Page 5 of Furever Loyal
“You’re seeing her? Where? Isn’t she going to come here…with her bodyguards?”
Haley laughed. “Not this time, sorry.”
“Darn. Okay, how long do I have?”
She thought about it for a moment. “Ten minutes. I don’t want to be late.”
“On it…where are you meeting her?”
“I’m not meeting her anywhere.” Haley took a deep breath. “I’m going to the manor.”
Danielle was quiet, which was unusual for the normally talkative woman. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” She hung up and stared at herself in the mirror on the side wall.
Thank goodness I just had all my dry cleaning done. At least I’ll look sharp.
Her stomach just curled into more knots.
3
Kincaid stood still, trying his best not to fidget as the Queen spoke. About him.
After being recalled to the Manor, he and Kvoss had taken a charter jet back the following morning. Two days later, he was still working to adjust to the time change and standing up while someone else spoke about him was not the best way to keep him awake. Even if she was saying nice things.Extremelynice things.
Although he and the Queen had never been at odds like he had been with her husband, the late King, Kincaid had expected that animosity to carry over. He’d been in Europe when a group of traitors had attempted to seize power via force, killing the King, his heir the Knight, the House’s best fighter known as the Champion, and others. Many of the title holders, those with positions of power within the House, had been killed.
The Queen was now beginning to replace them. Kincaid looked over at Kirell, the newly appointed Captain of the House, and an old friend. He exchanged tiny nods of support with the man, glad to see he had remained loyal. Too many others that Kincaid had thought his friends had turned on the House. They were all dead, as were others he’d called friends and who had stayed loyal.
It was a trying time for Ursa, but the bear shifters would recover, he was confident of that. House Canis would pay in time if they could ever prove the mangy werewolves had been behind the entire thing. Until then though, he vowed to do whatever was necessary to help put his House back in order. Until a few days ago, that had been keeping Europe stable and running smoothly.
My, how things can change in seventy-two short hours.
It hadn’t even been that long, and now Kincaid was standing in front of the remaining Title Holders, and all the other members of the House with any bit of power. Together they listened as the Queen made an impassioned speech, urging them to put aside the old traditions so that she could appoint him as a Title Holder.
The notion was enough to make him laugh. In fact, that was what he’d done when the Queen had spoken to him in private and told him she wanted him to fill the position of Hunter. The cold glare he’d received had stopped him quickly. Kaelyn had been serious about it.
“We need this, Kincaid,”she’d said, pacing back and forth in her private offices, while Kirell stood quietly in the background. “The House must have a Hunter.”
“They’ll never allow it,” he’d stated. “Tradition says that to be a Title Holder, one must have a mate. I am unmated. Always have been. I kind of like it that way.”
“I know,” his Queen had said. “But therein lies the difficulty. Without a Hunter, we will have no new source of mates. Unless we accidentally stumble across them, as did Kirell, then we will have empty positions for years to come. Decades. We can’t wait on fate to run its own course, Kincaid. I told Kirell this when I appointed him. The House must be made whole. It must be made strong, in time to face the coming dark.”
He’d laughed, told her that House Canis would never move outright against them. It would cost too much. What she’d said next had chilled his bones.
“The wolves are not of whom I speak,” Kaelyn had said quietly, her eyes dark, hooded.
Canis,not the enemy? The two great Houses had bickered and fought back and forth for decades now, ever since House Drakos had withdrawn from the world. Who else could be the enemy? The Mage Council was weak, powerless, the strongest of their number hunted and killed by the shifters of all races.
That much, at least, they could agree upon.
Kaelyn hadn’t had an answer to his question, however, only stating that she could feel it within her bones. There was some magic in her bloodline, an ancestor who had been the Magi of House Ursa some centuries back. She attributed her feeling to that, but it gave her no further insight.
It was for that reason that he’d agreed to work with her, to stand for nomination to the position of Hunter. Kincaid had never wanted to be a Title Holder. In fact, he’d been more than content in Europe, away from the politics, away from this place. All the Houses, major and minor, had their seats of power in Plymouth Falls, which meant that politics and infighting were worst here. In Europe, all he’d had to worry about were rogue mages and the occasional shifter doing something stupid.
Hunter.
Not a position he’d ever thought about. They operated behind the scenes, mostly, holding little real power on the political field, and yet being coveted by all. Hunters were given the ability to see the strings that joined a mated pair together. They were given brief glimpses, hints, really, of how fate operated. All through the use of magic, something he detested.
