“You cannot blame a lycan for defending hismate,” Maverick repeated.
Tove stopped his pacing and turned to faceMaverick. The two men stared at each other.
“They are on our side,” Maverick said. “Someof them are part of my pack. They were wrong to fight in your hall.Let them stew in that knowledge for the night, but set them freeafterward.”
CHAPTER 13
A muscle twitched in Tove’s jaw as his teeth groundtogether. Cole didn’t say a word, but his uncle was right, and hisfather knew it.
“It might not be the best idea to make anenemy out of them,” Brokk said.
His father grumbled something and paced overto the table. He grasped the chair at the end, his chair, and gazeddown the table at his sons and Maverick.
“I’ll set them free tomorrow,” he relented.“Except for the vampire. He’ll stay in there until I say he canleave, and I don’t care if that’s three centuries from now.”
“They can’t fault you for that,” Colesaid.
“No one gives a shit about the vampire,”Maverick muttered.
His father released the chair and pulled itback to sit on it. He waved a hand at the two chairs beside him.“Join me,” he commanded his sons.
Cole stepped away from the wall and walkeddown to sit at his father’s right side while Brokk took the chairon his left. Maverick sat a couple of chairs down from Brokk.
They had originally planned to have a fullcoalition meeting with the other immortals seeking to end theLord’s tyranny. However, there was no reason for those members toremain in the palace once Tove commanded everyone to leave.
Maverick was family; it wouldn’t look odd ifhe remained, but it would look strange if the others did.
“I spoke with Talon,” his father said.
The warlock was a powerful asset to thecoalition, but he was also the most cautious.
“He’s determined that we find someone who cansit on the throne before we try to destroy the Lord,” Tovecontinued. “He believes it won’t do us any good if we remove themaniac but have no one to replace him.”
“The throne and the power are going to rotwhoever we replace him with,” Brokk said. “Just like it has thecurrent Lord.”
Cole still remembered what the current Lordwas like before he sat on the throne. He’d been a good man, awarlock who was chosen by the other immortals to take the place ofthe Lord before him.
Cole clearly remembered Andreas as a smilingwarlock with hazel eyes and a boisterous laugh that once reboundedoff the walls of the downstairs’ hall. He was one of the fewimmortals everyone liked, and now the throne had corrupted his mindand turned him into a madman who had unleashed hell upon theunsuspecting mortals.
“And each race of immortal wants it to be oneof their own,” Maverick said.
“I don’t know why everyone is so willing toclaim the next lunatic as one of theirs,” Cole muttered.
The idea behind the coalition was a good one.A few of the strongest leaders from different realms belonged toit, but unfortunately, the idea was better than the execution. Theyoften spent more time bickering with each other than they didundermining the Lord’s control.
His brothers had known what they planned andhoped to accomplish, but five of them grew impatient with the lackof progress and broke off to join the rebels. Only two of themremained.
Cole didn’t fear that they would rat out themembers of the coalition if they were caught. They may have stoodon opposing sides of the war and had differing opinions on handlingthings, but there had always been a lot of love between them.
None of them had the same mothers, but theyall had each other, and their father loved them all equally. Theywouldneverbetray each other.
They were supposed to have stopped him beforethe humans ever learned about the existence of immortals. Instead,while the war was still waging in the Shadow Realms, the Lord grewimpatient with its lack of progress and turned his dragons loose onEarth.
The humans, not expecting the attack andhaving never seen anything like the creatures scorching their landbefore, were slow to respond. But it didn’t matter; the Lord hadgathered enough intel that he sent the beasts to destroy thehuman’s military strongholds first.
No country was safe from the wrath of thedragons. By the time the humans responded, their military wasdevastated, and what remained of it was ineffective against thedragons.
The war had spilled out of the Shadow Realmsby then, and though the coalition spent much of the war working insecret to depose the Lord, Cole realized they’d failed. Now, theywere still trying to figure out a way to defeat him, but millions,if not billions, had lost their lives in the process, includingcountless immortals.
