Chapter 38 38
Selena’s POV
The girl was more of a fighter than I had given her credit. Walking out of the door to “my” study,— little bastard now — and leaned against the wall listening to Lena call out orders to pack members for today’s tasks in confidence that was fast grating on my last nerve.
"Marcus, report to the southern patrol on the border issues. Elena, by the way, will you look at those orders before we meet this afternoon? And somebody go check on the omega pups in nursery — I want to make sure they’re adjusting all right after yesterday’s fright.”
Competent. Clear. Just the sort of decisive leadership I’d spent weeks trying to sabotage. How had she recovered from the doubts I’d meticulously sown so quickly?
“Fuck,” I said quietly, backing away before anyone noticed me standing in the shadows.
I retrieved the communication crystal I had been using for my friend from my quarters. The stone throbbed with dark force as I activated it, King Jubril's face emerging from the smoky mists.
"Report," he commanded without preamble.
“There have been… complications,” I confessed, and the words tasted bitter. The target is proving more tough than Ellen desired. She is starting to suspect my intentions.”
“Well, then maybe enough of the soft touch already.” His voice carried cold calculation. “We talked about the potential for more direct action.”
“The Lycan keeps a closer eye on me these days. If I'm too obvious—"
“And if you don’t want to be caught, then don’t be obvious,” he interrupted. "But the timeline is accelerating. We need the girl alone and defenceless in a couple of weeks, otherwise our entire operation turns mind-blowingly difficult.”
I wondered about Luna meeting I had been told Lucien had declared. A public statement of loyalty that would have secured Lena’s position and rendered it almost impossible to remove her short of open warfare.
"There might be a chance," I said, slowly. "A pregnancy complication. It was something that would require her to be alone for reasons of medicine, it would take the safety of the rest of pack away from her.”
"Arrange to have a complication like that?
"I'd just have to make it look real enough that even master healers would believe it. My wheel was already turning on the matter. Isolate her, frighten her and then it would be much easier to get her away from the pack house.”
"Do it," Jubril commanded. "And Selena? No more half measures. If the girl will not go willingly, we take her by force. The prophecy doesn’t need her cooperation, just her blood and her power.”
When the connection broke, I sat in the darkening room and thought about how very lowly I’d sunk. It had once been that I’d been Luna of this pack, and I’d been respected, honored. Now, I was planning kidnapping and betrayal with shifters who had once been beneath me.
But when they lost Lucien, it had been the first cut, a scar that still hadn’t healed over in all these centuries. Watching him with that towheaded kid, watching him look at her with a tenderness he never quite showed me — it opened every old scar and made new ones.
If he weren’t mine, then no one else would have him. And if there was some prophecy about the need for Lena's death to somehow remold the supernatural world beneath shifter rule, that was just a happy coincidence with what I really wanted to do.
I had mine three days on when Lena was busy with a pack of educators and Lucien had withdrawn to his private study concerned with territorial reports. The study we'd stayed up in for nights on end, debating strategy, pouring wine, allowing conversation to turn into something more personal.
"May I come in?" From the doorway, I asked, clutching two glasses and a bottle of wine that I knew was his favorite year.
He glanced up, a flicker of surprise crossing his face. "Selena. Is something wrong?"
"Nothing wrong. I just figured you'd enjoy a respite from all those dry territorial updates.” I went in before waiting for an invitation, taking the chair opposite his desk. “Remember when we used to do this? You would overextend yourself and I would have to physically make you lie down.’
“I recall,” he said cautiously, and did not take the glass I had poured for him.
“Good times,” I said, and allowed a little nostalgia to enter my voice. "Simple times, in some ways. Before everything became so complicated."
"Times change. People change."
"Do they?" I rose and came around the desk, near enough to touch. “Or do we simply delude ourselves that we’ve morphed, because it’s less painful than acknowledging we remain the same individuals who choose differently?”
I put my hand on his shoulder, and felt the muscles tightened. Once, that touch would have been welcome, familiar, the arrival of intimacy we’d shared for millennia.
“Selena,” he murmured, but he didn’t move away. "What are you doing?"
“Reminding you of what we had. What we could have again." I inched closer, my voice lowering to a hush. "She's a child, Lucien. Beautiful, yes, but ultimately temporary. You and I, we're eternal. We know something about each other that she never could.”
For a second, I almost believed he could be swayed. In his ancient eyes, I thought I saw something flicker, something that might have been temptation or regret.
When his hand caught my wrist and took it firmly off his shoulder.
“No,” he replied, the single syllable bearing complete finality. “Whatever we were, it was centuries ago. And I've chosen Lena."
