AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Well, about the same. Do you want to comein?”
I accepted the invitation. Yvonne wouldn’t have offered it if she’d wanted to be alone, even when it came to heralpha.
The sitting room at the front of her quarters smelled the same as it had since I was a boy, like clover and sunlight. The coffee table that had used to sit between the two low couches was gone, though. I realized with a lurch of my stomach why. It must have broken in theskirmish.
“If you wanted to change rooms, there are a couple of suites unoccupied,” Isaid.
Yvonne shook her head. “We lived in these rooms for thirty years, and I’ll remain until you no longer have any use for me asadvisor.”
“Well, that day is never going to come.” I gave her a halting smile. It reassured me a little that she managed to return it. I groped for another topic of conversation. “What do you think of our dragonshifter?”
“Oh, she’s a fiery one, isn’t she?” Her smile grew, but it looked bittersweet. “Saying she’ll put an end to the rogues. Is she really prepared for the battleahead?”
As much as I valued Yvonne, my hackles rose at the question. “Ren has faced more troubles in the last few weeks than most of us have to deal with in a lifetime. I’d say she’s handled herselfwell.”
“There now.” The horse shifter patted my arm. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Of course you’ll stand by your mate. I simply meant that it seems the pressure on her is only going to keep growing. She’s had no training, no time to even ready her mind for what’s ahead. I hope she can stay steady, but it would be hard for any ofus.”
“Exactly,” I said. A little heat crept into my tone, remembering some of the standoffish reactions my guards had given Ren. “It isn’t fair to her, being brought into our world when the community is in more chaos than it’s ever been. But we’ll figure it out, the five of us, together. It’s what the rest of us trained for. No one should questionthat.”
Yvonne looked up at me with her clear, sad eyes. “Sometimes I think we have human minds just so that we can question things. Even the people trying to show us theway.”
* * *
Ren
“Your guests are starting to arrive,”Alice announced. “Do you want to go check themout?”
I paused where I’d been wandering my sitting room, trying to think if there was anything I’d missed with Orion, some way I could have better won himover.
Some way to feel completely confident I’d won him over atall.
The view out the window told me the sun was still over the trees. “I thought the welcoming party was happeningtonight.”
Alice shrugged. “Apparently the disparate kin also have a disparate sense of time.” Her lips curled up at the joke. “I just figured maybe you could use adistraction.”
Yeah, I probably could. I sighed and rolled my shoulders, not sure meeting a bunch more strangers—stranger shifters who weren’t half as impressed by me as the other kin-groups I’d met—was the kind of distraction I wanted. But it was the kind Ihad.
“I guess I’d better change into something a little fancier,” I said, looking at the jeans and tee I’d pulled on this morning. I’d already checked out all the wardrobes in the dragon shifter suite. There’d been one with casual clothes, thank God, but most were full of the posh formal wear the regular kin apparently liked to see me and their alphas decked outin.
I’d had my eye on one dress already: an ankle-length satin gown in an indigo shade so deep it was almost black. This didn’t seem like the right time for anything flashy. I pawed through the hangers for it and chucked off my clothes to put iton.
“Any news from Aaron?” I asked his sister as I adjusted the fall of the fabric. Even if Nate’s kin didn’t totally buy into me as leader of the shifters yet, they’d have to admit I at least looked thepart.
Alice grimaced. “Nothing so far. But he’s got a few hours left before I’ll be ready to bite his head off. He should have let me go too. Not that I mind hanging out with you, but from what I’ve seen you can handle yourself around here justfine.”
“Hey, I agree with you,” I said. “I guesstwogolden eagles soaring around together might have looked a little conspicuous,though.”
Alice grinned. “Not half as conspicuous as if he’d had a dragon keeping pace withhim.”
“Okay, okay, that was a dumb idea. I fully admit it. But I have a much better one now.” I sniffed the air. “Someone’s roasting chicken. Really, really tasty chicken. What do you say we go find some ofthat?”
“I’min.”
My heart started thumping a little faster as we headed toward the house’s main doors. I wanted to peek outside before I walked right out, just to see what I was getting into, but that didn’t seem leaderly at all. Squaring my shoulders, I pushed open the door and strode down to the courtyard as if nothing about the people down there could fazeme.
Alice had been right. Several dozen shifters were already gathered on the clay tiles of the courtyard, most of them ones I didn’t think I’d seen in the estate earlier. And all their heads turned toward me as I came down the steps. Quite a few faces brightened up. That made up for the ones that only lookedthoughtful.
The atmosphere didn’t feel all that celebratory, I had to say. I guessed it was hard to really party when four deaths and several injuries hung over theestate.
