Chapter 80 Maddy
MADDY
When the alphas started to arrive, I had a hard time concentrating on anything else.
A call from the guard house had alerted us to the first arrival, and from my window in the upstairs bedroom, I could see the first trucks and cars pull up the road and turn toward the meeting hall.
It seemed like the rest of Nico’s pack was curious about what was coming, as I could see quite a few others standing on their porches watching the convoy roll in, and there was a strange combination of excitement and dread in the air.
After almost two hours, I was in the meeting hall, and all the alphas had arrived.
Every alpha in the southern half of Florida had come to the meeting.
Some from smaller packs came by themselves, and others from bigger clans came with two or three other elders or high-ranking members.
Florida was a haven for wolf shifters, and ninety percent of the men who had come were wolves.
There was a small contingent of panther and bear shifters too.
Nico’s cousin, Eliza, pointed out a grizzled old man who was apparently the alpha of a gator shifter clan—one of the rarest types of shifters.
It still made my head spin how many shifters there were in the world.
I’d always known there were a lot of shifters, but it was hard to quantify it when they all looked like regular humans.
Nico stood at the center of the room and addressed everyone in attendance.
“I want to thank you all for coming. For those who don’t know me, my name is Nicolas Lorenzo.
Call me Nico. I’m the alpha of the Lorenzo pack.
My father” —Nico gestured to his dad— “Carlos was alpha before me.” Nico paused for a moment, and I couldn’t tell if he was thinking about what to say or if he was waiting for someone to ask a question.
After the hesitation, he continued. “You all know what is happening. You’ve seen the news reports, you’ve heard the rumors, and you know the history.
Edemas was real. His hidden vial of blood and all the power that comes with it…
it’s all real. I’ve called you all here to decide what our next move should be.
The royals were once boogeymen who hid in the darkness and shadows, but they are in the open now.
How we deal with them will determine not only the rest of shifter history but human history as well.
I’m being serious when I say that the world hangs in the balance right now. ”
The entire meeting hall fell silent. I glanced around at the myriad of expressions.
Some were contemplative, others looked scared, and a few others looked angry.
One of the angry men raised his hand, and Nico nodded at him.
He stood and gave a hesitant glance to the back of the room where I stood.
I’d been with Nico as the group took their seats, and they all knew I was his mate, that I was the reason this was all happening.
“So…” the man said, “I hate to say this, but isn’t it obvious that we need to give her to the royals? ”
“You’re gonna tuck tail and give the fuckers what they want?” a man with deep black skin and a shaved head said from the other side of the room.
“That’s Montague,” Eliza whispered in my ear.
“The boy’s right,” another voice called. “Give her over. Then we can go en-masse to find and destroy this vial of blood.”
Everyone started talking at once, the voices barking from every corner of the room.
Some in agreement, others in dissent. Nico raised his hands and tried to calm the building furor.
At the back of the room, the old gator shifter leaned over to whisper to a couple of panther shifters.
This was already not going well. I watched Nico.
His face was a mask of fury, and he let out an inhuman howl that was a combination of his human side and his wolf.
Power surged out of him, permeating the entire room.
Ever since we’d mated, his wolf had become tenfold stronger, and no one in his pack could resist the urge to bow to his strength.
It appeared as though that power wasn’t only reserved for his own pack.
Every man in the room was an alpha, former alpha, or an elder, but when Nico was finished, they’d all shut their mouths, and most had involuntarily bowed their heads to him in deference.
“Enough,” Nico growled. “Look at me. Even without that vial of blood, I’m the strongest alpha in this room. Does a single man here deny that?”
The room was silent. There wasn’t even a murmur of dissent. A quick glance around the room revealed several confused faces. Most of these men had not bowed to anyone since they’d become alphas themselves. So, this must have been a strange experience for them.
Nico nodded to himself. “I do not believe the old stories are completely true. Edemas was not the monster the legends tell us.”
A broad mountain of a man with light gray hair stood.
