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chapter 86
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Betrothed To The Alpha King chapter 87
I try to think back to the man who attacked me at Aconitum Hall. I can’t remember if he had a necklace. I didn’t get a chance to notice fine details while my arm was spurting blood.“Why?” I ask, my voice barely a whisper, and probably unheard over the blowing bellows of Nathan’s panting. I ask again, louder, “Why, Harriet? Why would you attack us?”“Because you will destroy our kind!” she rages, fighting against Xiao’s hold.“How?” I demand.“You shouldn’t have invoked the right!” Harriet shrieks at us. “You’ve doomed us all!”I can’t make sense of what she’s saying, but I know it’s important. Just like I know that it’s important to keep her alive for questioning. Nathan knows that, too.But Nathan’s not fully himself at the moment.He goes straight for the old woman.“Nathan, no!” I shout, grabbing a handful of his fur. It’s about as effective as trying to hold back a train with a refrigerator magnet.Xiao pushes Harriet behind her, but she just delays Nathan; he shoves my bodyguard a
Betrothed To The Alpha King chapter 88
“Black moonstone.”Xiao drops the pendant, now enclosed in a plastic baggie, onto the table between Nathan and me.He leans forward in his chair and reaches for the baggie, but I’m not taking any chances. I smack his hand away with an annoyed, “Don’t touch it!”I’m still shaking, even though we’re on the plane and safely away from Wyrding House, I’m still terrified that yet another shoe is going to suddenly drop.I made Xiao threaten the thrall pilots and leave a member of her trusted team in the cockpit as a reminder.I am not going to die today.Xiao gestures to the unremarkable looking cabochon in the pendant. “The assassin who took your hand had some in a bracelet. I think it’s fair to assume that this is what they’re using to change.”I shake my head. “Moonstone is a pretty common gem, isn’t it? I’ve never heard of it doing… this.”“Maybe that’s why we never heard of it,” Nathan muses. “If we knew, perhaps we wouldn’t need the thralls and their rituals.”“There’s thrall magic invo
Betrothed To The Alpha King chapter 89
I take a breath and nod to indicate I need just a moment. Just the smallest pause to collect the scattered pieces of those memories, which all seem to be not a big deal and a Very Big Deal to my emotions all at once. “I’ve never seen someone really get hurt before. Or die. And now I feel like I’m doing it all the time. And even though we’re fine… today we might not have been.”“We’ve been fortunate,” he says, putting an arm around my back.“And that luck will run out. Eventually, it just will.” Tears creep into my voice. “Death is all around us. And I’m supposed to be making this life and protecting it.”“It’s protected.” He puts his other hand on my stomach. “And you’re protected. With my life.”“Which you’ve almost lost before.” I shake my head. “This isn’t something you can just… reassure away. I saw you. I saw your insides coming out and I heard you screaming. And that… it haunts me. I can still hear you.”“Hear this,” he says, kissing the top of my head. “You’re here, now. And I’
Betrothed To The Alpha King chapter 90
We summon council members to Aconitum Hall. The Council Chambers are at the ceremonial site, and the ceremonial site is where all the thralls are.It astonishes me that for centuries, no one—except Nathan’s uncle, apparently—had cause to suspect the thralls as a source of potential treachery. It astonishes me more that now, with proof, convincing some members of the council is still nearly impossible.“We’ve overlooked a major threat,” I try to explain to the ten men seated around the large table in the conference room. There are only ten of them because we executed the others, which makes addressing this group that much more tricky. I don’t want them to think that they have to outwardly agree with me or I’ll cut their heads off, but that’s probably what’s going to happen. “Thralls are a part of our lives every day. They’re in our homes. They’re in our school, our businesses. And they’re content to do all of that and allow us to live in luxury and ease because they can harness our mag
Betrothed To The Alpha King chapter 91
“An independent human magician examined the spell and found that not only was it cast with thrall magic, it was cast on Nathan when he invoked the Right of Accord as a teenager,” I say. “And the second half of the spell was cast when I invoked the right. Decades later.”“Must you phrase it that way?” Nathan mutters under his breath.I shoot him a warning glance, entreating him to control his vanity, before I continue. “The magic is ancient. This suggests they’ve been working on this for a long, long time.”“But the hierophant said that the spell had to be cast on both of you at the same time,” the other guy from our last meeting points out.“And we’re taking the word of a thrall? When we know they’re working against us?”My question makes everyone around the table uncomfortable. To doubt the hierophant, to question our most sacred ceremonial leader, is blasphemy.“You have a thrall guarding you,” he counters. “In this very room. You must not be that concerned.”“I trust Xiao. She save
Betrothed To The Alpha King chapter 92
Tara is dressed all in black, seated on the sofa in the parlor adjoining her room and Clare’s. That door is closed, draped with black bunting.I sit in the chair perpendicular to the sofa and silently will my sister to look at me, to speak to me beyond the mumbled, “Your Majesty,” I got when she curtseyed formally at my entrance, or the offer of a beverage, which I refused.“How are you?” I ask finally.“It’s very lonely here,” she says flatly. “It was different, with Clare. More like when we lived at home, before we were mated. We didn’t see each other much when you were away.”“Because you were newly wed?”She nods.“I understand that,” I try, hating myself for even attempting to link my experience with hers. “Getting caught up in your mate’s life and drifting away from your own.”“It’s a bit different for you. You’re also caught up in being queen.” She finally makes eye contact with me. “Do you think that maybe you got too caught up in it? And that’s why…”She doesn’t finish her se
Betrothed To The Alpha King chapter 93
“They’re not thralls?” She’s just as bewildered by the information as I was. “Like, thralls that ran away from the pack or—”“Just humans who use magic.” Since I don’t know the details of how that all works, and since that’s not really the point of the conversation, I go on. “We needed someone outside of any pack, who could examine the spell objectively and tell us what we needed to know, without any investment in the outcome.”“What did he find?” The fact that Tara is talking to me now, not just looking for ways to snipe at me, feels like a cheap thing to be happy about. It doesn’t mean anything other than that she’s interested in this particular conversation.But I’ll take it. “I’m bound with runes from Tyr’s aett.” I don’t have to explain what those are; Tara’s always been a bit of a mythology nerd. “And Nathan is bound with etheric chains.”“Like Fenrir,” she says, referencing the wolf held captive by the gods. She glances down at my stump. “Wait. Nathan didn’t—”“No, Nathan isn’t
Betrothed To The Alpha King chapter 94
Somehow, in all the ugliness of pack politics and multiple attempts on my life, I totally forgot about pre-natal care.I’m just not sure how to get it, at first. Thralls are in charge of all of our medical care, and I don’t know how much we want them to know. But Nathan and I decide that we can’t take a chance with the baby’s life.As we wait in the exam room, looking at all the posters of werewolf fetal development and the plastic anatomical model of the baby’s head in the birth canal—no thank you—I find the situation becoming more real by the second.“Did you ever think you’d have kids?” I ask Nathan, who’s looking over a pamphlet about the first trimester.He lifts his eyebrows and folds the pamphlet before neatly tucking it into his inside jacket pocket. “I assumed I would. In a hypothetical, detached kind of way. There’s so much pressure to find a mate and breed right away. That’s never appealed to me.”“It’s not so appealing to me, but here I am. In a paper gown.” I laugh nervou
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