"You hand picked a pregnant girl who doesn't even know how to run a pack," I corrected, my restrained voice dripping with bitterness. “Half Shifter, half who-knows-what and who will never be able to fit into your world.”
“She belongs because I say she belongs,” he said, rising and putting some space between us. "And this conversation is over."
"You're making a mistake."
"Maybe. But it's my mistake to make." He crossed to the door and flung it open in clear dismissal. “I think it’s time you got over her, Selena. Your assistance was welcome, but you are quickly becoming… an issue here.”
The denial hurt more than any slap could have. After all my elegant maneuvering, my careful undermining, he was choosing her. Choosing that shabby little breeder over centuries of history.
"Sure," I said, trying not to let any shake into my voice. "I understand. I'll make arrangements to leave."
But when I walked out of that study, rage burned through me like poison. He would regret this. They both would. If I couldn't have Lucien, I was going to make sure she couldn't either.
And King Jubril’s scheme would provide me precisely the tools I needed to effect that end.
It was an abandoned hunting cabin, on the edge of no man’s land and out of reach of prying or supernaturally-enhanced eyes. Jubril’s two goons waited for me when I walked in: a scarred shifter Vex and a witch that seemed nameless to me.
“What took you so long?” Vex said unconcerned.
“I had to make sure that I would not be followed.” I sat down on a splintered wooden bench and made no time of it. “We need to move this timeline up. The Lycan is preparing for a Luna ceremony inside of three weeks.”
"That's... troubling,” the witch mused. “Gotta move quickly on this one, because once she’s formally acknowledged before the allied packs, stealing her is an act of war and not a kidnapping.”
"Exactly. Which means we’re walking before the ceremony."
"Can you arrange an opportunity?" Vex asked.
I rolled a map of the pack territory and marked several places down. “Lucien has to go to a territorial negotiation in 5 days. He will be away for at least thirty-six hours, perhaps longer if complications develop.”
"And the girl?"
"Will have plot enterprising pregnancy related illness that needs her to be isolated to the washroom quarters." I smiled coldly. “Not near the main pack house, not many guards, easy entry through this service entrance that most don’t even realize is there.”
The witch looked at the map with apparent satisfaction. “How are you going to stage the medical emergency?”
“There is an herb — sable root — that gives cramping and spotting to pregnant women. Not even so much to really hurt the fetus, but scary enough that doctors would agree bed rest and isolation were warranted.” I met her gaze steadily. “I will take it the night before Lucien goes. And by morning, she'll be scared to death for her baby and asking me what to do."
“And what about the pack healer, she won’t question your diagnosis?”
"The pack doctor is a seventy year old trained in traditional remedies. She’s going to rely on me based on my imaginary expertise in complex supernatural pregnancies. Your people come through here, the old servant’s passage. Minimal exposure, quick extraction."
"What about you?" Vex asked. "It'll be clear what your part in all of this is when she's gone.”
"I'll say she was taken while in my custody. Express appropriate shock and horror." I shrugged. "Lucien may have his suspicions, but he will not be able prove anything. We’ll be out of there with the girl in place by the time he gets back.”
The witch pulled from her pocket a small vial of dark liquid. "Sable root extract, concentrated. Three drops in liquid — best that it be warm to cover the taste. Effects begin within two hours."
I took the vial, placing it carefully within my pocket. "And once we have her?"
“None of your business,” Vex said flatly. "Your job is delivery. Whatever happens afterward is a matter between the girl and King Jubril.”
Part of me was curious to see what they would do for Lena after they got her. The prophecy had been one of blood and power, of connections that could be severed and turned. No indication in those ancient writings that the vessel needed to survive.
I should have felt guilty. Should have paused at the idea of sentencing that girl to whatever fate Jubril had in mind.
But now I was simply cold. Everything had been stripped from me —— Lucien's affections, my rank, my claim to Lunas. She was about to pay for that theft now.
“And, one more thing,” I said as we were about to leave. "I want to be there when you take her. I want her to remember who put this together, who ripped her perfect little life apart.”
Vex and the witch looked at one another, shrugged. "Now, just so long as you stay out of the extraction process," Vex accepted. "Enjoy your revenge."
It didn't kill poison - laced as it was with rosewater, black pepper and if I Were any judge at all of the human mixture of whether or not someone would back that particular afternoon - but the vial in my pocket burned like ice against my skin. Five days and that would all change. Lena would be dead, Lucien heartbroken, and I’d really be called upon to clean up the mess.
As if I’d always been meant to be that.