Page 25 of Make Me

Zack nudged his leg against Cody’s, and Cody quickly trapped it between his. Zack rolled his eyes but relaxed into the touch. “Easy there, tough guy. I don’t know if we’re ready to take on the Stonemont Triad just yet.”

Cody loved that it was a ‘we’ and not a ‘you’ that came out of Zack’s mouth. “Eh, I don’t know if they’ll put up much of a fight right now.”

“True,” Zack hummed. “Anyway, how was the rest of your day? How is Bethany?”

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Cody said, then filled Zack in on meeting Nita and Calen and the revelations that they were mates and what Bethany had said about them being forced out of the pride.

If Bethany’s pride was really that against intermixed matings, Cody and Zack had a long fight ahead of them. And it would be a fight. Their time at the Academy had shown him that he couldn’t just go back to the pack after their four years were up and watch her mate with someone else. He was going to fight for her and Zack.

Zack hummed again, the sound so much like a purr that his own wolf purred in response. Zack jerked slightly when he heard it, and it was Cody’s turn for his cheeks to redden.

“Can’t help it,” he grumbled. And he couldn’t. The wizard was just as important to him as Bethany was.

Zack flashed him a quick grin. But his face quickly turned serious as he thought about what Cody just shared.

“That makes a lot of sense,” he murmured. “Why she’s so shy about getting close to anyone who isn’t a male lion, and from what you’ve told me of male lions, she wouldn’t want to get close to them anyway.”

“But Sadara will force her to anyway,” Cody growled. “She wants a consort for Bethany who will secure her place as Alpha, but I don’t think she understands that the lions on that list don’t care about Bethany’s power, only their own.”

Even though his father had forbidden him from telling Bethany, Cody wasn’t going to sit idly by and let someone else get close to his mate. Well, anyone besides Zack. Especially not someone who wouldn’t treat Bethany like the jewel she was. All male lions cared about was the power she could bring them.

“It’s a good thing Bethany has us, then,” Zack said simply, and Cody wished it was only that simple.

They had a long fight ahead of them. They had to get Bethany on board with accepting that not just Cody, a wolf Alpha Heir, but also Zack, an Ashcraft wizard, loved her and wanted to stay at her side forever. And that her mother’s skewed views on love and emotions didn’t matter. Once they overcame that, they just had to tackle the Realm’s forbidding of intermixed species matings and the pride’s very hostile views and tendencies to kick intermixed mates out of the pride. It would be a piece of cake.

CHAPTER TWELVE

BETHANY

Age 21

Summer after second year.

Bethany’s jaw ached as she held back another yawn. She looked around the room at the fifth meeting of the day her mother had forced her to attend and by far the most boring one as the Elders in her pride droned on about trade routes and proposed trade goods. She was home for the summer and sitting in boring meetings seemed to be how she was going to spend most of it. The meetings were especially boring given how exciting the last few weeks of the semester and the first week of summer had been.

She’d finished her second year at the Academy, which was exciting enough. But what made it more exciting was Claire had touched a mysterious dagger at the market and had regained her sight. Then she and Everett were attacked by a Felua, a massive creature only seen in the Elven Forest, which had been controlled by dark magic. Claire and her Triad had headed to Brandlevine with Holly and Zack. Holly also lived at Brandlevine, and Zack was able to secure an apprenticeship with Andrea Brandlevine, or Professor Andy, as she was known at the Academy. It was an amazing opportunity for Zack, but Bethany’s lioness missed him terribly. She did, too, if she dared to admit it to herself.

She missed all her friends. Her lioness had claimed them as an honorary pride, and now with Claire in danger and the others so far away, her lioness was antsy. But her mother wouldn’t hear a word about Bethany staying at a coven this summer. Even when Bethany tried to tell her mother what was happening and the importance of building allies, her mother was firm that she spent the summer at the pride.

So here she sat, in an uncomfortable wooden chair in the pride’s main meeting hall, listening to the Elders debate how much wood they should sell at the Capitol this year.

“Bethany, what do you think?” her mother asked, her keen eyes narrowing in Bethany’s direction like she could tell that Bethany wasn’t paying attention. Good. All these meetings could have been paper requests instead of taking an hour of her time.

“I’m sorry, can you repeat the question,” Bethany said, her green eyes holding her mother’s similar ones a fraction of a second longer than was typically appropriate before looking at Elder Nicolai.

Sadara frowned at her, but Bethany avoided looking at her. She used to admire her mother. Her strength and discipline had carried the Pride through the death of Bethany’s father and cemented their place as one of the most influential shifter groups in the Realm. But lately, she was starting to question some of her mother’s choices. Starting with this ridiculous notion that Bethany had to take a consort to cement her place in the Pride before she turned twenty-two. Her mother had never taken another consort after her father died. Even though their marriage was arranged, her mother and father had shared a deep respect and love for each other. It was like opening her heart to her father was the one risk her mother had ever let herself have, then when he died, she’d locked all of her emotions into a steel vault and made the pride her first, second, and third priority. And she was determined to make Bethany do the same.

“We were talking about how much firewood to bring to the market to sell,” Elder Nicolai told Bethany, his brown eyes assessing her.

Elder Nicolai was the grandfather of the pride’s biggest pain in her ass, Alonzo. Alonzo was on the short list of her mother’s list of consort candidates despite Bethany’s protests. From the look Elder Nicolai gave her, he found Bethany lacking.

“How much did we use last year?” Bethany asked. She locked eyes with Elder Nicolai, pushing a little dominance into her gaze until the man shifted in his chair. Good. He and his grandson needed to be taken down several pegs.

“300 cords.”

“Are we anticipating the winter to be worse this year?”

“The witches are saying no, but we have no way of verifying that,” Elder Nicolai said.

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