Page 37

“How do you know?” Brack asks, his voice calm and low, as always.

Denvil sits at the table, jaw tight, hands clenched into fists. “Who else would it be? Fuckin’ retaliation for taking the kid.”

That hangs for a moment. It was my idea. I should say something, but I’m caught.

We have to do something—but what?

“I’m going to rip his insides out and watch him plead for their return,” Denvil seethes, cutting through the silence with a menacing tone I’ve never heard come from him before. “I’ll tear out all my grandpa’s old torture devices, hold him between forms, make him shift and pull his claws out, cut his ears off. Feed them to the fucker in a pot pie when he’s back to being a human.”

Of course, we’ve all heard of Denvil’s grandfather’s reign of terror as king, but never in such great detail. My stomach turns at the thought of feeding a shifter his own wolf ears in human form—it’s gruesome, even for a man known to torture and kill.

“Why would Gavyn do this?” Zade asks, after a beat. “He knows we have the manpower to completely take him out. He doesn’t even really have a pack—why would he provoke us like this?”

“You’re right,” I say, glad Zade was the one to say what I was thinking, too. “It doesn’t make any sense. Why go to such an extreme? He knows Denvil will retaliate now, and that means we will, too.”

The room goes quiet again. I’m sure we’re all—maybe with the exception of Denvil—thinking about the reality of another war. When we were kids, we had a brief conflict with an Oceanic pack using the waterways near our territory. That—even just a collection of skirmishes and blows on both sides—was not a fun thing to live through.

But a war between Kault and the outskirts? It would be time-consuming as the best-case scenario, and if Gavyn really has united them into a pack, made himself the alpha, then it could take months to squash all the dissenters.

Countless shifter lives. Our pack members going hungry if crops are sabotaged, fighters exhausted and injured and changed for the rest of their lives.

But at this point, what other choice do we have?

My father was always a fan of minor conflict. He said the pack members, everyone in the territory, needed to understand the necessity of a king. Without a little danger, how would they see that our leadership was necessary?

But the four of us, all having recently taken our positions—there’s so much more we can do. Working new fields. Building infrastructure for the pack. Harvesting our natural resources.

Any conflict—from those minor skirmishes to full-out war—just distracts from that. Moves us backwards.

Since we were pups, our goal was always to move forward. Away from the pointless violence. And now Gavyn is ruining everything. I always wanted to be something more than just a commander-in-chief for my people. Wanted to do something that would actually help the shifters in my pack.

“Fuck waiting,” Denvil snaps, pushing out of his seat so hard it scrapes against the floor and tumbles to the ground. Not even bothering to grab his coat, he turns and heads for the door. “I’m going to get the fucker right now. Maybe he forgot that I know where he lives.”

“Wait.” Brack doesn’t touch Denvil, doesn’t even get close enough to him to block his path, but manages to stop the alpha anyway. “We should talk.”

“Brack is right,” Zade says, voice sympathetic but not pitying. “We’re going to get him, Denvil. You have my word—” Zade glances between Brack and me, and we nod. “—our word. But we need to be careful about this. Going to his place could be a trap. We need to talk strategy. Make sure we do this right, and don’t let him get away with it. Not let him hurt anyone else.”

Denvil holds himself very still again, fists clenching and unclenching. For a moment, it looks like he might sock Brack and storm out of the room, but finally he manages to get control, taking a deep breath. The tightness in his shoulders doesn’t disappear, but he does bring his fists up, cracking the knuckles and stretching them out.

Letting out a bark of a laugh, he spins around, heads back to the table, and says, “Well, alright then. How the hell are we going to make that fucker pay?”

Chapter 17 - Mylah

I’m pacing my room, turning over the question of Augustus over and over in my head, when there’s a knock at the door.

I’ve been visited by Aurora enough at this point that I recognize the way her knuckles hit the wood, and I’m halfway to the door before they land on it a second time. She stands there, staring at me, almost looking…sorry?

“Too bad it didn’t work out,” she says, offering me her arm. “Walk with me?”

I want to say no—I’ve done enough running today that a walk just sounds like it’s going to hurt my feet. But other than my escape attempts, being with Aurora is the only way I can be out of my room.

So, I take her arm, slide my feet into a pair of slippers, and step out with her.

Just like always, the grandeur of the place hits me square in the chest. Being in a mansion, with everything gold and glittering around me—it’s a huge difference from my little farmhouse.

The farmhouse.

Is this really the first time I’ve thought about it? What happened to it? I’ve been here for more than two weeks now, and the place is vacant. I doubt Beefy and Smelly remembered to shut the door on their way out. If anything, they might have gone back and ransacked the place after they delivered me to the festival.