Chapter 44: The Ceremony

Chapter 44: The Ceremony
Moments later Dan rushed in with the expression of a man whose house was on fire.

He stood at the study door with a sealed document and the look of someone who had already organised three things in his head before entering the room.

"The annual Alpha gathering," he said. "Three days from now. The central hall at Greywood. Every pack leader across the six territories is expected to attend."

Josh set down his cup. "I know."

"The hosting council has sent the formal request for your household delegation. Numbers, names, roles." Dan placed the document on the desk. "They will need confirmation by tomorrow morning."

Josh looked at the document. Then he looked at Olivia who was arranging the window curtain on the far side of the room.

"Add her to the list," he said.

Dan followed his gaze. Wrote something. Left.

Olivia turned from the curtain. "Your majesty?"

"You will accompany the delegation," Josh said. He picked up his cup again. "The gathering requires full household representation. You are part of this household."

Olivia opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"Yes, your majesty," she said.

We are going somewhere, Lisa said inside her, immediately delighted. I have never been anywhere.

"You live inside me, Lisa," Olivia said under her breath. "You have been everywhere I have been."

It is not the same thing.

++++

Greywood was three hours from the Dark Howlers Pack by carriage.

Olivia spent most of the journey looking out of the window at the passing forest and trying not to think about the fact that she was travelling in the Alpha's personal carriage, sitting directly across from the Alpha himself, who had been reading the same page of the same document for forty minutes without turning it.

He was not reading. She could tell. His eyes were on the page but his mind was somewhere else entirely.

She did not ask where.

Harris rode ahead with the outriders. He had been acting differently since that morning. He was pleasant at breakfast. He was pleasant in the corridors. But it was the particular pleasantness of a man managing himself very carefully, and Olivia had spent enough time around carefully managed people to know the difference.

Lisa had noticed too.

Something happened, Lisa said, watching Harris through the carriage window. Between him and Josh. Something is different.

"I know," Olivia said quietly.

Josh looked up from his document.

"Did you say something?" he asked.

"No, your majesty," Olivia said. "I apologise."

He looked at her for a moment. Then back at his document.

She looked back out of the window.

++++

Greywood's central hall was the largest building Olivia had ever stood inside.

It rose three storeys high with carved stone walls and windows that ran from floor to ceiling on the eastern face, flooding the interior with afternoon light. The floor was packed with wolves from every territory, alphas and their betas in the centre, lords and high-ranked pack members filling the outer rings, household staff moving along the edges with trays and documents and the particular focused efficiency of people who knew their place in a large and complicated room.

Olivia moved with the household staff. That was her place here. She kept her head straight and her movements neat and she catalogued the room the way Jean had taught her – exits, layout, who was watching what and from where.

She had been in the hall for perhaps twenty minutes when she saw Harris stop moving.

He was standing near the eastern windows with a cup of wine, apparently admiring the view, and he had gone completely still in the way he went still when something had caught his full attention without him wanting it to show.

Olivia followed his eyeline across the room.

A young woman she did not recognise. Sharp-faced, bright-eyed, standing with a group of lower-ranked wolves near the northern pillar. She was laughing at something and the laugh was loud and completely unself-conscious and utterly unbothered by the grandeur of the room around her.

Harris looked at her for three full seconds.

Then he looked away and took a sip of his wine.

Olivia filed it away and kept moving.

She was crossing the far side of the hall with a tray when she felt it.

Not a sound. Not a movement. Just the particular sensation on the back of her neck that meant someone's eyes were on her with a very specific kind of intention.

She turned.

And her blood ran cold.

Kayla.

Alpha Damian's younger sister. The same girl who had made her life a living nightmare at the Silverline Pack. The same girl who had ordered lashes across her back and laughed while it happened. The same girl Olivia had escaped from the night the rogues attacked and she had run into the forest and never looked back.

She was standing twenty feet away dressed in deep green, flanked by two friends and a personal guard. She was already looking at Olivia. Had clearly already been looking long enough to be absolutely certain of what she was seeing.

Her eyes narrowed slowly.

Olivia held the stare for one steady moment.

Then she turned and kept walking.

She is following you, Lisa said immediately.

Olivia did not look back. "I know."

She has been following since you turned away.

"I know, Lisa."

What are we going to do?

Olivia kept her pace even. She set the tray on the side table near the hall entrance and stepped outside into the cool afternoon air.

She stood on the wide stone steps and breathed.

The grounds outside were quieter. A few guards at the perimeter. Horses tied near the trees. The distant sound of the forest settling into evening.

She heard the door open behind her.

"Well, well," Kayla said. "I thought it was you."

Olivia closed her eyes for just one second.

Then she turned around.