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Denvil surely wouldn’t call this a throne room, but that’s what it looks like. Just like the one my father used to preside in, except washed in white and echoing. It almost feels like there should be elevator music or something playing gently. Like we’re waiting in the lobby of a dentist’s office.

They continue looking at me. There’s too much unsaid from what happened when we rescued Mylah. There’s been no time for real discussion. These past few days, we’ve been kings and leaders, not friends.

When Mylah was in trouble, they came with me, asked no questions. Even when I carried her out of there, unable to let anyone even think about touching her but me.

Then, I disappeared back home, not answering missives or messages for several days, despite the brewing conflict and discovery of traitors. Holed up in my room and had my guards lie about a headache, though it was actually the first time in a long time that I’d been pain-free.

It had to have been obvious to them what that meant.

Luckily for me, we’re not exactly in a situation right now that they can start questioning me. And what would I tell them? That I found my fated mate, but it doesn’t matter because of the position I hold in the world? Because of the danger we face?

I have started to fall in love with Mylah, and that causes me more pain than I could ever admit. But the pain would be far greater if I let down my packmates. Failed in my duties as king.

“Sorry.” I rub my hand over my jaw, like it might help to ground me in the present. All it does is remind me of Mylah’s hands there, her soothing touch. Fucking hell.

“Hey!” Denvil turns his head and calls to his guards—dressed in white, bracketing the doors—”someone call up the kitchen for coffee!”

“Den, that’s okay, really—”

“No.” Denvil turns to me, pointing his finger at me. A bold move, if it were anyone else. His eyes—hazel, but more green than anything else, with a ring of gold around the pupil—are bright and intent today. Focused. “You are not drifting off into your head during this. Get some caffeine in your body, man.”

Brack shifts, sitting back in his seat, nodding. “I could use some, too.”

“We all could.”

Unfortunately, for coffee to be effective as a massive shifting alpha, it has to basically be the texture of sludge. Together, the four of us choke down the nasty stuff like it’s medicine. When we’re done, we turn to each other with matching expressions of despair, and Zade bursts out into laughter.

“You remember when we—?”

Yes, we all remember the first time we tried the alpha coffee our fathers drank. And we decided we would never stoop so low as to drink shit like that.

Now look at us.

“Yeah, and we were—” Denvil starts, launching into a story that will surely send us down the path of reminiscing together.

That is, it would, if the large white doors on the other side of the room didn’t swing open, a nervous guard standing in the center, doing his best to keep his head tilted up toward us.

“Your majesties,” he says, clearing his throat more than once. Denvil shoots a look at me like can’t get good guards these days. “Gavyn has arrived.”

Those words cut off any glee we were feeling.

The mood in the room turns somber, even slightly violent.

Denvil lost men and believes it was Gavyn’s doing.

Zade and I faced injuries to our fighters, the fear that something just as dire would happen to them. And if we hadn’t gotten there in time, it very well might have.

The guard shifts to the side, and Gavyn himself marches in after him.

I haven’t seen the other alpha since that night at the festival, but he looks the same now as he did then. Tall, thin. With pale skin so translucent you can practically see the blue veins snaking around his body. A bald head that gleams particularly strangely under so many artificial lights.

“Hello,” Gavyn says, smiling and spreading his hands, palm up, like he’s a saint at a moon goddess table, standing at the dais and leading a worship service. His eyes gleam, his lips thin and straight. “Thank you for inviting me to a council of the alpha kings.”

“Don’t send thanks for what you haven’t received.” Brack is the first of us to speak, his deep voice booming through the space. Still, it’s not a shout—something moving, dark under the water, but not rippling the surface.

Gavyn’s expression twitches only slightly, but the annoyance is there. Just like with the festival, this is a chance for him to position himself as being legitimate.

As though he’s a real alpha leader of a real pack.