alphas as his new family.
But Ryker was far from normal and likely never would be. There would always be more of the wild in him than most Velesians.
“Rynn?” A touch of amusement coated Remy’s words, and I stopped, only to realize he’d already halted ten feet behind me. “Kitchen?” He jerked his thumb towards the wide entryway.
“Oh, right.” I blinked and walked back towards him.
He chuckled. “Still getting lost in your own thoughts, I see.”
I grunted in response, which drew another deep laugh from him as we ducked into the massive kitchen.
“So it’s just you and the Alphas living here?
” He looked around the large cooking space that had floor-to-ceiling storage on one wall.
Clearly, whatever Fae had built this place had enjoyed throwing some epic banquets because you could easily cook enough food here to feed all the Velesians in the Avala territory.
“Yes,” I answered, not bothering to correct him that I was one of the Alphas.
“Interesting.” Remy hummed and started helping himself to the bread rolls that someone, probably Cade, had made earlier and stashed in the bread box. “She’ll probably like that.”
“She?” My brows furrowed together.
“I . . . might have meddled where I probably shouldn’t have,” he mumbled around a mouthful of bread.
“Remy,” I growled and snatched the rest of the roll from his hand. “What did you do?”
He gave the bread a forlorn look before letting out a long sigh.
“Gavril is still trying to find a way in with the Alphas. He’s given up on trying to get you out and is instead .
. .” Remy hesitated. “There’s a woman, Selene.
She’s not in the Dragomir pack, but her family is the third pack down in the hierarchy from us and very loyal to him.
He came here to demand that she be allowed to join the Alpha pack too. ”
I hadn’t been prepared for the rush of emotions that crashed into me.
Excitement about someone joining our pack who I didn’t have a complicated history with.
Anger at Gavril for trying to fuck with things.
And also . . . jealousy. What if the Alphas liked her more than me?
What if I ended up being the odd one out forever?
I studied Remy. He’d said he’d meddled, and the way he spoke about Selene made me think he genuinely cared about her.
“Why?” I pointed the bread roll at him. “You want her in this pack. Why, Remy?”
While I knew Remy well and was acquainted with most of the members of the Dragomir pack, I didn’t know many other Velesians within the Fervis Order.
Their Order and mine had already been on the outs when I’d been born and it’d only worsened as I’d grown older.
Whoever this Selene was, I’d never met her.
“Selene and Marie grew up together,” he explained, a softness entering his expression that was only there when he spoke of his mate. “Not sisters by blood but by soul. Like you, Samara, and Cali.”
I waited.
“Her past is complicated.”
That drew a grin out of me. “One thing she and I already have in common.”
“You’re not wrong,” he agreed with a smile before his mouth twisted like he’d just bitten into something sour.
“We might give the Moroi shit for their arranged marriages and constant scheming, but at the end of the day, it’s not like we’re much better.
Selene has been used as a bartering tool by her pack since she was sixteen.
That was the first time she was sent to a different pack. ”
My stomach churned. I might have been promised to the Alpha pack when I’d been fifteen, but the agreement had been that I wouldn’t join them until after I attended Drudonia, at which point I would be twenty-one.
Pack dynamics were complicated. They didn’t always involve sexual relationships, but that was the norm.
It was usually for everyone’s benefit that members were promised to other packs. It gave them a better chance of finding a mate, or mates, but typically, even if this had been arranged when they were as young as I’d been, nobody actually joined the packs until they were adults.
There were a lot of unspoken rules in place. The Alphas didn’t meet me in person until I was at Drudonia, and even then, it was only briefly. In most circumstances, there was also an adjustment period where either party could dissolve the agreement. I hadn’t had that option.
The question was, had Selene?
“What were the terms?” I asked.
“Nothing in her favor.” Remy’s expression tightened. “Look, you know my life revolves around Marie, she is my everything, but even I can acknowledge that Selene is beautiful. Those looks, however, come with a price.”
“They make her a highly sought-after bargaining chip,” I said, disgust rolling through me.
Remy nodded. “But she’s never fit into any pack she’s joined. At this point, she’s been in five packs, and every single time, she has returned to her family so they can trade her off again.”
I frowned. “Five? What happened?” The crease between my brows deepened. Remy said Selene had grown up with Marie, and I knew his mate was fifth generation like me and Remy, although she was older than us, in her late twenties, whereas Remy and I were twenty-five.
Our generation was five generations removed from the original magic that had turned us into Velesians. The oldest were in their fifties. None of us knew how long we would live. I’d met older Velesians from my generation though, and they looked like me.
It wasn’t unheard of for someone to join a pack only for it to not work. When that happened, they would simply return to their original pack and try again, but five failed pack transfers was a lot in roughly a decade.