Page 54 of My Pleasure

Augustus looked to him. “You, the units, have been dealing with this for months and you didn’t call us in?”

“It hasn’t been that bad here,” Hunter answered.

“Not that bad!” his cousin yelled, then stood and began pacing.

Kiera hadn’t taken her eyes off Kendrick.

Kendrick smiled. “I’m still the same witch you met this morning.”

Kiera reached for her shot with a shaking hand.

Augustus saw what she was doing and grabbed his. All five of them downed the shot and slammed the glasses down.

Augustus took a deep breath. “Your Majesty, are you returning?”

“I don’t think that would change anything, just complicate matters.”

“Are you serious? It would change our campaign entirely,” Augustus replied.

“Campaign?” Kendrick asked, looking from brother to brother.

Augustus ignored him. “Right, so, if you’re not returning, we need to focus on building up the warriors and Elder Council.”

“I have our angle,” Rory said, holding up the paper.

“Talk to me” Augustus said.

“Storm Keep is pretty isolated. You’d think it would be Noctem Falls or even Éire Danu being in a pocket dimension, but if you look at their weekly issues, Storm Keep’s two newspapers are only reporting on the little news they have in Storm Keep.”

“Go on,” Eoin encouraged.

“If we start flooding them with the recent stories of how the warriors and Elder Council have saved people, especially in the other three pillar cities, it would sway public opinion. It would get them wondering, why is Storm Keep the only one having ‘problems’? And it would make them second guess their own papers since they haven’t reported any of it.”

“What do you need?” Augustus asked.

“Interviews with Queen Aleksandra, Prince Magnus and Prince Gavriel. They are some of the oldest and most revered in our world,” Rory replied

“I can get you those,” Meryn said, picking up her phone.

Rory blinked. “Seriously?”

Aiden snorted. “Queen Aleksandra and Magnus compete to see who can spoil Meryn the most and Gavriel adores her.”

“What about the Elder Councils from those cities?” Rory asked.

Once again, Aiden pointed to his mate.

Rory smiled. “Meryn, I’ll be working with you directly.”

“Word.”

Augustus pointed to the smaller woman. “We stay on her good side.”

His brothers all nodded.

“You might wanna reach out to the other city’s papers directly and see if we can’t distribute them here. No point reinventing the wheel,” Meryn suggested.

Rory blinked. “I would have gotten there eventually.”