Page 12 of The Wolf and the Chimera
“Those howls aren’t from your pack, are they?” I asked.
Tension lined Ryder’s face. “No.”
“They’re from the Sovereign’s pack,” Kai explained. “I called them as soon as you arrived.”
Chapter Four
Ryder
Rage tunneled my vision, and I snarled at my father. He stared me down with the ferocity only an Alpha could muster.
“You calledher,”I spat.
Dad nodded. “Your mother won’t let harm come to you or Elle. She has the forces and the political power to protect both of you from the High Witch.
Dad’s eyes—the eyes I had inherited from him—turning pleading. “I don’t, son. I wish I did, but I don’t.”
Part of me recognized the logic of his decision, but the kid inside me who’d been abandoned by his mother didn’t see it quite so clearly. Betrayal and worry and bitterness soured my stomach.
Beside me, Elle was frighteningly quiet, whereas my packmates were a flurry of chaos. They snarled and twitched at the incessant howling.
Wolves didn’t appreciate other wolves entering their territories.
“If they come in peace,” Landon, a thirty-something-year-old who spent more time on four legs than two called out, “why’d they bring so many of them?”
He wasn’t wrong. Several howls sang outside.
“Why is the Sovereign himself here?” Lauren, a blonde wolf with a crooked nose demanded. She stared out the dining hall’s tall windows with a scowl.
“Because the chimera is too important of cargo to letsomeone else fumble again,” Elle answered so quietly, human ears wouldn’t have caught it.
At the resignation in her eyes, I wondered just how accustomed to betrayal Elle was. I gritted my teeth.
“We can’t let him take the successor’s mate!” Maren, my childhood babysitter with perpetually smudged eyeliner cried out.
“Calm yourselves,” Dad commanded. “I would never put my son or his mate in harm’s way.”
Dad’s Alpha order paired with his gentle reassurance settled the tension in the others, but his power bounced off my skin like it was nothing and so did his pretty words. It didn’t matter anyway.
Knock. Knock.
They were here.
As Dad turned to greet them in the foyer, I took Elle’s hand and stared into her dark, honey-flecked eyes. Though her fear scented the air, her face was a mask of calm.
“We can run,” I promised. “There’s a million exits in this place.”
“Which I’m sure they’ve already surrounded,” she argued. She glanced around at my nervous packmates. “And I’m not sure weshouldrun.”
“Ellie,” I whispered, “they got your parents killed—”
“And if we stay with your pack,” she interrupted, “we will getthemkilled.”
A chill raced down my spine.
“Your father is right,” Elle continued. “The only wolf Cordelia will hesitate to attack is a fellow Leader. To attack one of her peers would get her impeached as the Leader of Witches. She won’t risk it. Not even for me.”
“I don’t trust my mother,” I growled, “and I trust the Sovereign even less.”
