chapter Twenty
It took two days before Callum called me in for a private audience.
By that point I’d explored most of the grounds and had run out of busywork to keep Magnolia occupied. She seemed to get worried when I didn’t have a task for her, so I’d started asking for random things to make her feel better. But I could only request so many newspapers or coffee filters before I started to look crazy.
I was starting to feel crazy.
In New York there was no shortage of things to keep me entertained. Even if I wanted a quiet night, I could still go for a jog in the Park or visit Calliope if I had a craving for some otherworldly company.
In Louisiana my options were limited to reading, sitting on the porch swing or wandering. The pack was as cliquey as a prime-time high school, and I felt like an oddity when I spent time with them. Sure, the prodigal niece returns and all that, but they weren’t fooled. I wasn’t their princess in anything more than title because I didn’t own the position. I didn’t feel like a princess, so why should they respect me as one?
When Magnolia came to get me after dinner on our third night, telling me Callum wanted to speak to me, I almost hugged her. It wasn’t that I was dying for alone time with my uncle. Quite the opposite. But I was dying for a break from the nothingness of my night, and she’d brought me a reprieve on a silver platter.
Lucas and I had dined in the main house twice now, often enough I wasn’t knocked on my ass by the grandeur when Magnolia guided me through the main floor and up to Callum’s office. I had been exposed to the things money could buy. My time with Lucas had shown me there was a way to make wealth look impressive without being showy, and Callum did that as well as Lucas did. Must be something in the bloodlines.
The furnishings in the main house were fancy, and I would have felt bad for spilling a drink on the couches, but they weren’t antiques, so I at least wouldn’t be afraid to sit on them. Paintings covered most of the wall space, with a few mirrors to break up the art. It was like being in Hogwarts. The frames were crammed so close together I half-expected the fishermen in one to hop into the fox hunt next to them.
The other glaring absence was photos of Callum’s relatives. Over the fireplace in the dining room was an oil portrait of Elmore, Vivienne, Mercy, Savannah and Callum from a much happier time. Or that was how the artist chose to make them appear. Happy. What a novel concept in a werewolf household.
Magnolia left me outside the office door, and I knocked.
“Enter.”
I stepped inside, and Callum looked up from the sheaf of papers he was reading. He smiled at me like I was someone who mattered to him. The warmth of his expression made me self-conscious and a little…pleased. I didn’t like how he made me feel. He gave me the impression I could belong to a family I’d long since given up hope of being a part of.
I’d always been a McQueen in name alone.
The way Callum was smiling at me made me ache to be accepted by those who gave me my name.
“Mags said you wanted to see me…Your Majesty.”
“Please, Secret. I think we can put formality aside now.” He indicated the chair across from him, and I accepted the seat gratefully.
“Thank God. If I had to say that one more time, I was going to start using a British accent and demanding someone bring me a tiara.”
He smiled but didn’t laugh. Tough crowd.
“Do you know why I’ve asked you here?”
“To welcome me to the flock?”
Silence. Thank you, folks, I’m here all week.
“No. I’d like to talk to you about your notions of marrying Lucas Rain.”
“Notions? You say that like he’s a celebrity and I have his name sketched on my Trapper Keeper in a heart. I am marrying him.” I held up my ring finger. “We came here to respect your wishes, but from what I can tell this is a pretty outdated tradition. What do you have against my marrying Lucas? It doesn’t get much better than a king, so you can’t be rejecting him because of his status.”
“I don’t reject Lucas.”
“So what’s the problem? We’re soul-bonded.”
“Ahh, yes, your soul-bond. Let’s talk about that, shall we?”
If I had hackles, they would have gone up when he said those words. “What’s there to talk about?”
“Where should I start? The fact that you are soul-bonded to a king, but living with his lieutenant.”
“Desmond is the queen’s guard.”
Callum raised a brow. He wasn’t buying it. “Mmhmm. A queen’s guard who shares a bed with his queen? And what of this second soul-bond?”
“God, was there like a newsletter?”
“Wolves are a small community, Secret. Gossip travels fast.”
“So it seems.”
“I need to know if you understand the life you’re getting into. Can you believe that?”
“I know what life I’m getting into.”
“I don’t think you do.” He leaned back, and the leather chair creaked under his weight. “Will you humor an old man telling you a story?”
“Why? Do you know any old men with good stories?”
He ignored me, which was probably best for both of us, and went on. “When I was a very young man, not long after I was Awakened, there was a woman in our pack who was young and willful, not unlike yourself. She fought against her king and her pack every step of the way, believing the rules of conformity shouldn’t apply to her. She felt she was too special to be bound by a hundred generations of tradition.”
“In other words, she was a teenager.”
