Page 73 of Veradel
The phrasenot letting us talkseems to rebound in my skull. It reminds me too much of the Cardinal Rules, and Kyra’s eyes glimmer as if she knows it.
I swallow thickly. “I’m sure Lucan would be happy to hear what you both have to say.” I shoot a glance at Gabriel behind her, and he meets my eyes with a hardening of his own.
“See, that’s where you’renotso smart,” Kyra says with a sigh, tossing her hair back and taking a single step toward me. “Or maybe you’re just a really good liar. Because Lucan’s obviously not happy with anything we have to say if it’s notOh Saskia, you’re so perfect, Saskia, you’re our salvation, Saskia. If we’re not kissing your ass, then he’s quite literally pommeling us. So tell me—does that sound like good leadership to you?”
My face flushes with a blast of humiliation. My breathing feels like it’s shrinking, forced through a narrow tunnel. I want to defend Lucan like he’s defended me, but all the Cardinal Rules seem to swirl around and around my head, and I know I can’t do anything besides allow Kyra the freedom to speak her mind.
Otherwise, I’d just be proving her own point.
“So tellme.” I try to force a modicum of calm back into my shaking voice. “What do you really think?”
This time it’s Gabriel who lifts himself off the brick wall and takes a step forward, and the air seems to tighten as I face these two werewolves who hate me.
“I think this is all a ploy,” Gabriel says with sharp, vicious quietness. “Not that you’re with the Guardians—I don’t think you’d go to such great lengths to bring down the Wall if you were secretly on their side—but I do think you want to replace them.”
“Replace them?What?”
“Oh, please,” Kyra scoffs. “You somehow getLucan Veradelto fall in love with you, something every female in this pack save for his own mother and cousins have tried to do for centuries now, and you want to help him reclaim his throne? You know full well you’d be the one to sit by his side if that ever happens.”
I take a step back, sucking in a lungful of brittle air as the implication of what they’re accusing me of hits me right in the chest. “No. I don’t want to be queen.”
“Prove it, then,” Gabriel snaps. “Help us defeat your Guardians, and thenleave him. This pack and that entire city in there—” He points in the direction of the Wall. “—will be better off without a vampire in charge anyway. Just look what your kind has done.”
Silence falls between us, heavy as a snowstorm. A chill snakes through the alleyway, pebbling my skin.Leave him.Leave him? I could never leave Lucan, even if I wanted to.
But what if Gabriel’s right? What if I help them kill the Guardians, just to end up replacing them? I can’t put myself in a position where I might hurt innocents or take away anyone’s freedom. But I can’t hold Lucan back from his rightful place as king, either.
“Prove it,” Gabriel hisses again.
And then he grabs Kyra by the arm, and they leave me standing at the lip of the alleyway with a heart that would be hammering against my chest if only I was human.
The first thing I notice when Saskia joins us in the meadow is that gold chain hanging around her pretty little neck again. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t fill me with some sort of twisted, smug appreciation that she picked it back up. That she wants to be marked as mine.
Then my eyes rove up to her face, and I know something’s wrong. I can see it in the tense lines of her face, even as she tries to hike up a smile when all the children run up to her.
“Ask her!” one of them cries, pushing the oldest, Milo, toward her.
“Yeah, do it, do it!”
I try to catch Saskia’s eye, but she won’t look at me, so I exchange a bemused glance with Merrick and the others instead. Milo peeks back at his mother, hovering on the edge of the meadow with the other parents, before he shuffles up to Saskia and murmurs, “Will you… um… can I fight you, too? Just to practice?”
“Milo!” his mother calls, her voice stern and melodic. She was one of the few werewolves who lived in Veradel back when it was still a kingdom, just a child herself when the vampires invaded. I remember how overjoyed she was when she and her mate found out she was pregnant with Milo thirteen years ago. “You can’t even shift yet.”
Milo rounds on his mother, his arms crossed. “But if we’re attacked, then I should learn how to fight a vampire with what I’ve got. I’m still strong and fast and—
“We’re not going to be attacked, Milo.”
“We might ifshemanages to bring the Wall down like all you want her to.” The boy doesn’t have to nod at Saskia for everyone to know who he’s talking about. Once again, I try to catch her eye so that I can detect what kind of emotion is brewing in them, but she won’t look at me. She’s just standing there, wringing her hands together. Did something go wrong with the antivenom?
“Even if the Wall comes down,” Milo’s mother bites back, “there’s no wayyou’regoing to fight.”
“Maybe not, but what if the vampires decide they don’t want to fight, either? What if they run away… toward us?”
The kid’s actually got a point. The Wall has protected my pack from the Guardians just as much as the Guardians try to tell the humans it protects them fromus.
“I say go for it!” Soren calls with his hands cupped around his mouth, breaking the silence. “Give the pup a chance!”
Milo doesn’t like being called ‘pup’ apparently, because he wrinkles his nose, but his mother sighs and glances at Saskia.
