Chapter 7 #2
For a moment, Adrien couldn’t form words, wanting to process everything she’d just said and not have her rehash it again. His father had paid Helene to leave her?
“Why?”
“He wants me to work for him.”
“He wants you to what? Why?”
“He wouldn’t say.” When she turned to him, her eyes were that familiar, rich brown again. “Not until I swear fealty to him.” She seemed to spit on the word. “I have until we return from Callisto to decide.”
Adrien wasn’t sure where his emotions wanted to settle, not sure where his mind even could. Helene had betrayed her like this? His father knew what she was?
That frightened him more than anything, and he was overcome with such a visceral need to hide her away. “What if you say no?”
“He’ll either hunt me down or tell the entire world, I’m sure,” she said and practically fell into a chair. In time, the darkness dripped from the barricaded exit. “He said I wouldn’t be treated like the others. Do you know what that means?”
Adrien stiffened.
Lie.
It was his father’s voice in his head. His tutors, instructors.
It’s not for her ears.
It was his duty to uphold their pack’s secrets, the wolves’ secrets, and what had been going on with the witches in the prison had been a decade-long one, even if he’d only learned the truth months ago.
But… he couldn’t bring himself to lie to her. Not now, not when she was like this. Inevitability seemed to linger here, Fate a taunt in his ear. She would find out. He should’ve been grateful that his father didn’t tell her himself before Adrien could.
“Do you remember when I told you, or you asked, about witches who were caught trespassing in our territory within the mountains?” Raana straightened and nodded. “They weren’t—they weren’t executed as I’d said.”
She tilted her head, shadows rolling off her shoulders with the movement. “Then where are they?”
He swallowed. “They’re in our prison within the peaks. We call it the High Ground.”
Raana blinked. Once. Twice. “Why would you lie to me about that?”
An honest question.
Adrien scrubbed at his jaw. “I wasn’t allowed to tell you the truth. To tell anyone the truth.” Though he’d told Isla, even Sebastian was in the dark.
Raana shook her head as if trying to dislodge something from it.
“Why does it need to be secret, though? People only hide things when they feel guilty, when being caught comes with consequences. Our treaty—you can imprison them if you wish. Why must that be a secret? I would think you’d all rejoice at their capture.
Or was not killing them too merciful?” They were biting, curious words.
Killing them might’ve been, Adrien thought with a sickening twist of his gut.
He hadn’t truly known what went on in Valkeric—prison to the wolves’ greatest felons, those who’d committed crimes so heinous that living as a rogue was too little of a punishment—but he’d heard the horror stories.
It was why he still thought of Lukas, a competitor from the Hunt a few months ago who’d been sent there after trying to kill his fellow wolf during the sacred trial. He’d tried to kill Isla, too, afterwards. Somehow, the Wilds had driven him to sheer insanity.
“My father doesn’t want anyone to know that they’re there because of their purpose—or what he hopes their purpose will become.
” A flicker of her eyes urged him to get to the point.
“He wants to use them for our protection, on our inner and outer borders. Something he’s not so sure other packs would be keen on. ”
Raana’s fists flexed and clenched in her lap, shadows curling her wrists like manacles. “Protection against what? Our magic doesn’t even work on wolves.”
“I don’t know.” Her eyes scanned his face for deception. “Truly, I don’t.”
“You’re his Heir.”
Adrien fought to keep his voice from matching the malice of hers. “I know.”
As the words settled, as the truth did, Raana’s shoulders shook.
She was looking down at her clasped hands as she muttered, “Entitled prick.” Her stare was scalding when it met his again.
“We were always told that you wolves, with your prosperous empire on your lonely continent, would destroy yourselves. That there was no need to fight you to bring it down. Don’t drag our people into this.
We’re not weapons at your disposal for your petty wars. ”
“There is no war,” Adrien snapped, harsher than he meant, feeling the words with a touch of fear. “Your people should’ve never been in those mountains in the first place. You don’t even know what they were doing. What they were planning.”
Raana didn’t respond; she only glared at him.
Adrien dragged his eyes over her one last time before heading for the exit. “Don’t leave this room.”
“Where are you going?” she called, worry tinging her voice.
“To find out why my father wants you.”
Adrien sat silently in front of his father in the Imperial Alpha’s office.
He’d caught the Alpha in the hallway as he’d been ascending the stairs to the third floor along with a horde of guards, more than Adrien had ever seen him travel with within their own walls.
He didn’t need to contemplate their purpose.
No one was permitted into the atrium of the Imperial Pack Hall, comprised of frosted glass walls with gilded panes; the only one with a clear view of the Imperial City and open sky beyond it.
An observatory of sorts, made more so by his father’s brass telescope, perched by a latched opening in the glass.
From where Adrien sat now, he could see the entirety of this place he’d called home—the Valkeric Mountains, a sliver of the Barit Sea.
In a couple of hours, the sun would fall, and the moon would call up the city’s famed lights, much like stars.
He’d seen the same in Deimos, but their stars had been crystals embedded into the earth and their streets.
Crystals that glowed at night as if they’d absorbed the Goddess’s energy and reflected it into the world.
He remembered coming up here as a child, wondering at this floor, at this office, what would all come to be his. All this space… yet, it felt like a cage.
