Chapter 28

Chapter 28

Stella's POV

A couple of days passed since my meeting with Camilla. I didn't act immediately. I told her to be patient, that we would soon have everything we wanted and more as long as she was ready to wait for it to happen all by itself. Obviously, she wasn't ready—she didn't want to wait at all, simply wanted to have her revenge as soon as possible, but I convinced her somehow despite everything she said.

I was building something in the background. I was arranging this meeting that we were in right now, and I knew that after it was over, she would understand why I had done what I did and she would also be grateful to me for my very thoughtful action and my wonderful plan that I had made. I laughed a little, thinking about how she was going to thank me and how we were going to have our sweet revenge even though it seemed to be forthcoming now.

"Do you all know why I got you here?" I asked and looked at the others who were in the meeting. Camilla looked pleasantly surprised at how many influential people were here. Most of them were good traders, rich people who had a say in things. If it came down to it, they might seem as if they weren't really strong people in terms of real decisions, but I knew more than anyone what would happen if they were all against the Luna and the Queen.

Traders, tailors, bankers—but all of them were influential in their own right. I couldn't get the elders directly and talk with them because I knew just what the chances were, and I was well aware of the fact that it wasn't going to work with them and they would never honor such an invitation. Even if they honored it, they weren't going to take whatever I said seriously, not like these guys would. We pretty much knew each other to a very large extent, so I was confident that I would be able to sway them against the Luna, but only if I was able to choose my words wisely and only if I had enough proof to convict her of the crimes that I wanted to pin right now.

I told myself that I would succeed, and it sounded very possible now—not just possible but also sounded like it would happen as I looked at them all.

"No, why are we here exactly?" someone said. I laughed a little, hearing the coolness of his voice and his words that were rough. He was here for business, another thing that I could use to sway him.

"There's a person I want us to really talk about now. I'm not talking about some kind of gossip, you know people, they all know I don't do that," I continued. "But she has suddenly been acting weirdly, and I don't think she should be allowed to go off without proper monitoring, just in case what might happen before the sake of our entire pack," I told them.

Well, I could see them interested now that I mentioned the entire pack. Naturally, they wanted to know exactly what I was talking about and who I was here for. "For the Luna, Queen, whatever you want to call her," I thought 'witch' in my mind but I didn't say it out loud. "She's present right now and we all know her a lot, but I don't know how many of you know just how strangely she has been acting. I don't know how many of you are aware of how she has suddenly started acting off," I told them.

I could see a couple of them frowning. Well, let them frown. I would soon come up with my proofs, and the moment I did so, I was pretty sure that they would understand the rationale behind my words and they would stick with me and support my claim.

As I spoke to them, "You see, there's a lot I don't know about her anymore. I thought I knew her," I said before I lowered my voice. "We all thought we did, but who could have ever expected her to suddenly start acting very strangely as if she's—well, I don't know what to say," I said, stopping and looking at Camilla for backup.

I really wanted to see if I was trying to incite them all against her. I needed someone else to voice similar words to me, if only she was smart enough. Of course, I somehow felt like I could count on her. I didn't know how far she would be able to go with what I was saying, whether she would be able to take them along and convince them, but I was confident that we would try and that she was not useless. She was smart, just as much as I was. What's more, she was the one person that was totally against the Queen. Therefore, I wanted to see her putting in her effort to sway them just like I was.

She was speaking now, her voice soothing in such a tone that I found myself smiling. She had always been a public speaker—she seemed to have some kind of trait that made people want to just keep on listening to her. Her voice was sing-song like, and I found myself enjoying every single word she spoke as if she was talking directly to me. There was something wonderful about how she put her words one after another as she pointed out inconsistencies in her behavior.

"You see how odd she has suddenly been," she was saying. "I'm pretty sure not only me has noticed it. She's going to lead our pack to ruin. She's going to tell the alpha a lot of outrageous things and push him to making rash decisions," she continued.

I could see the people around us nodding now. This was something I would never have been able to achieve all by myself, but she was managing it, and I felt happy that it was working out well. I smiled a little as I thought about what the results would be in the end. One way or another, the queen was going down as long as we managed to discredit her enough here.

I looked at each one of the people around us. All of them belonged to the families of the elders one way or another. I had picked them out carefully and invited them here for this particular reason. With this mindset, the moment they got back, they were going to have thoughts against the Luna no matter what happened, and as long as they had those thoughts, I was pretty sure that it would affect the entire family when they started voicing it out in their own ways. Soon the elders would be against her in the pack meetings, and the alpha would also notice. Either he stood with her and supported her, or he would simply be swayed along with the elders in order not to be alienated and for them not to be against him also.

That social method from the grassroots like I was using right now—I was going to get them all, every single last one of them to be against her and to act contrary. She was going to soon see the results of this, and while she was still shaking, while she was trying to regain herself and focus back on her foundations, I would make sure to particularly take her down myself.

She thought she was secure, thought nothing would happen after everything now, didn't she? Well, she couldn't have ever seen this coming, and I was going to make sure she paid the full price of her insolence and her disrespect for the order that has been here ever since. She should have known that this was coming, I thought to myself as Camilla continued her expertise, sowing seeds of doubt in their minds and turning them against her.

I smiled, cutting in now and winking at Camilla. The mission was done. We had succeeded.