Page 60 of Broken Pregnant Mate
Mhairi reaches out toward Emin. “My son, an alpha male, is acceptable to the pack. And my daughter, Kira, an omega. Another generation of Argent women to be overlooked and undervalued.”
“Noneof this justifies it,” Emin growls, finally on his feet, hands against the wall, getting his mother’s attention back on him. On the other side of the room, Ash is standing, but I can’t make her out clearly.
“Doesn’t it?” Mhairi steps back, gesturing expansively around the grand ballroom. “I played the perfect pack mother for years, watching incompetent male leaders run Ambersky into the ground. I offered counsel that went unheeded, suggested alliances that were dismissed without consideration. And all the while, I studied. I planned. I prepared for the day when I would take what should have been mine from the beginning.”
She stalks back to the center of the room, her shoes crunching over the destroyed chandelier.
“The Grayhides understood power better than Ambersky ever did,” she says. “Jerrod Blacklock was a brute and a fool, but he recognized strength when he saw it. Together, we could have transformed the territories, united them under leadership that valued capability over tradition.”
My hands are still on Aidan, holding him. I feel him shift under my fingers, some of his strength coming back. I don’t know how much longer she’s going to talk, or if Aidan will be back to full strength in time to fight her.
“But in the end,” Mhairi says, shrugging and running her fingers over the pelt around her shoulders, “he, too, couldn’t accept a woman as an equal partner. So he joined the long list of men who underestimated me—a mistake he won’t make again.”
“So, you’re the one who’s been going after psychics?” Emin asks, his voice low, murderous. “NotBlacklock.”
Mhairi waves her hand, like it doesn’t matter. “Knowledge is power, Emin. I raised you well enough for you to know that.”
“…your men tried tokidnapmy daughter,” Emin spits, pushing off the wall and moving toward his mother. “They would havemurderedmy mate!”
For the first time, regret seems to shift over Mhairi’s face as she looks at her son. “…yourdaughter? Your mate?”
Across the room, Ash stumbles backward. I look up to see Oren standing shakily.
His expression is a mask of fury, sticky red trailing down his face, pooling around his collar. He must have been hit with a piece of glass from the chandelier, slicing through his skin, because his face is a mess of blood.
Oren’s eyes shift to the fur around Mhairi’s shoulders, and he moves easily, unaffected by the pink haze, stalking through the room and toward her, but she doesn’t notice because she’s too busy talking to her son.
“Yeah,” Emin laughs, shaking his head and taking another wavering step toward her. “And you know what? She’s not the only grandkid you have. Kira hastwins,Mom, and you’re never going to know them, because you’ve always put this insane obsession with climbing to the top first, before everything.”
Mhairi shakes her head, something like pleading entering into her voice. “Emin, you—”
“You killed him,” Oren says in that flat tone of his, interrupting her and stalking in her direction. “My father.”
Mhairi turns toward him, not realizing he’d finally gotten on his feet. He’s the only alpha in this room capable of walking right now. Even Dorian struggles to rise, and Emin has gone back to leaning against the wall.
Despite Oren’s approach, Mhairi’s expression is cool, and she raises an eyebrow at him. It seems like she’s waiting for him to fall, stumble, certain that he’s not going to make it to her.
“You were planning to do the same, were you not? I simply saved you the trouble.”
“Not like that,” Oren snarls, wiping blood out of his eye, not slowing in his advance toward her, stepping over writhing bodies and others who have gone still. “Not to hang his pelt like a trophy around your fucking neck. You’re fuckingsick,lady.”
Mhairi’s confident smile falters, and she takes a step back, nearly tripping over one of the shifters on the ground as Oren gets even closer to her. “How interesting. Your Amanzite isn’t…”
“Are you forgetting that I’mfromthis pack?” Oren asks, his voice buoyant with laughter but burning with rage. Mhairi is backing away now, her hands starting to shake as he advances toward her. “AndmyAmanzite comes from my family’s private collection.”
“But, but—” Mhairi starts, but Oren lunges forward, crossing the space between them with inhuman speed. His hand closes around Mhairi's throat before she can retreat, lifting her from the ground.
“We are all sofuckingtired of hearing your voice,” he growls. “Hope you enjoyed your little speech, and your playtime on the throne, because it’s over now.”
The pelt falls to the floor as Mhairi claws at his grip, her feet kicking uselessly in the air, her eyes bulging, face turning purple. Aidan gains enough strength to sit up, moving himself so he’s between me and Mhairi, Oren.
But that doesn’t stop me—and every other person in the room—from watching.
“Not even afightin you,” Oren snarls. Then, still holding her, he raises his voice so it echoes through the room. “Fuckingpathetic.”
“Oren—” Dorian calls, now on his feet and limping toward the middle of the room, where Oren stands in the center of the chandelier’s wreckage, a thousand shards of glass glittering around him as he growls at the woman he’s holding in the air. “The succession—”
But Oren either doesn’t hear him or is beyond reason at this point. With a savage twist of his hands, he snaps Mhairi's neck.
