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‘Um. I’ll be in Staffordshire tomorrow at Fellworth House.’
She huffed. ‘And you were planning on telling me this when?’
‘Now?’
‘We need to do this every day until the amulet is powered enough to self-sustain. We can’t stop and start or it won’t work.’ She glared at me. ‘I guess I’ll see you tomorrow in Staffordshire.’ She packed her bags and started for the door. Before she opened it, she paused. ‘Lucy,’ her voice was softer than it had been, ‘be careful.’
‘I will,’ I promised.
She nodded and walked out, leaving me with my apparently very pissed-off lover.
‘Harden has made all these plans to get me to Fellworth House for me to join with the seat of power, whatever that means,’ I told Greg. ‘Apparently I can’t take guards without it being a huge insult to the hosting pack, so Esme decided I could take some with me if they posed as suitors.’ Was I throwing Esme under the bus? Yes. Did she deserve it? Undoubtedly.
Greg pushed off from the wall. ‘I understand the logic of her plan,’ he said finally. ‘I even approve of it.’
‘But?’
‘But emotionally it’ll be damned difficult to see you parade around in another man’s arms. Not to mention that you’ve effectively declared open season on yourself, and some of the alphas don’t take no for an answer.’
I grimaced. ‘You’re right – but it’s also a play for time. If the alphas think I can be wooed, maybe they’ll hold off challenging me.’
‘Maybe. But some of them are already mated – most of them, in fact – and they will still challenge you, Luce. Then what will you do?’
My face hardened. ‘I’ll kill them.’
‘There’s a lot of bad alphas out there,’ he said darkly. ‘They won’t fight fair, Peaches. I’ve been gathering intel. Some of them make Frost look like a dream. You can’t fight everyone, Lucy.’
I raised my chin. ‘What do you propose? That I renege? That I go there without guards? That I don’t claim the crown?’
He shook his head and blew out a harsh breath. ‘No, obviously not. You’ve been named now. It’s done and can’t be undone.’
‘Then what?’
Greg rubbed his hand over his shorn blond hair. ‘We go as prepared as we can be. You can only take unmarried males – Liam, Archie, David, Finley or Ethan.’
‘Tristan’s married?’ I said, surprised at the omission of his name from the list.
‘Happily. To a seer.’
My jaw dropped. Tristan had been a pain in my ass since my arrival. We’d come to a wary truce recently but I’d had no idea he was married, and I was truly shocked that it was to another species; I would have bet money that he believed in the sanctity of same-species marriage. I suddenly remembered his gentle touch on Pollyanna at Mum and Dad’s house; he had known her. Had he somehow driven her away from Ben?
I shook my head and tried to clear my mind. ‘I think Ethan is still too traumatised to go.’ Ethan had been bullied and blackmailed by my former third, Mark Oates. Although he’d done well in the pack tourney, I still didn’t think he’d cope in a testosterone-fuelled environment that would no doubt remind him of Mark and his bullying.
‘I agree. Marissa said he still has nightmares.’
I blinked at that. I hadn’t known that Greg and Marissa were friendly. He read my expression correctly. ‘She is seventh, and a loyal member of our pack. As your second, people report concerns to me that they don’t wish to bring to you.’
Suddenly weary, I sighed. ‘But surely I must be failing if they won’t bring their problems to me?’
‘They bring you the stuff that matters – dead bodies,’ he said drily. ‘I am here to make your day easier in every way so you can do your thing.’
‘And what is that?’ I asked drily.
He tilted my chin and looked into my eyes. ‘Lead. As a strong, capable woman, you lead, Lucy. You are dragging the werewolves kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century and they will thank you for it.’ He paused. ‘Eventually.’
I straightened my spine. He was right. I had found my feet as alpha and now I would find my feet as Queen. No matter what type of ruler I would be, I knew one thing: I would be strong and capable and I would do what was right.
The strong survived in this realm, but too often that meant that the bullies ruled. Well, no longer. I was going to seize the patriarchy by the balls and I was going to give it a vasectomy.
