Chapter 138 Worth the Fight
THIRD PERSON POV (THE GRANDMASTER)
The grandmaster called his brothers together that night, and for the first time in a very long time he felt something that was adjacent to pleasure.
It wasn’t exactly satisfaction, that would come after. Though, it was adjscent to it. This was more of a relief the conclusion of a search that has consumed years of patience and resources and careful, grinding work. Without showing it, because showing it would communicate to his brothers that the process had cost him more than he wished to admit.
It had cost him considerably.
This small wolf had given him more difficulty than enemies ten times her size and experience. She had given him sleepless nights. had forced him to make compromises and alliances he would not otherwise have made. She had required him to use mortal intermediaries, which he found distasteful, and to expend resources on misdirections and searches that had, for a long time, produced nothing.
All of that because of one girl who hadn’t even known what she was for most of her life.
He did not find this amusing. He found it insulting. And the insult would be addressed in full, along with every other outstanding account.
Alpha Elijah was the other matter.
He was a thorn that had been in his side for longer than the wolf had. The young Alpha had managed, through some combination of natural ability and those infuriating witches who seemed to consider him their personal concern, to remain standing in a position that should have been collapsed years ago.
Every time the Grandmaster had moved against him, something had intervened. Every time the conditions had seemed right, the situation had shifted.
The fact that the wolf was his mate was not a coincidence. The Grandmaster did not believe in coincidences at the scale he operated at. It was a convergence. Both of the things he most needed to resolve, gathered in one place, presenting themselves together at the moment when he was finally positioned to act.
He would take her. He would kill him. He would end both problems simultaneously and he would do it with the full force of what he had accumulated, and the witches would find that there were limits to what even they could protect.
“Brothers,” he said, “the news tonight is what we have been working toward. The special wolf has been located. She is Adriana, the daughter of former comrade Donald.”
The silence that followed was the kind that preceded noise. He let it develop for a moment.
“You’re telling us,” one of his brothers said slowly, “that the wolf we have been searching for was Donald’s daughter. That she has been in the vicinity of our operations, connected to people we have directly engaged with, for some time.”
“Yes.”
“And we did not find her because—”
“Because she was hidden. Her wolf was concealed by means we are still fully characterizing. She was not findable by conventional methods.” He allowed no defensiveness into his voice. “That has changed. She has emerged fully. Her power is now visible and it is, I can confirm, everything we were told it would be.”
More movement among the brothers. Questions being formed, held, weighed.
“She is Elijah’s mate,” he continued. “Which means when we take her, he will come. We will not need to go to him. He will come directly to us.”
This landed well, as he had known it would. His brothers were capable but they were not adventurous. The prospect of the enemy coming to them rather than needing to go find him was appealing to them on a fundamental level.
“We will move in two days.”
“Why two days? If we know where she is—”
“Because I need two days. The sisters are still a factor and I will not move against their protected ground without the appropriate preparation. I do not intend to win this partially.” He looked around the room. “We have waited this long. Two more days will not cost us anything and they will cost us considerably less than going in underprepared.”
The brothers accepted this. After more questions about technicalities, they began to disperse, leaving him alone with the orb.
He stared at it for a while. He could see her clearly now. The field she trained in, the way she moved, the energy that surrounded her like weather. She was strong. Stronger than any special wolf he had encountered in his long experience with this work, and he had encountered several. She was not going to submit easily or quietly. She was going to fight with everything she had.
He was counting on that, in a way. Fighting her at full strength and winning would mean something. It would mean something to his brothers, to the forces that had been watching this particular confrontation develop for years, to the legacy of what he was trying to build. Winning against something that barely tried was not the same kind of victory.
He needed her at full strength because he needed the full power when he took it from her.
And there was another element to it, one he would not name aloud even to himself. A test. Not of her—but of the limits of what he had become. Power, in its truest form, demanded resistance. Without it, domination was hollow, reduced to mere inevitability rather than conquest.
He turned the orb slowly and watched her, this girl who had caused him so much trouble, and felt the anticipatory pleasure of a man who had finally, after years of patience, reached the last chapter of something he had been writing for a very long time.
He was ready. And in two days, it will all be over.
The question was whether she was ready enough to make it worth it. Looking at her in the orb, he thought she probably was. She seemed to be in good form.
What could have been a smile touched his lips. He almost looked forward to finding out.