“That’s Tiago. He’s a bear shifter and the alpha of one of the most powerful packs in the state,” Eliza whispered.
“What do you mean? How can you know that?” Tiago asked Nico.
Nico gestured toward me. “Maddy is a shifter. Until a few months ago, her wolf had been suppressed with drugs. Once her wolf appeared, we discovered that she was the reincarnation of Edemas’s eldest daughter.
The crown princess of his rule. She was murdered by the original founding members of the royal society.
Edemas’s queen was also murdered. The man was not a bloodthirsty madman.
He was goaded and driven by rage, anguish, and heartbreak.
He was provoked, and when he lashed out, they spent decades and centuries framing him as something other than what he was.
“He was not inherently evil. He retained enough of his mind and soul to send his two youngest children, still just babies, into hiding. He was still crafty enough to make a pact with a witch to seal up his vial of blood so that his descendants could access it and hopefully fulfill his dream of revenge.”
A man stood and raised a hand. “Sorry, my name’s Harvell, alpha of the Everglades pack. What you said a second ago—if all of that is true, why don’t we do it? Use Maddy as a weapon.”
Nico leveled a finger at him. “Be careful what you say next.”
Harvell raised his hands in surrender. “Listen, the royals want that vial, and you’re the only one who knows the location.
Why don’t we take her there? Give her the vial, then turn her loose.
It’ll be like dropping a nuclear bomb on them.
If it gives her even half the power Edemas was said to have, it’s the best chance we have at beating them. ”
I glanced across the room and caught Luis’s eye. He gave me a grim look and shook his head. Nico raised his hand again. “We don’t want an all-out war,” he said. “We still have to live in this world after all this is done.”
“The boy’s right,’’ a heavy voice called from the rear of the room.
Heads craned, and eyes turned to see who spoke.
I watched the old gator shifter stand. “Roderick’s the name.
I know, over the years, this has been a wolf issue, but these royals of yours have made it all of our issue.
If we set loose some werewolf god or demon or whatever and go to war with them, all we’ll end up doing is massacring thousands of humans who’ve bought into their lies.
Then what? We win, but the whole world is still terrified of us, and we’ll all still have to go into hiding.
My kind lives in the swamps and bayous, but we aren’t savages.
We have homes and houses, neighborhoods, and our children go to school.
As scary as things are right now, I don’t want to ruin all our lives after this is over. ”
Without another word, the old man sat down, and the room fell into a contemplative silence. Nico gave the man a nod and turned back to the crowd. “Roderick is right—”
“Fuck that!” a younger alpha yelled as he stood.
“I get that we don’t want a damned blood bath.
I really do. I agree, but we all know where this started.
The reason our lives have been turned upside down.
” He turned to the back of the room, and his eyes locked on me.
“The simplest fix is the one first mentioned. Maybe these royals had the right idea. If this vial of blood is as powerful as they say, then could it be possible that they’ve been doing the right thing by hunting down Edemas’s descendants? ”
“Watch your mouth, Amadeus,” an older man beside him murmured in a warning. The man looked worried about what the younger alpha was going to say.
Amadeus shook his head. “No, I’m not watching my mouth. You all know it’s true, and you’re too scared of Nico to say it. Quick fix. Give his mate to the royals and wash our hands of this. Get back to normal life. Take—”
Nico was on him in seconds, wrapping his hand around the younger man’s throat and lifting him into the air.
His strength was as shocking as the rage on his face.
A murmur of surprise spread through the crowd.
Chairs slid across the floor, and other alphas stood and backed away.
Amadeus hadn’t brought an entourage, which was probably good. Otherwise, it would have been chaos.
Nico growled in Amadeus’s face and said, “If anything happens to Maddy, you will be the first person I think of. I will come for you, and I will not be merciful when I ask for answers. Do you understand that?”
Even as he was being choked, Amadeus looked pissed. “I’m… no… ugh… snitch,” he hissed through his clenched throat. “It was… just… an… idea.”
