AVA
10am the next morning and we were all gathered in my office with nice, fresh cups of coffee. Best
1000 I’ve ever spent, that coffee machine. I’d even successfully started to bring my Kings around to
my way of thinking.
My Kings were on either side of me, and we had Jacob, Amelia, Alex and Jeremiah opposite. Dream
team.
“Shall we start with Elijah?” I proposed.
“Let’s do it,” Jacob replied.
“So, we know that he’s the Lycan I was betrothed to before I was born, but in the end, not even with
the consent of my own parents, it was forced by the council. After working out it was a bad idea, it
was called off, my parents were murdered and I was smuggled out. At some point after that, he set
himself up as the Rogue King.”
Callum nodded. “We know he’s a psychopath working with a lot of witches.”
“He’s also dead,” Oscar interjected.
“Did we find the body?” I asked Jeremiah. He’d looked after everything when my Kings and I all lost
consciousness.
“No, my Queen. There was no sign of him.”
“Did you find the witch I asked you to go after?”
He shook his head. “I think she’d gone by the time I got to the forest, my Queen.”
Fuck, I swore under my breath.
“Oscar ripped his stomach out, there’s no way he’d be able to survive that on his own… he might be
Lycan, but there are limits to healing,” Callum added.
“Absolutely,” I replied. “Unless he was in fact rescued by a witch, they’d be able to stop him from
bleeding out and help him heal.” I tapped my fingers on the table. “Callum, did you see him breathing
or anything when we ran to Oscar?”
He shook his head.
I gave a dark chuckle under my breath. “So, he should be dead, but he might not be, he did have the
resources to survive that.”
“So what do we do about that?” Jacob asked. “If he did survive, he’s not going to have gone back to
one of his old camps, it would be too risky.”
I nodded slowly. “We’ll reach out to local covens, see if any of the witches know anything.”
A knock at the door; the doctor. Whilst we were discussing the witches, I had linked the doctor who
looked after us all.
“Doc, sit down,” I was forcing myself to stay calm. “The marks from Elijah biting me… what can you
tell us? Why are they healing like they are?”
“Honestly, my Queen, I’m not 100% sure. Whatever they gave you to render Artemis unconscious
must have gone through your system quickly, there were no traces left in your blood of any foreign
substances, and I would have expected there to be.”
“So… you think Artemis was awake when… when he marked me?”
He nodded. “I do, my Queen.”
“So that’s why the bites are still sticking around?” my voice was low, I couldn’t hide the concern in
my voice.
“I believe so, my Queen.”
Fuck. Now I really had to hope these healed without leaving a permanent mark behind. I zoned out at
that.
I wanted to be far away.
Anywhere that meant I was no longer connected to Elijah.
“Is the bond forged?” Oscar asked, voice full of pain.
“I can’t feel it,” I replied. “Is that because he’s dead? I mean, he might be dead.”
“If he died after biting you and the bond had been forged, my Queen, you would have felt his death. If
he didn’t die and was just injured, you would have felt that. I would conclude that the bond likely did
not fully forge between the two of you.”
He met my gaze. “I don’t know enough about the Alpha Queen to truly advise you, my Queen,” the
doctor continued. “But I would recommend marking your mates and having them mark you as soon as
you can so the bond can’t be forged.”
“Thank you, doctor, that’s all,” I dismissed him. He bowed his head to me on the way out, and I let
my head fall into my hands.
“Have any of you spoken to Selene? Or heard anything from Michael?” My voice was small.
“Not yet, my Queen,” Noah replied.
“Shit,” I swore, trying not to let my eyes well up. “Let’s move on to a different topic. How did the
pack fare?” I moved my eyes between the Alpha, Luna and Beta.
“The fighting was brutal, we lost two wolves and twenty five were injured,” Alex replied.
“The borders were damaged, but all things considered, the territory itself fared pretty well,” Jacob
added. “The damage will likely only cost a couple hundred thousand to put right.”
A couple hundred thousand might sound like a lot… but the Blood Moon territory was enormous and
had some seriously high-tech equipment around the border. It genuinely wasn’t actually a bad figure, I
expected him to tell me that we were looking at millions of pounds in damage.
“That’s good,” I replied with a smile. “Gut feeling says this isn’t over, so we need to get tied up as
soon as possible.”
“Agreed, my Queen,” Jacob bowed his head.
“Beta, My Queen…” Amelia started. “I think we need to revisit border patrols again. From what I’ve
gathered, some of the rogues found weak spots in our defences in places we wouldn’t have
considered.”
“I’ll sort that, Luna,” Beta Alex replied.
“I’ve got a topic…” Theo started. “I was taken from the treehouse, right?”
I nodded, one eyebrow raised.
“I can’t remember exactly what happened, I just know I didn’t feel very well that morning.” He
glanced over, meeting my eyes. “I’ve been trying to work out if I could have ingested something,
some kind of poison that would have knocked me out. And I don’t know how anyone would have
known that’s where I’d be, it’s not a place many people know about.”
“Possibly,” I shrugged. “But that would mean we likely have someone inside the pack working with
the enemy.”
“Unfortunately… I think that’s likely, Ava.”
“Well, fuck. We’ll add that to the problems list,” I sighed.
Everyone in the room snorted, and I couldn’t help but laugh. It felt good to laugh.
“Last but not least, for this debrief anyway, my Queen. What do you want people to get done whilst
you’re away?” Jacob asked.
“Someone needs to try to find out if Elijah is actually dead or not. Start with local witch covens, and
we can branch out from there. Matthew… someone needs to see what information they can get out of
him. He must know something.” I thought for a moment. “Izzie seems to know a surprising amount
about the old legends. Getting her to write as many as she can remember down for us would be
handy.”
“Alright then,” Jacob smiled. “Is that all of it for today?”
I shook my head. “One thing left.”
My Kings all looked at me with slightly confused looks on their faces. “We need to look into my
past.”