Page 261 of Claimed By the Rival Alpha
I smacked his chest. “You better not!”
He laughed again and pulled me against him so he could nuzzle into my neck and kiss me there. “I’m so in love with you, Bryn,” he said. “Every day, I fall harder and harder for you.”
“I feel the same way.” I ran my fingers through his soft, thick hair. “But we can’t stay in bed all day…as tempting as that is.”
“Are you sure? Maybe we could take a sick day.” His sexy grin stirred desire in my core, and I was this close to saying yes.
“You know we can’t.” I kissed his forehead. “I’m feeling much stronger today than I usually feel. I need to take advantage of that and get some work done.”
Night gave a long mournful sigh. “I’ll check up on Dom and see if he needs my help training our wolves or with any construction projects. I also want to see if there’s been news about Troy.”
I grimaced. “It’s been too quiet lately. I hope they have an update.”
“Me too, baby.”
It took a little while, but Night and I finally pulled ourselves out of bed, freshened up, and got dressed. He kissed me goodbye and left. I decided to stay inside.
I grabbed some paper and a pencil and sat at the dinner table with a cup of tea. The first order of business was sketching the symbols I’d seen. I told the elders I’d do that last night, but the ritual had exhausted me. Fortunately, I still remembered them clearly, which helped me hold the pencil with some confidence.
I used five sheets of paper, one for each wall that made up the room and the ceiling. I drew the symbols as I’d seen them from Blossom’s position on the bed. Because I knew nothing about these symbols or how they worked, I wasn’t sure if the positioning mattered. I wanted to be as accurate as possible so that the elders could give me some real information.
It took me about an hour and a half to complete the five pages, and when it was done, I dropped my pen and sat back in my chair, my hand cramping like it had when I was still in school. Now that it was done, I just needed to drop the drawings off at the elders’ cabin, and then I could do some work here in the office while they analyzed them. I hoped I’d done a good enough job recreating what I’d seen.
I gathered the papers, keeping them in order as I put them in a canvas tote I’d found in one of the alpha cabin’s many rooms.As I pulled the strap onto my shoulder, there was a knock at the door.
Weird. I wasn’t expecting anyone to come by. I opened the door and found a middle-aged male wolf standing on my porch.
“Yes?” I asked. My suspicions had been raised, but I tried to keep that off my face. “Did you need something from me?”
“The council gave me the task of coming to get you, Alpha Hunter,” he said. “They request your presence.”
I raised a brow. “Did they say why?”
He shook his head. “They didn’t give me that information, Alpha.”
“Okay. Did they say why you’re to escort me?”
He shook his head again. “That’s just what they’ve asked me to do.”
“Fine. I was heading out, anyway.”
I was confused, but I tried to keep my expression impassive as I followed behind him. What on earth could the council want? And why did I need to be led there like a child who didn’t know her way? It seemed pretty disrespectful to me, and that put me on edge.
He left me at the door leading into the building, and I went in alone. It occurred to me that I should have asked Tavi to come with me, but I was so taken aback by my “escort” that I hadn’t even thought to reach out to her. Now that I was here, it was too late.Maybe they wanted to get me alone.Just what the hell do they want from me?
I stormed up to them, not bothering to hide my annoyance. “What is going on?” I demanded. “Why did you go to all the trouble of bringing me here like this?”
“Apologies, Alpha Hunter,” Ross said. “This isn’t exactly orthodox, but we voted on how we wanted to do this, and three of our council decided an escort was necessary.”
I looked at each of them in turn. Ross obviously hadn’t been one of the three to support the summons strategy, and the way Colby shifted uncomfortably in his seat told me that he hadn’t voted for it either. That meant Grant, Dana, and Edward had been in favor of the theatrics.
The latter two I understood—they seemed to live to belittle me—but I would have thought Grant was above this sort of pettiness. Plus, he’d seemed supportive of me—or at least of Night—until now. But when I looked at him, his dark brown eyes stared back at me without a hint of regret. It reminded me of what Night had said about his council turning against the original plan to merge the packs. Was my council about to do something similar? And when had I lost Grant’s support? Had I pissed him off in some way?
“The reason we’ve called you here today,” Grant began, “is that this arrangement is no longer working for the pack.”
“Meaning?”
“We have decided to move the alpha challenge up by five days.”
