22. Chapter 21

Chapter 21

I used my righteous rage to carry me into my private living room, where a cool secret space awaited me. It seemed like the right place to dig into the mysterious ‘seat of power'.

I pulled on the book by Kant and the secret door opened. I sneaked in, using my phone to light the dingy room, went to the desk and found the stewards' diary, the old book that the Samuels had all written in. I'd read it cover to cover but I didn't remember anything about the ‘seat of power'; then again, I hadn't been looking for it.

For the next hour I scanned through the book, impatiently turning the pages. Finally, I found one entry: Things worsen still. Without the artefact, the seat of power has gone quite mad. Any who stray into her domain are never seen again. The Staffordshire pack have been tasked with keeping her alive, but no longer can we entrust her with our dead. Who knows what she would do with them?

That was it, the whole entry. I flicked through the rest of the book, but not once was the seat of power mentioned again.

I flipped back to the entry and frowned. If the seat of power was a ‘her', then what manner of creature was she? She had to be immortal, or at the very least long-lived. There had to be a plethora of deadly immortal creatures in the Other realm that I still hadn't encountered. Could the seat of power be one of the dragon elders?

We will find out when we are there, Esme said finally. I suggest we practise shifting our head like Jacob taught us.

That wasn't actually a bad idea. Fine. We tried for the next hour but wholly without success.

You're doing it wrong, Esme accused.

It's not me! It's you! I flew back.

We managed it the other night. Now we cannot do it because we are not in accord.

I pinched the bridge of my nose; she was probably right. Jacob and the other seraph could do the partial shift easily, instinctively. Esme and I needed to work together, and right now, together wasn't a place either of us wanted to be. Enough, I said firmly. We'll try again another day.

We may not have another day, Esme said darkly .

I ignored her and went out of my secret room, shutting the entrance behind me. I grabbed a random book from the bookshelves and tried to learn something, anything at all to stop this day being a total fucking shambles.

Annoyingly I couldn't focus and I kept reading the same sentence over and over. Finally I gave up in a huff and stormed up the stairs to my room to pack my bags for my doom. A girl had to look nice even if she was going to die a brutal death by some sort of mysterious creature like a chimera.

We're not going to die, Esme sighed.

I ignored her and packed my moisturising creams. Once I'd finished, I went down to my office. I could stare at some numbers for a while; they always soothed me. Numbers didn't lie. I was still stewing an hour later when there was a single brisk knock at the door. The door swung open, revealing my favourite redheaded witch in her usual full skirt and peasant blouse.

‘Hey,' I greeted Amber. ‘Did you manage to rune my parents' house?'

‘To the hilt,' she confirmed briskly. ‘Your dad baked me some blueberry muffins, so I've given you a small discount on your invoice. He's got some talent.'

‘Yeah. Was he…? Did he seem okay? '

She shrugged. ‘He kept calling me the "painter/decorator" rather than a witch. Not everyone welcomes a world where magic is real – especially when that world just tried to kill their son.'

Put like that, Dad's attitude was more understandable. He'd been through a lot in the last couple of days; maybe I needed to stop worrying about him and cut him some slack. ‘Yeah.' I rubbed a hand across my face.

Amber reached into her ever-present black tote bag and pulled out a necklace with a metal amulet on it. I grimaced. ‘It's not very delicate.' Or pretty.

She glared at me. ‘It's not for Jinx to wear, it's for Gato. You can't give a hellhound a pretty trinket – besides, it needs to be big enough for me to paint runes on it. The Crone gave me this amulet.' Her tone was reverent. ‘You should be grateful.' She pulled out a potion and a paintbrush then snapped on some gloves.

‘Oh, I am. Super grateful. I'm overflowing with grateful.' It came out more sarcastically than I'd intended. What was the point in doing this if I was going to die in the next day or two? I gave myself a shake and told myself firmly to put on my big-girl knickers. ‘So we're doing this right now?' I said, eyeing the purple gloop.

‘Jinx is getting married soon. Even if we start now I'm not sure if it'll be strong enough in time, but we can try. If not, we can give it to her as a gift after the honeymoon.'

I watched as she painted small runes onto the back of the amulet. ‘Okay,' she said. ‘Now summon up your piping magic and direct it into the amulet.' She made it sound simple but I'd never piped an inanimate object before.

It took three attempts, including some humming and holding the amulet, before I managed to forge a connection between me and the hunk of metal. It wasn't like piping something living; I didn't get the feel of any emotions nor the beat of its heart. There were no flashes of memories. There was nothing, and consequently the connection between us felt tenuous. I floated my magic down the small bond with the lightest of touches, like a feather trailing across skin.

‘Enough,' Amber said abruptly. ‘The rune work is wearing out.'

I disconnected, then blinked when I saw Greg leaning against the wall in all of his nonchalant beauty. ‘Hey,' I greeted him with a smile.

He nodded but his eyes were dark and serious and he didn't return the smile. Ah: perhaps he'd heard about the suitor/mating thing. My stomach knotted. I didn't want to trap him, not for a second. The whole thing made me feel ill.

‘I'll be back the same time tomorrow,' Amber said, ignoring – or perhaps not noticing – the tension in the room.

‘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.