You never ask the obvious question, Rynn. The deep voice of the elder scholar who had led most of the lectures while I was at Drudonia surfaced in my mind. You assume, and you do so to your own detriment. It makes it easy to make a fool out of you.
Five years later, I was still a fucking fool.
Chapter Three
Rynn
I realized I’d stopped walking, and Remy was giving me a concerned look.
The conversation in the meeting room had moved on. They were now discussing the specifics of what Gavril and the Fervis Order would offer the Alpha pack for accepting Selene.
“Fuck them,” I muttered under my breath, not caring if the others picked up on it. Straightening my shoulders, I stalked towards the room and didn’t slow when I entered. Cade briefly paused mid-sentence to track my movements as I placed the food on the table they were all gathered around. I ignored him and the open seat available next to him on the settee, instead choosing to sit in the chair located several feet away from him and the other Alphas. It put me closer to Alexis than them, but if I was going to punch anyone in the face at the moment, it would be the Alphas.
They all believed I was a traitor.
A brief, sharp pain raced along my fingertips as nails shifted to claws. I wrapped my fingers around the arms of the chair and dug them into the wood.
“So,” I drawled, meeting Cade’s piercing stare, “adding a new member to your pack?”
Cade narrowed his eyes at me, but it was Bastian who corrected, “Our pack, Rynn dear.”
“She’ll be just as welcomed as me, I’m sure.” I looked away from Bastian in pure dismissal and focused on Gavril instead. Remy had taken a seat next to them and was eying the Alphas with a bored expression that I knew meant he was daydreaming about killing them all. Should have talked to me about your plan first, Remy. Selene might not be as happy here as you thought. “There are three pending trade deals with the Moroi that Fervis has been stalling on. They will be approved as part of this arrangement.”
Crops were easier to grow in the Moroi realm, but they were often low on meat, which was something the Velesians had in abundance, thanks to all the deer herds in our realm. Two of the trade offers Samara had sent over were for food and the other was for resources required to power the wards around the Moroi Houses and outposts. Samara had been more than generous in her offer, something that had probably frustrated Alaric, but I knew her goal was to get what the Moroi needed to survive but also help heal the rift between the Moroi and Velesians.
Gavril had been sitting on those offers for four months. He hadn’t rejected them; he’d simply ignored their existence. The Alpha pack had a lot of power in the Velesian realm, but they couldn’t force the Orders to accept trade deals, not without significant backlash, which wasn’t something they could afford at the moment.
The Alphas didn’t trust me? Fine. They didn’t want me here? Fine. But I was here, and I was damned sure going to make use of whatever power I could wield. None of them had disagreed with Gavril when he’d suggested I was a spy, but they hadn’t voiced their agreement either, which meant we were still doing this song and dance of pretending I was a legitimate member of this pack. I was betting they wouldn’t directly undermine me in this, not while I was sitting in the room with them.
Cade and Bastian would take me to task later, but that just meant I had to get what I wanted now.
“I haven’t had a chance to review what the Harker Hei?—”
“The Blood Sovereign,” I cut him off. “Samara is a member of the Blood Sovereign. She always addresses you as the Fervis Alpha; the least you can do is treat her with the same respect.”
In private, she called him a limp-dicked jackass, but I kept that to myself.
A muscle under Gavril’s eye twitched. “I am unfamiliar with the terms the Blood Sovereign sent over.”
“I’ve reviewed them,” Remy chimed in. “They are excellent terms for the Fervis Order.”
Thank you, Remy, I said silently, keeping my gaze on Gavril.
Gavril broke his stare with me to look at the Alphas. “Does the Alpha pack agree with Rynn’s demand?”
A beat of silence, and then Cade’s rumbling voice. “Yes.”
I felt Alexis’ pissed-off stare on me, but I didn’t look at him. Only Gavril’s agreement mattered.
“Fine,” the Fervis Alpha reluctantly agreed, his eyes still on the Alphas.
“Great.” I leaned back in my seat and pasted on a polite smile before turning to Gavril. “So when should we expect Selene to arrive?”
An hour later, I watched the retreating forms of Gavril, Remy, and Alexis as they vanished into the forests surrounding the stronghold. They would be staying at a nearby outpost before starting the two-day trek back to Fervis territory. The agreement had been hammered out and Selene would be joining us in three weeks.
I still didn’t know how I felt about that. Things with the Alphas had already been strained, but now it felt like a dry forest waiting for the spark of a lightning strike. For Selene’s sake, I hoped she wasn’t that spark, and for my sake, I hoped she and I got along because I couldn’t handle yet another enemy in these walls.
And that’s what the Alphas were to me now.
