chapter 54

Hannah arrives just in time for my video address to hit the inboxes of every member of the pack. She pulls it up on her laptop, and she, Tara, Clare, and I sit on my big bed, all squished together around the screen.

I’m not sure I even want to see it. I felt like a mess when I recorded it, and I didn’t have a speech writer. But when the royal seal fades from the screen and I see myself, with my head held high and my hair messed up, my eye makeup smudged but my face a stone mask of anger, blood spattered across my gown but my spine stiff and straight, I don’t recognize myself. The person on the screen doesn’t look like a terrified and unqualified twenty-two-year-old who just barely survived a political uprising.

“This afternoon, I stood before the Toronto werewolf pack and pledged my life for the good of my subjects,” the unrecognizable me on the screen says.

“Are you doing an English accent?” Tara whispers, and Clare shushes her.

“Some of my subjects took that as an invitation to take