Chapter 28
brYLEE
My throat is dry as a pair of servants swing the doors to the throne room open with bowed heads.
I stride into the massive, echoing space as I smooth down the emerald-green suit I wear to curry favor.
Every step I take in my heels sends a clacking sound reverberating off the marble floors, columns, and arched ceilings, making me utterly self-conscious.
The room is empty, a great wide void. Mother has graciously squeezed in this meeting with me right before she makes a public announcement about the war on the nightly news.
But not another soul is in here preparing yet.
No camera or lighting crew. Just her, sitting on her velvet throne, making me approach like a supplicant.
Of course she couldn't have made this meeting in her dressing room or somewhere casual. I have to walk all the way through the room toward the golden throne, feeling exposed and minuscule as an ant as she stares down from her raised dais.
My gaze drops to my feet because I know that's what she expects from me, and it's better not to approach an alpha with a challenging glare. Her, in particular.
Though my throat still stings from her proclamation earlier, from her dismissive cruelty toward my scent matches, I try to keep my features smooth and placid as we learned to do at Darling.
Omegas don't win battles directly, I remind myself. We win through stealth. Cunning. Not force.
But that's hard to do when every single nerve ending in my body is still vibrating from the remnants of my heat, and my connection to my men has never felt stronger.
If she says a single word about them—
"You need to forget that alpha group."
My gaze flies up to find the queen casually checking her hair in a compact mirror, tucking down a stray strand as though she didn't just verbally attempt to guillotine my future.
Play dumb, Madame Ellora coaches inside my head. Her slicked-back bun and clasped hands pop into my head as clear as a television program. When an alpha makes a demand of you that you don't like, it is your duty to serve them. But if they make a demand that's unreasonable…play dumb.
"I'm sorry. I don't understand." I struggle to act confused instead of outraged, and my voice comes out strained and squeaky.
"While that team is…decent, they lack the advantages that Brock and the others have."
"But I thought they were decorated war heroes?" I turn it into a question, trying not to overdo the valley-girl tone because I don't want mother to suss out my tactic.
"Ridge's team has no political alliances."
"Aren't you the biggest alliance of them all?" I allow myself a little head tilt.
Her lips thin, and she snaps her compact shut, clearly impatient with this conversation already. "Yes, but we need allies."
I blink at her several times. "I'm confused. I thought allies were with other countries."
Her nostrils flare as she inhales in a bid to keep her temper. "They can be internal as well. Brock comes from a well-respected, noble family. His family is considered one of the richest in the country."
“Wouldn’t better allies be the Noth princes?” Though there’s a president that runs that country, there’s also an archaic royal family who’s kept around for the sake of tradition, a fact that I know abrades my mother like a cheese grater.
Her teeth clench, but she takes a deep breath and brushes off my suggestion without responding. God, can’t she just get angry enough to dismiss me and put this discussion off? She has a press conference to get to. But I haven’t won yet, so I keep going.
"And we aren't already allied with all the families in this country…so we need an alliance?" I full-on channel Legally Blonde because I've made it this far, and I doubt she'll get the reference.
Her smile is a grimace. I can tell she’s fuming.
"We're in the middle of a war, Brylee. We all have to make sacrifices." She stands in a clear bid to intimidate me, her sleek black suit emanating power alongside her aggressive scent.
"Brock's group is going to help us win the war?"
"You will marry them. That's the end of this discussion." Instead of shouting and sending me out of the room, her declaration is low and lethal.
The words slam into my torso and knock the wind out of me. When I am finally able to suck in a ragged breath, I want to lash out. To scream. To throw something at her. And at Madame Ellora too for stupid, pointless, worthless advice.
My torso's suddenly stuffed full of thorny brambles that scratch ragged holes through my lungs.
Each breath is painful.
Each imagined second of my future is worse than the last.
Am I really supposed to live this way?
Subject to every alpha command?
Dragging myself through my life on my knees like some pathetic slave, grateful for the opportunity to follow their orders?
Her orders?
My mouth opens, and I nearly give in to the temptation to wail.
To rend the air apart with my furious devastation.
The intense outrage. But any scream would be so amplified by this stupid echo chamber that eighteen doors would open and a million servants would rush in and everyone would witness me “throwing a tantrum.”
And that's when the lessons Alpha Tamlin taught about history hit me. He told us once that the general who picks the battleground usually wins.
I glance around this massive throne room. This space that the public and all servants can access at any moment. The press is probably waiting in the halls, ready to pour in the moment she's camera-ready.
She didn't just pick this room to intimidate me.
It's a trap.
She brought me in here and said the most abrasive thing possible because she wants to stoke my emotions when I'm vulnerable just after a heat.
She wants me to scream like a banshee and have a parade of witnesses rush in so that she can say I'm too volatile to make decisions for myself.
That would allow her to swoop in and take charge for my own good.
This isn't some mother-daughter heart-to-heart.
This is a queen making a move on the battlefield.
Sacrificing a soldier to her plan.
I mean nothing to her.
The betrayal of that realization smashes over me like a military tank. Heavy, brutal pain judders over each of my bones and compresses me until my lungs stop working, and the air still stuck inside them stings.
I don't think anything has ever hurt more.
Not when Sam betrayed me.
Not when my exes sold me.
Never.
Nothing has ripped me up by the root like this.
My own mother doesn't see me as human.
Only as a pawn.
No wonder Teddie won't confess the truth of his illness.
She has to be the most selfish person who's ever lived.
I fight the burn at the back of my eyes but lose as a sheen of tears coats my vision and makes my mother's face blur as if she could be anyone. A stranger. Which is exactly what she feels like.
The woman who birthed me is not a mother.
A true mother couldn't sacrifice her children.
Inside, I shatter into tiny fragments, though I fight with every ounce of strength not to let that hurt rise to the surface.
My lips compress as my eyes burn. I stare at the ground again, trying to regain my composure, but a traitorous tear escapes.
It leaves a warm, wet track down my cheek, and I sniff, trying desperately to contain the rest of the water behind a dam of indifference.
I hate that she gets to witness that lone, vulnerable tear.
I don't want her to have any power over me at all. In fact, I want her to be the blurry stranger—some unknown figure in the distance. But what I want is an imaginary life and not the reality I've got to face.
What do I do?
How do I resist a monarch's orders? An alpha's? My mother's?
I don't know.
"Alpha Team X is shipping out anyway," Mother says casually, a smugness to her tone that tells me she thinks I've acquiesced. "They leave in the morning. Right for the front lines."
My eyes widen, and my hand comes over my mouth to cup it, to block the horrified scream that wants to emerge.
She moved up their timeline. I know she did.
And probably changed their destination.
She's going to send my scent matches to their deaths, all so that she can tie me to the alphas she wants.
My eyes stare vacantly at the tufts on the red rug that ascend the stairs and run underneath her throne. One strand looks like it might be fraying, coming unwound.
I've never identified with an inanimate object more.
I thought my life was finally coming together. That the worst was behind me and that reuniting with my men was going to be the start of a brand-new chapter.
How stupidly foolish of me.
Life likes to hit you when you're down. But when you're up, fortune likes to roundhouse you right in the face.
Actually, that might be giving too much credit to fortune. This level of cruelty is all the queen’s. Hers alone.
Without another word, I turn on my heels and walk out—and the only sound in the room is the echoing click of my retreating footsteps.