Page 103 of Empowering the Wolf's Heart

My bones ached with the cold flushing through me.

She snapped her fingers and a head was thrown on the floor. “This”—she gestured to the head at my feet with a frown—“attempted to assassinate me this past new moon. He was sent by the uncle of the princess herself. Our very own family! How very surprised I was to be informed it was by the hand of my very own son.” Her eyes speared into mine, and her anger flared in a palpable aura. Lycus pushed back against her, just enough for her to know she was dealing with another Alpha. Her eyes brightened, as if I intrigued her. “You will be my heir until the day you die, little boy. Which will be a very long time.”

Beatrice’s eye twitched as I fought Lycus for control.

“Perhaps I won’t make the deaths of your little castoffs immediate,” Mother said, tapping her long fingernails against the glass throne on which she sat.

Even Beatrice stared at Mother. A scent rose from Mother. A sickly-sweet scent of insanity.

Blood streamed from my finger as I used pain to fight the fear and rage battling for dominance over my body. “Why threaten them when Command will ensure your words are carried out?” I asked, barely keeping Lycus in line. I felt him in my eyes. If they were golden, she would know. Based on Mother’s sly grin, they were. To take a word from Alia—heck.

“Oh, ho. You care much more than I thought. For both the pack and the little human. It will be a great pleasure to ensure you prove your continued loyalty to this pack. Caring over much is the bane of rule. You will prove your loyalty in blood. And it will teach you.” She came forward and tilted my chin up, disgust painting her face and making her fair features appear deranged. “Next time you wish to kill me, do it yourself.” She returned to her throne, wiping off her hands.

“You will kill the current matriarch and make the people bow to you by any means necessary. I expect her heart laid at my feet by the falling of the Blood Moon on the first day.” She paused, leaning forward once more, her eyes glittering with pain. “Should you fail to procure the heart of mine enemy by sun-up the day after the Blood Moon, do not return.”

Lycus fought. He howled in my mind as the Command seeped its claws into my mind, scalded past walls I had erected, and tangled into my being until I could not determine what was my will and what was the Command.

I bowed, turning to leave, my soul screaming.

But not before Beatrice tapped her throne thrice.

“She saidshe would not harm them.”

The whisper came from my left. There, I saw a stocky, old, humpbacked man; his dark eyes were feminine, though. I had been waiting for her in our place in the market. The area stunk of refuse and rotting meat, but it was a good place to ensure no one heard our conversation because the people selling their wares were so very loud it hurt.

I continued browsing the potions. The owner of the stall was on the other side of the stall, helping a different patron. “And you believed her after what we have seen?”

“She is not all bad. She is trying her best, but it is hard.”

“Hard? Hard is struggling and making wrong choices. It is not threatening her own pack members to force her son’s hand, Beauty.”

“She will not kill them,” she said. I heard the doubt in her voice, even if she did not.

“She already has. She killed Matilda.”

Beatrice froze. She rarely lost even that amount of control. She and Matilda had been close, once. Matilda had been more of a mother to us than our birth mother ever was.

“No.” The slight hitch in her breath told me all I needed to know.

“Help me,” I whispered.

She glanced over her shoulder. “What do you need?” Beatrice was a brat, but she was not evil. We had broken together during training. We had held each other together when father died. We were the only two who truly knew the person this world had lost when he left. Our siblings were kept out of our family’s dark secrets, but Beatrice as the eldest and me as the only son made us the two trained for assassination and rule. And Papa was the only one who kept us any sort of sane through all our mother’s manipulations. The only reason I was not a heartless killer was because of him, Doc, and Fen.

“Warn Fen.” She knew how to get to Doc’s. I just hoped she would not get there too late.

She hesitated. “You still need to kill the enemy. I understand she is important to you, but it can only end in death. For all of us.”

“You do not know her.”

She shook her head, her false wrinkles bunching around her pursed lips. “I do not have to. She is matriarch to a tribe who kills more werewolves in a month than we lose in wars. They must be put down.”

“Beatrice, the Command will ensure that outcome, even if I do not wish it. But should something go wrong?—”

“Our pack mates need to be protected, even from their Alpha.”

“Exactly. Please.”

She nodded. “They will be warned.”

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