Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

Shirley’s POV

Then rage overtook me, and I cursed the empty chamber as the mirror burst against its stone wall and silver shards rained to the floor like tears. There I was, my image split in one of a dozen sections and there was a reminder of what I had in the end, become: a shattered woman who had been bested in one evening.

"How could you?" I growled at the biggest sliver, which reflected back my father's purple eyes. “How can you do me like this, you hit me.

But the reflection provided no answers, only the truth I'd been avoiding. My father — the great Godric Nathaniel, who'd taught me power was all and weakness death — took my rival over his own blood. The thief of my mate's love had now become thief of my father's right.

As I flung my arm across the vanity, knocking over perfume bottles and jewelry, I yelled. She smelled that sweet jasmine blossoms that was sprinkled on top of the pile of a waste that I laid in the VonAphen house when I wore the same perfume as tonight to attract Ryan's attention. But he’d hardly looked at me since Freya had swept in, radiant in emerald silk that made her golden hair glow like spun sunlight.

“I hate her,” I said quietly to the empty room, and the words felt like poison in my mouth. “I hate her perfect face and her noble suffering and the way men fall all over themselves to protect her.”

The baby fluttered to life inside me, a sharp reminder of why I could not afford to lose control. This was my tie to Ryan, my promise of a place in his pack and his bed. Without it, I was just a pesky mate bond that could be discarded if he would rather be exiled than take the moon goddess’s choice.

A soft rapping on the door interrupted my descent into violent fury. "Luna?" called Maya through the door. “Alpha Ryan wants to see you.”

I stood up, brushing down my silver dress and checking my reflection in the few remaining slivers of mirror. My makeup had smudged, mascara tearing down my face and lipstick smudged from trying to muffle my screams. Perfect. Ryan could look for himself at what his betrayal has done to me.

“Coming,” I called, answering just the right amount of tremor in my voice.

I discovered him in his study, pacing up and down like some imprisoned wolf while Daniel looked on from a safe perch. The desk was cluttered with empty bottles and the stench of whiskey was pervasive. As he glanced up at me, his blue eyes were wild with grief and rage.

“Shirley,” he sighed, walking across the room to embrace me. "I’m sorry you had to see that.”
I dissolved into him, my tears soaking his shirt. "I don't understand, Ryan. Why did my father do this to me? To us?"

“I don’t know,” he murmured into my hair, his hands tracing my back in what I supposed was comfort. "But I'm going to fix this. I’m going to take this girl home to her place.

“You can’t,” I wept, drew back and stared at him with big, scared eyes. “You don’t know my father the way I do. This wasn't impulse, Ryan. He's been planning this."

Ryan went very still, fingers biting into my arms. "What do you mean?"

“He has been stalking her for years,” I fabricated casually, making my voice tremble with realistic emotion. “Every time he was around, every meeting and every gathering I was at, I saw his eyes following her. I thought it was an appreciation for beauty,Meerclar had had but now… now I think he intended to take her from the beginning.”

The rage that crossed Ryan’s face was exactly what I’d hoped for. "That bastard. He used mate bond to get near to her. He used you."

“I'm afraid, Ryan,” I whispered, snuggling up to him. “What if he’s been pulling the strings all along? What if he had used the Council to strong-arm you into accepting me just so he could get to her?”

It wasn’t entirely untrue — my father was known to apply such long-term strategies. But I knew the reality was more simple, and infinitely worse: Freya was his mate, and he’d finally done what was his due. The knowledge acid-burned in my chest.

“He can’t be with her,” Ryan snarled, and I smiled, this was even easier than I’d expected. "She's mine. She's carrying my child."

"What are you going to do?" I said, though I knew the response. Men like Ryan, they were easy to control – poke at their pride and they'd bite, whatever the price.

"I'm to make him," declared Ryan, and his voice was final. "Formal challenge, full ceremony. I'll get her back."

"Ryan, no!" I gasped, clinging to his arm with both hands. "He'll kill you! My father has never lost a challenge — never. You can't—"

"I have to," he said, placing quivering hands at both my sides as he bought his face in close to mine. "Don't you see? I failed her once. I chose duty instead of love, tradition instead of what my heart desired. I won't make that same mistake again."
The admission hurt more than I’d imagined. Even now, even as he held his pregnant mate, he was thinking of her. But my eyes wouldn’t comply; I looked loving — I really tried to — just not supportive, as if love and support were two different things, two things I should have learned long ago to say at the same time.

“If this is what you feel you need to do,” I said gently, “then I’ll stand by you. But you promise me, if you get her back, if you bring her home, you'll never let anybody stand between you two."

“I won’t,” he said, resting his forehead against mine. “I swear to God, on my child’s life, I will never let her go again.

I smiled through tears, understanding that he could not see the sum of my sorrow. Let him challenge my father. Let him fight and bleed and potentially die for the chick who was already gone. Either way, Freya would be gone to me — either returned home to a shattered man as her mate, or robbed of her mate by his death to be left alone with a child that would haunt her forever in what she had lost.

But I required insurance, somebody who was going to help me make sure that the result was going to go my way.

I found Daniel three days later in the pack’s training area, taking his anger out on a sandbag. His arms were quick and sure, each blow hard enough to have broken bones. He had always been deadly, but his hatred for Freya had sharpened him.

“She’s ruined everything,” I muttered as I walked up from behind him.

He whirled around, instantly cautious, but relaxed when he saw it was me. "Luna. What are you doing here?"

“I couldn’t sleep,” I confessed; this was true enough. “When I close my eyes, all I see is her in my father’s arms, and it makes me think of how easily she threw away all that Ryan had given her.”

Daniel's face darkened. "She's poison. I told him years ago when he first brought her home, but nooo. Now, see what she's done to our pack.”

“Our pack is crumbling to pieces,” I concurred, flopping down on a bench. The wolves are half talking about following her to my father's." They feel she’s somehow a tragic heroine and not the conniving whore that she is.”

Weird words tasted foul on my tongue — I had spent so much time maintaining my image of a virgin — but Daniel nodded approvingly. “At last, another person who sees her for what she is.”
“I need you to help.” I heard my voice go soft and vulnerable. Ryan is going to get himself killed trying to win her back and I can’t lose him. This baby needs a daddy, and I... I love him too much to see him throw his life away on her."

"What do you want me to do?"

I gazed at him in pleading distortion of my eyes. "Help me save him. I tried bringing her back where she belongs – under our pack's authority, not sitting on my father's throne like some great queen.”

Daniel looked at my face, seemed to be thinking. "You have a plan."

“The start of one,” I conceded. "But I can't do it alone. I need a mate who knows how dangerous she is, someone who will do whatever is necessary to keep our pack safe.

"Even if you have to disobey your father?

That put a smile on my lips, giving him a peek at the steel I hid behind just enough demure. "Especially then. Let my father be very powerful, he is not infallible’. And every king has weaknesses."

"What's his?"

I rose to my feet, straightening my dress and getting ready to go. "Her. She's his mate, so she's his biggest strength and his biggest weakness. We just have to figure out how to use that against both of them.”

I gave him one more look before heading off to hear Daniel attack the punching bag again, hitting it with even more force. Perfect. Let his hatred fester, and fester some more. I've had time to detail my plans, to fully understand how to use my father's greatest triumph to destroy him.
But he had, after all, taught me that power was power. He simply hadn’t anticipated my employing those lessons against him.