Nico dropped the other alpha, who fell to a knee and coughed while rubbing his throat.
Pointing to the door, he addressed the crowd.
“If any other person has an issue with my mate, there’s the goddamned door.
You can leave right now. And any who do, remember that you will have no help, no shelter, no protection from any member of the Lorenzo pack or any other alpha in this conclave.
“Get this in your minds now. We are here to form an alliance and to plan the downfall of the royals, not sell out our own.”
Amadeus stood and walked toward the door at the back.
I wasn’t surprised to see him go, and most of the faces in the crowd looked as though they’d expected it.
At the door, he turned back. “Like I said, I’m not a snitch, but you all caused this.
All the shit that has come our way started with the Lorenzo pack, and I don’t trust them to handle this.
I’ll protect my own pack. I don’t need you. ”
He shoved through the door. Francisca leaned close to my ear and whispered, “What a little bitch. Good riddance.”
The meeting continued for another two hours, and thankfully, it didn’t devolve into more shouting and fighting.
There did seem to be some consensus that Nico was right.
It looked like all the other alphas in attendance were in agreement to let Nico lead them.
Nico’s pack was one of the three biggest and most powerful in the entire country, and the fact that he’d already aligned with Javi’s pack only made us stronger.
Everyone in the room was a shifter, and if there was one thing they did, it was to defer to the most powerful.
They could see the strength, intensity, and authority Nico had now that he’d taken me as a mate.
He was far and above the most capable alpha in the room.
Even the other alphas could see that and understood their best chance at survival was to follow his lead.
The meeting adjourned for the day, and I immediately left to go to the creek in the woods.
As I walked, I stewed on what I’d heard in that room.
Now that the meeting was over, all I could think about was what they’d said about me.
I was surprised at how much it had hurt me.
The way they’d talked about me like I was either a weapon to be used or a sacrifice to be made, shouldn’t have stung as it did but I couldn’t hide my feelings from myself.
Since this had begun, I’d been called an abomination and told I shouldn’t exist more times than I cared to admit. Hearing it all over again was like rubbing salt in an almost-healed wound. I hadn’t asked for this. I hadn’t asked to exist.
When I got to the creek, I flopped down on the ground.
The air was cool right by the water, and I tried to zone out as I tossed small stones into the stream.
Eventually, my mind drifted to my birth mother.
I hadn’t thought about her much since we got home.
Now I wondered where she was and what she was doing.
Had she managed to escape that night? Or did Viola still have her?
That didn’t seem right. If Viola still had her, I had no doubt she’d have tried to use her against me.
My birth mother was the only trump card the royals had.
No, I told myself, she’d gotten away. How?
I’d probably never know. If she’d managed to keep the fact that she was a shifter hidden for all these years, she probably had a lot of tricks up her sleeve.
It was a hope I clung to, even though, in my deepest heart, I wondered if I was wrong.
It was hard to think of a way she could have escaped.
That wasn’t something I wanted to think about, though.
I sat there for several hours before getting up and strolling along the stream.
As I walked, I sent Nico a text, letting him know not to worry about me.
Eventually, the stream led me to a big pond, almost the size of a small lake.
The sun had set moments before, and the moon was rising as I lay down in the moss, relaxing and trying to think of better things.
The moon was waning, and the yellowish half-circle was like a magnet for my eyes.
It gave me a strange comfort. I had no idea how we were going to fix things.
It all seemed so big now, so overwhelming.
Whatever we did, I wanted it done soon. I had been plagued with dark thoughts for a few days now.
Things were going to get bad. I had no idea how this would end, and that was terrifying.
I raised my hands, letting the light of the moon turn them into a silhouette.
My hands slowly morphed into claws. Not the simple paws of a wolf but the claws of a werewolf.
I reminded myself that I was not a murderer.
Still, I would happily tear every royal to shreds if it meant I could protect my family.