I gave him my best mysterious one-eyebrow-raised look. “Not scared are you, bear?” I asked, before stepping inside and leaving him to make the decision.
His footsteps were silent as he followed me, but I knew he was there. The energy of the mecca was strong, almost suffocating on this side of the secret chamber. Whoever had designed this hiding place had definitely spelled the walls around it. This much mecca would make even alpha wolves sick if it wasn’t contained.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Kade towered over me, glancing over my head so he could see the stone clearly in the middle of the room. “I’ve never seen a mecca stone of that size.”
The stone’s purplish hue washed over his darkly tanned features. It was about four feet tall and two wide. It sparkled and shone with mesmerizing depth; the pull was great enough that I always feared if I stared into it too deeply I’d be lost in its depths forever.
Swallowing through my thick throat, I forced myself to focus on Kade. “The Red Queen always hinted that she had something powerful as a weapon,” I said, trying not to turn back and stare again. ”But none of us realized what it was.”
I was really the red queen now, but no one called me that. It had been the former leader’s title, and after her reign of over a hundred years, shifters weren’t going to break the habit anytime soon. Which was fine by me. Rumor was they were referring to me as Queen Alpha. I like that much better than the traditional title of Red Queen.
“Your father was the king before you, right?” I was learning about bear hierarchy, mostly from bits and pieces Kade let slip.
I’d been taught to fear and hate the bear shifters who held two of the five boroughs of New York City. That was all, just fear and hate. None of their history or traditions. To the best of my knowledge, their crown was inherited, not earned as ours was.
Kade was focused on the stone, his answer slow to come. “Yes, the crown remains in the royal bloodline. Only the males receive a familiar, and are strong enough to rule, so even if daughters are born to the king, they’ll never be a leader. My brother Kian was older than me, and should have been king. But he disappeared many years ago, so when my father was killed, it was up to me to take the crown.”
It was kind of odd that bears appeared to be the direct opposites of wolves. In our royal lineage, only female wolf shifters could be queen; we were the only ones to get familiars. In the bears it was only males. Odd.
Right now, Finn, my huge white wolf familiar, and Nix, Kade’s eagle, were off fae hunting, making sure no more of those hideous erchos were hiding in Central Park. Both of them were on high alert, and since familiars were extremely hard to kill, they thought they were the best first line of defense.
It calmed my mind to know I could check in on Finn at any time. Our mental link was strong and thrumming within me. I knew Kade felt the same way about his Nix. It was a bond that could not be replicated.
“How did your father die?” I asked, hoping this wasn’t too painful for him.
Kade had been king for a couple of years, and while this was not a long time in the few hundred years we could live, he already held the respect of his people. He was a just leader, I could tell.
“I remember the queen tolling the bells and informing us that King Roland had fallen and that the bears were vulnerable, but that she would honor the peace accords. It was a hunting accident, right?”
He focused fully on me then, some of the awe from the mecca fading out of his masculine features. The power within us was so much more potent this close to the stone, our connection back in full force. I actually took a step closer to him, unable to stand my ground. Kade was all of my woodcutter fantasies rolled up in one package – dark brown, bordering-on-black hair, tousled, thick, and shiny across his forehead; neatly trimmed beard against his throat and around his full lips, showcasing a slight dimple in his cheek. His height topped out near seven feet, and that package was finished off with broad shoulders and heavy muscles. He was huge, and his bear even bigger.
The gods could have helped me out and made the bear royal line less attractive or something. A girl only had so much restraint.
He was still staring at me, and hadn’t answered my question yet. I was about to apologize for my bluntness when he said, “Hunting accident was the council’s spin so that no one would know we had a traitor in our own house. A king should be able to manage his guard, but he didn’t. My father was killed by his friend and advisor. The traitor thought himself in love with my mother, the queen, and decided that by getting rid of my father he’d have a free run.” Kade’s eyes, normally bronze, were now the color of whiskey, deep and rich, filled with emotion.
“He’d never have bested my father in a normal fight of course, but the ambush was unexpected. My father trusted him above all others. He never even saw the blow coming. Poisoned my father with dinner the night before, then killed his familiar first, to weaken him before finishing him off.”
To the wolves, Kade’s father had been hard and cruel. He’d initiated more than one scuffle with our queen in a bid to gain territory. But when Kade talked of him, there was a sense of softness in the tone.
“And your mother…” I said.
He smiled suddenly, and I had to blink a few times to ground myself. “Still alive. Ordering me around. She’s the real ruler of the bears, I just give the final order. They all adore her.”
He loved his mother too. Of course he did. Was there anything wrong with him?
“So your father married your mother? Like mates?” I couldn’t remember the last time a wolf queen had actually married her wolf mate, and we certainly didn’t refer to those mates as “king.” They were simply the queen’s mate, one step up from a lover.
“Mates … yes. My father met my mother when he was nineteen, at the summer festival on the Island. Declared right then and there in front of everyone that she would be his queen.”
I grinned. Sounded like the man knew what he wanted in life. I could respect that. “What did your mother say?”
Kade suddenly gave a deep rumbling laugh. “My mother replied without an ounce of hesitation that my father wasn’t her type. She would never marry an arrogant, over-confident, pushy man like him.”
Now I was laughing. His mother sounded like my kind of woman.
Kade shrugged. “My father loved a challenge. He fought for her. Every day. Two years later, they wed.”
“That’s a nice story,” I said, feeling soft emotions battering my body. All the feelings.
A sudden pulse of purple light had both of us focusing on the stone again. Kade stepped closer, about five feet from it, and I found myself flashing back to Breanna. The mecca power had been too much for her to handle. This had left her unfit for the throne. I could still see her seizing wolf in my mind’s eye, the memory of carrying her out of here, not knowing if she would make it or not.