Page 91 of The Alpha’s Heir

“You could’ve died from rejection or moonsickness if she kept you two apart.” Kera twisted her hands behind her back as she paced. “The goddess wouldn’t have knowingly put you in harm’s…”

“That fucking bitch.”

Alpha Kera’s eyes burned as she growled.

Then suddenly everyone was growling. At least the wolves. Justus shrieked, and my poor mate paled as he took a step closer to me.

“Is it true?” he asked. “That you’d get hurt if I wasn’t with you?”

“Yes,” I told him. “We can’t be too far apart for too long or the bond can make me sick.”

It’d be better now that we were mated, but I wasn’t giving him all the details until I was sure he didn’t plan to do anything stupid. Maybe I’d learned a little from my time with the humans after all.

He closed his eyes as the inner turmoil raged inside him again. “I didn’t know.”

“We’re still learning things about each other.” I took his hand in mine again, feeling him relax at my touch. “But we’ll take it slow, okay? We’ll figure this out.”

I thought everyone was still growling about the betrayal of the goddess, but their attention turned to the window as a howl came from outside.

The front door blew open. Rain and wind raged behind my aunt Coral as her blonde hair blew wild and her fingers gripped Skoll’s soaking fur.

“The river,” she cried. “We have to go. It’s about to flood!”

33

Roman

I’d been through many courses of natural disaster training, but that was more in line with city riots and power outages than combating the forces we faced now. The sheer magnitude of what we were up against was daunting, but the wolf shifters wasted no time in working to combat the rising waters.

And I saw the side of Meg I’d only caught glimpses of as she came to life in her role with her people. Kera had rushed downtown to set up defenses at the pack houses, while Meg led a team of shifters toward the bend in the river of what she’d called “Jareth’s station.”

It wasn’t until I saw the structure downriver and the massive gears powered by the water that I understood this was a hydro-electric generating plant about to be washed downstream.

“Fill sandbags and put them here!” Meg’s clear voice rang out above the pounding rain and rushing of the river.

I’d left Justus in the care of Marcus as I joined the wolf shifters that moved at Meg’s bidding, hoisting sand with shovels and pouring it into burlap sacks that Alec and Meg carried downstream with more ease than I’d think possible.

I worked alongside the shifters, still trying to come to terms with what Meg had said tonight.

She’d suffer—physically—if something separated us, in ways I couldn’t understand, but wasn’t eager to find out. How was I supposed to go back to Ethica without her now and face my punishment for disobeying direct orders? The councilwoman had worked for weeks to make this wedding happen. We’d snuck her son away from the city in the dead of night to fuel the publicity she’d orchestrated around the event.

There was no way I’d be walking away from the council without retribution for messing up their plans.

Maybe Justus’s half-drunk idea would work.

It was all the hope I could cling to for now.

“I told her this would happen,” Meg muttered under her breath as she motioned for me to toss her the sandbag I’d just filled.

I hoisted it over my shoulder and tried to carry it to her, but she grabbed it with an ease that half-terrified and half-turned me on.

“Who? Kera?” I rubbed the strange spot in my chest. Since last night, it felt like I was getting pummeled with sensations that weren’t mine and I was pretty sure I could sense the wolf inside Meg.

The mate bond I assumed.

I was still trying to catch up.

Meg’s eyes widened when she realized she’d spoken out loud. At least, I thought she’d spoken out loud.