There was another map beneath the plating of his father’s desk, and atop it were small figurines.
Carved wooden flags on stands with the insignias of the other packs.
Adrien traced his eyes over a long river cleaving the south of the continent down its center.
Along it, in a line across their territories, were Tethys, Deimos, and Mimas.
Io, along with Iapetus and Charon, was positioned west of Iapetus and Charon’s borders.
Adrien asked as Cassius swept a hand over the glass, washing it all away, “What’s this for?”
“Contemplation,” his father said, sitting in his high-backed chair. Adrien had always wondered why he kept his back to the city. “Let’s not waste each other’s time, Adrien. I’ll have to work on drilling the importance of confidentiality into her before we start.”
Adrien fought to stop his body reacting, keeping his face impassive at his father’s grating tone.
Start what would’ve been a logical follow-up question, but something else had gnawed at him. “Did you threaten Helene?”
His father laughed humorlessly. “No.”
“So, why did she—”
“She chose her life over the girl’s. People are simple. Greed is simple. Cowardice is simple.” Cassius waved a hand, dismissing, “I thought you’d be happy you get to keep your little pet.”
Adrien snarled, feeling his wolf snap to the surface. “Don’t talk about her like that.”
In response, his father’s eyes flared crimson, the blood-red glow bearing down on him, pushing at him.
An alpha requiring submission from his subordinate.
“Careful,” he seethed, though something like pride swept over his face.
As Adrien’s wolf retreated, Cassius’s did as well.
“You’ve hidden her from me for how long? ”
Adrien’s nostrils flared. He could lie—but he hadn’t been much for that today, had he? “I found out a few months ago.”
An indifferent nod. Adrien would’ve thought his father would be angrier about the deception. “Does anyone else know?”
“No. It’s just me. I promised her that.”
“Good. I’m sure you know what would happen to her if it got out.
” A silent threat rippled beneath that sentence.
“I will tell you the same as I told her. Have your fun, get whatever you need out of your system, and don’t get caught.
No doubt your prospects will remain if the secret slips, but I’d rather not deal with the headache. ”
Raana hadn’t mentioned this.
Adrien’s blood heated, feeling like he’d just exposed a vulnerable edge to a predator. He wouldn’t let it reflect on his face. He may have remembered too late that laying bare emotions was as good as lying down for a blade. “My prospects?”
“Alpha Baldor of Rhea—his daughter’s a year past age with no mate in sight. I’ve had Winslow arrange for her to come here for the Winter Solstice. The chances of her being your fated are slim, but it should be a suitable blood match.”
Adrien’s gut twisted. “I don’t want to think about finding a mate right now.
” Especially not choosing one. Before his father could elaborate further on whatever he was attempting to arrange, Adrien asked, “What are you planning to do with the witches? Are they truly for protection? When you release them, where will they go? How will you explain it to our people, to the realm?”
Cassius tapped his fingers against the glass. “So many questions.”
Many that also hadn’t been the one he intended.
“I’m just trying to understand you. I’m your Heir. If I’m meant to follow in your footsteps, I should be able to defend your decisions.”
“Have I made a decision you cannot defend?”
Several.
But maybe one weighed the heaviest of them all.
“You approved a challenge of an alpha against a rogue wolf,” Adrien began, low but firm.
“Even with the rogue’s claim—months after the atrocity—they have no right to rule over anything.
If we can’t prevent that from happening, what is the purpose of our keeping order between the packs?
Deimos had already seen us in a poor light, as had the southern territories. This has only created more discontent.”
“I know.”
Adrien’s brows lifted. He knew? “So, why approve it?”
His father fell silent, contemplative. Without breaking eye contact, his hand reached out, picking up one of the discarded figurines.
He squeezed Deimos between his fingertips as he brought it up between both of their faces.
“When Alpha Kyran and his heir passed, I thought the Goddess had done us a service.”
“They didn’t just pass,” Adrien argued, not allowing his voice to rise. “They were murdered. Murdered in cold blood by a witch who should’ve never been able to breach our lands.”
“An unfortunate tragedy.”
“Our failed purpose.”
Cassius’s grip on the wooden figure tightened, ruby-red threatening his eyes as creases cut his face.
“Alpha Kyran was building an army,” he laid out in a plain, frank tone.
“Planning an attack of some sort; I still don’t entirely know what his plans were.
But he was rallying pack members from Charon to join his ludicrous cause to rise against us.
” At Adrien’s stunned silence, he continued, “For months, all those audiences with me were for the purpose of tracing our territory, our defenses. It’s why I denied his last request. Why I started bargaining with the witches. ”
Adrien opened and closed his mouth, shaking his head. He knew their packs had their disagreements, but… “Attacking us would mean civil war. He couldn’t have been that reckless.”
“One would think,” Cassius said, propping the piece back on the map, right over Mavec’s eight-pointed star.
“Our packs have a long history of strife that I don’t have time to explain to you today.
But as greed and cowardice are simple, so is pride and how it destroys and distracts.
It has been my own shortcoming in the past, even regarding this.
I thought I could handle it myself, but I must call upon something, someone greater. ”
“What are you talking about?”
His father leveled him with a glare. “Alpha Kai is a problem that needs to be addressed quickly, and that’s why I need her.”