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“It’s all right. Although…it was a little difficult to get into this dress with just me and Hannah at the wheel.” It’s not the time to ask, but everything in me has to know. “Can my sisters come out of time out yet? I could really use the extra hands when I’m getting ready in the mornings and stuff like that.”
“That joke is becoming tiresome,” Nathan warns. “Tara is cleared to return.”
But not Clare?
I’ll have to ask him about her, later, because the sound of angry voices in the hall outside the throne room doors spikes my anxiety through the roof.
“It’s just the thralls bringing in our guests,” Nathan says, leading me to our thrones. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
But my throat is tight with fear. The last time we were in here, the last time we were among our subjects, they tried to kill us. I look behind me, to where my bodyguard stands behind the dais, constantly scanning the room.
“Xiao?” I call, and she snaps her attention to me. “Could you stand closer, please?”
She moves to my side of the dais, still behind me.
“No, I mean…” I tilt my head. “Like, closer. Like, right next to me?”
“Of course, Your Majesty.” She climbs the dais and stands to the left of my throne, just slightly behind it.
Having seen the way she attacked a fully transformed werewolf, I feel a lot better with her right by my side.
Some people in file in from a side door; I recognize them as council members from our own pack once I see Ryan, but there are others mixed in who I don’t know. I assume they’re from Greater London.
“I want to meet those people I don’t know before they leave today,” I tell Nathan.
He nods and watches as they take their seats. Then he asks me, “Are you ready?”
I face the huge doors across the wide room from us and take a deep breath.
“No one is going to hurt you, Your Majesty,” Xiao says, astonishing me. She never speaks unless I speak to her. I must really be a wreck, if she’s breaking protocol to console me.
I exhale and lift my chin. “Let’s do this.”
CHAPTER 45
The throne room doors open and suddenly, all I see are images from the night my family and I had been forced, terrified, into vans and brought before the king.
I look over at Nathan. His expression is totally cold, just like it had been that night. For the first time since then, I’m afraid of him.
My lungs heave for breath, and I can’t stop swallowing. I’m trembling. I’m going to cry.
A hand touches my shoulder, squeezes reassuringly. The contact is so brief that by the time I look up at Xiao, it’s already over. She hasn’t stopped scanning the crowd.
How did she know I needed that reassurance? That I wouldn’t object to it? This isn’t the first time she’s been eerily tuned into me.
I’m unnerved and comforted all at once.
The room is arranged differently than it had been that awful night. There are more seats. Enough for at least a hundred people. They’re in a semicircle but parted by a single aisle; the thralls escort the sometimes-resistant werewolves down the outside and fill them in to the middle. It’s chillingly structured, almost rehearsed.
Is this something Nathan enjoys? I’m not opposed to ruling by fear, at least, not right now. But I’ve been where these people are sitting; I can’t imagine delighting in tormenting people that way.
It’s all couples in the seats in front of us. What does Nathan have planned?
The one person I don’t see is Ashton.
When everyone is assembled, Nathan nods to the majordomo, who thumps his staff against the floor with a thundering bang. It stuns everyone into silence.
Nathan remains seated in his throne, unnervingly still as he speaks. “Every family in this room is a traitor.”
There are a few gasps, which the majordomo silences immediately with his staff.
“Some of you participated in the riot at the coronation of your queen and pack leader. Some of you participated in the planning of it. Others have made the grave error of withholding information vital to the pack’s safety, either before the treasonous attack or in its wake.” Nathan motions to some guards, and they leave at the signal. He goes on, “Those of you who attended the coronation with weapons concealed on your persons, intending to harm your fellow pack members will be executed at the next full moon.”
Someone screams. A woman in the front faints.
I feel like I might faint, too.
Guards move in on the two front rows and begin zip-tying the hands of the men who are now prisoners. But not the women.
I don’t have a chance to wonder why.
“I am not unmerciful,” Nathan calls, his voice carrying over the growing hysteria. “The children of this pack cannot be made orphans. They must be cared for. The mates of the executed will inherit the assets formerly belonging to them and be spared execution themselves.” He motions to remaining guards around the edges of the room. “Take them out.”
