Page 113 of The Wolf Queen’s Curse

“I don’t know what that is,” Doyle says. “The point—”

“Her privacy spell ensured that only those in the room could hear her words. She didn’t want any more wolves to come running. I offered to go with her—”

“No one wants to hear about you, witch.” His lip curls. “If anyone wants to fully understand the cowardice of Bishop Daniels, they only need to look at you. He only agreed to marry you to please his Alpha, and now he can’t even stand up to you. He lets you talk for him in front of his own wolves.”

Julius snorts. “That’s not weakness. It’s confidence. The confidence of not needing to always be the loudest person in the room, of not feeling intimidated by—”

“Yap, yap, yap. You’re as bad as her. You protect him to protect yourself.” Doyle turns to the assembled wolves. “This is your Alpha, Albions. A wolf who would see you all dead before he’d sacrifice himself. He acts like he’s some kind of messiah, savior of the Albion Pack, but he only cares for himself. For the title of Alpha and all that comes with it, and when he lost half his Pack, he tried to recruit another one. My Pack. The Cambrians. You—we—are all sacrificial lambs to his ego and his pride and his madness.” He glances at Bishop. “I hear that last part runs in the family.”

I keep waiting for Bishop to intercede. So does Julius, glancing again and again at his cousin. But Bishop only stands there and listens.

And that’s when I see Jesse, off to the side, with his arms crossed, his gaze fixed on Doyle. Fixed on him, not with gloating joy but with …

Hate. Seething hatred.

“How much longer is this going to last?” Bishop says finally, echoing Doyle’s earlier words in that same bored tone.

Doyle slowly turns to him, just as Bishop had done to him. “What?”

“Are you done?”

“Am I boring you? Is watching your downfall boring?”

“Yes,” Bishop says.

Doyle’s face suffuses with red. “Then let’s speed this along. I issue a challenge to Bishop Danvers or Bishop Daniels or whatever the hell he calls himself these days. If I defeat him, his wolves will join mine.”

“No,” Bishop says, his voice deceptively soft. “When I defeat you, your wolves can choose to join mine, which I believe most will. Happily.”

Doyle sputters, goggle-eyed. “You really are mad.”

Bishop gives an elegant shrug. “Perhaps.”

“Even if you won—which you will not—they would never follow you.”

“Perhaps.”

“You are mad,” one of the Cambrians mutters. “Your own Pack won’t follow you after this.”

“Harry?” Bishop says. “Please tell me what happened last night.”

“Last night?” Doyle says. “It’s the night of the massacre that matters. Tell them, boy.”

“I’m not a boy,” Harry says, his voice a low rumble. He walks up to Doyle. “You tried to buy me off.”

“What?”

“You offered me a hundred pounds to lie.” Harry’s heavy jaw sets. “I wouldn’t have done it, but my cousin ordered me to.”

“Asked,” Rufus corrects.

Harry glares at Rufus. “You’ve got a funny way of asking.”

“And you’ve got a funny way of agreeing.” Rufus touches a bruise on his chin. “We must be related.”

“Anyway,” Harry says, “Rufus said you might try to pay me to turn traitor. You’d heard I wasn’t happy being part of the Pack under Bishop, that I blame him for my father’s death. If you did ask, Rufus wanted me to agree. Which I did.”

“I have no idea—” Doyle begins.