Chapter 91 Chapter 0091
•MASON•
"Oh, well," Nadia sighed when she leaned toward me while I was kneeling on the ground. "I have given him time to declare me as his Alpha and live, but he has refused my offer."
People murmured behind her. Her voice was now their primal instinct. They would do anything she wanted them to do.
"The former Alpha should die!" Someone said from the crowd. "He's not fit to be the Alpha anymore. He has betrayed us!"
"Yes!" Another chanted. "Mason has betrayed us and gone back to the enemies who want control of our pack!"
"He must die!"
"Do you hear them?" Nadia asked as she crouched and leaned toward my ear. "They want you dead, Mason. They now want me as their Alpha because that's how things should've been from the beginning."
"Was this your plan all along?" I asked, lifting my head and looking at her. "Were all the plans we had twelve years ago meaningless to you?"
"We had a fling, Mason, and nothing more. But if you want to know if I have ever loved you—" she leaned closer, her voice dropping. "I loved you so much that I would've let you be the Alpha. But you stabbed me in the back and married someone else."
"The Alpha's title is not yours to claim."
"Don't flatter yourself," she scoffed. "I have been destined to be Alpha since my birth. But your father stole everything from us. He removed my father from the position that he knew damn well belonged to him."
"Did your father tell you the whole truth about the Alpha's title?"
She leaned back and looked at me. "Who cares about how your father became the Alpha? My father was the one who had the elders' blessing to be named as the Alpha after the war. He fought for all of us and never cowered away from danger. But your father was nowhere to be seen when the real fight took place."
"Is that what your father told you?"
She frowned and I could see how much I was provoking her.
"Your father lied to you, Nadia," I said. "He never told you the entire truth about what happened. If he had been destined to be the Alpha, he would've been made the Alpha."
Her eyes narrowed. "Watch your mouth."
"He lied to you," I repeated. "He was not at the front lines during that war. He was not fighting alongside the warriors. He was inside the territory waiting to see which way the battle went before he decided where to place himself."
"That is a lie," she hissed. "Your father is the one who lied to you because he didn't want you to think you didn't deserve to be in the pack house."
"My father held the northern gap with eleven men," I replied. "Eleven men against forty-three rogues because your father left it unguarded while he hid in the interior. Three of those eleven men died. My father carried their names for the rest of his life." I looked at her directly. "Ask the elders who were there. Ask anyone old enough to remember what actually happened that night."
Something flickered across Nadia's face. She swallowed and tried to fight away the doubt that was creeping up on her.
"My father served this pack honorably," she answered, her voice hardening. "And I will not stand here and listen to you slander his name in front of everyone he built this pack for."
"I am not slandering him," I replied. "I am telling you what happened. Because you deserve to know what you are actually fighting for before you burn everything down to get it."
"Enough," she sneered. "I will not hear any more of this."
"Nadia—"
"I said enough!" Her voice cracked across the courtyard.
She straightened up and looked down at me with an expression that had moved past anger into something colder and more final.
"Guards," she said, raising her chin toward the men standing at the edges of the courtyard.
Four of them stepped forward.
"Take him to the dungeons," she instructed them. "And make sure he understands that the only way he leaves is if I decide he leaves."
The guards moved toward me and I didn't resist. There was no point in fighting four men in the middle of a courtyard full of people whose bond no longer ran in my direction.
As they pulled me to my feet and turned me toward the pack house entrance, I looked back over my shoulder at Nadia.
She was already turning away from me, straightening her coat, and recomposing the expression of authority she wore for the crowd.
But I had seen the flicker. She had heard what I said about her father.
And some part of her, buried beneath everything she had built and everything she believed and everything she had done to get to this courtyard tonight, had not been entirely certain I was lying.
That was enough for now.
The guards pushed me forward and the doors of the pack house closed behind us.