Callum smiled at this. “Yes, very much so. Well, this girl fell in love, as girls of her age are wont to do. Girls of any age, really. We are all ruled by love, Secret, make no mistake of it. Love will make fools of us all in turn.”
It was my turn to say nothing.
“The boy she loved was a good kid. Polite, charming, and he loved her a great deal. I’m sure this feels like a story with a happy ending, but I’m sorry to say it isn’t. They loved each other, and through a twist of fate, she found herself pregnant at only seventeen years old.”
My blood went cold.
“The boy wanted to take care of her, but…died tragically.”
Yeah, I bet he did. Having a hole chewed in your neck by a vampire is a very specific kind of tragedy. I continued to sit in silence. Any urge to interrupt had vanished when he’d told me the girl’s age. I just wanted him to finish.
“After he was gone, we believed she would mourn but that her love for her child would be greater than the loss she felt for her man. He was human, after all, and he was destined to die before her and she knew it. But time passed, and when the child came, we knew something was wrong.”
“With the child?” Shit. Shut up, Secret.
“No, with her mother. Her grief over her loss had driven her past the point of consolation. She believed the child was an abomination, when it was just a beautiful little girl.” He smiled sadly. “She gave all of herself to the wrong man, and when she lost him, she lost everything that made her who she was. His death broke her, and she never fit together again.”
“I’m not my mother,” I whispered.
“No. I could have told you that, my dear. You are stronger than Mercy ever was. Your identity is not entwined with your love for the king, that’s as plain as day.”
“Then why did you need to tell me her story?”
“Because I don’t think you’re marrying Lucas for the right reasons. I want you to think about what you’re doing. This is something you can’t change once it’s done.”
“I’m prepared. The mate bond has already been activated.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t make this decision lightly. I know what I’m doing, and it won’t break me.”
“It may not break you, but consider the story from another angle. What if you are not the girl? What if you are the dead boy and the fractures you are creating are destroying someone else?”
Callum could have reached his hand inside my mouth and squeezed my heart to pulp with his bare hands and it would have made my chest hurt less than his words had.
“What are you talking about?” I was barely able to wheeze out the sentence.
“I don’t think you should marry Lucas because I don’t think he’s the one you’re meant to be with.”
I had started shaking my head before he was finished saying Lucas’s name. “You’re wrong. Everyone has said it’s perfect. I’m royalty, so is he. I’m pack protector. We’re soul-bonded, and now our mate bond is active. I’ve proven I deserve to be his wife.”
“I’m not disputing whether or not you deserve it. You do deserve to be at the head of a pack. I know all about how you dispatched Marcus Sullivan. I know, too, you were forced to fight your own mother in the end, who was madder than ever thanks to her attachment to yet another wrong man.” Callum wove his fingers together and rested them on his stomach, still toned even though he was pushing forty. Fat werewolves didn’t exist. “You are Alpha material, Secret.”
I fought against the swell of pride that grew larger in my chest. This guy was playing me like he was Hendrix and I was a guitar. He’d found a weakness I hadn’t known I had, and he was poking at it until it was raw.
“I don’t understand your problem then.”
“You won’t be the Alpha anymore if you marry him. He will crush that part of you.”
This made me laugh. “Callum, I know we’ve just met, but I’m going to be honest with you if I can.”
“Please.”
“You think you know me because of what the werewolf grapevine has told you. We’re family, and I respect you think that means you know what’s best for me. I can almost appreciate it. But you need to understand something about me. If I’m meant to be Alpha, if that’s the misguided destiny the Fates have chosen for me…” The lifelines on my palms felt like they were burning. “If it’s my path, then no man will set me off course. Not even a king. Only I decide.”
And I would have to decide. Calliope had told me there was no way around it, short life or long, I couldn’t escape the decision. I had thought choosing to marry Lucas had made the choice for me, but I was still deeply entrenched in my vampire half, and as long as I had a foot in each world, my choice would remain up in the air. My destiny was a coin tossed high, and eventually it would come back down and I would know—wolf or vampire. I couldn’t be both forever.
“I like you,” Callum said. “Things would have been very different for you if Vivienne hadn’t taken you from us.”
Sure. I’d be dead.
“Well, what’s past is past. But if you have a time machine, I’d be willing to give your version a go.”
“Do you know why she took you?” He sounded genuinely curious.
“She thought because Mercy had abandoned me the pack would shun me. She was afraid for me. Of what a young teenaged king might do to an unwanted baby.” I shot him a look.
“A baby who was a born wolf?”
Looks like my story for Magnolia had made it all the way to the top. “Yes.”
“No, my dear, we wouldn’t have shunned you for that.”
I shrugged. “I can’t know now if that was true then.”
“Well, why would you be any different?”
“Different?”
“We didn’t shun Mercy’s other children.”