Page 22 of So I Won a Werelion

“I have a piece, but he has a bigger piece. I tried to play it cool, like he didn’t have the most important shifter relic in the history of artifacts in his hands. He wants to do a story about it.”

“No,” I growled, and turned to look at the rest of the room.“He can never find out what it is.”

Wendy should’ve never known about it either. I’d broken the rules for her, and I’d swear that long-dead shifter king had cursed me for telling her our secrets.

The kids had distracted everyone with the trampoline, but Bibi caught my eye. I gave her a thumbs up, which earned a megawatt smile.

Shit. She probably thought that meant Wendy was coming back to the show. Or that she wanted me.

“Gabe, I need your help. I wanted to call you and fix what happened on that stage, but I kept chickening out.”

If she’d called before now, I would’ve had to let it go to voice mail. Let Bibi handle it. Her timing was perfect. That had tomean something. “I’m glad you called me. You know you always can.”

She sighed. “This story can never go public, and I don’t know how to stop it from happening. Every time I talk to the reporters, they twist my words and everything gets worse. There’s a whole bunch of them outside the building right now. If my sister thinks I’ve been—”

“Slumming with shifters?” I growled. Wanda had always had a problem with us. Even back in high school. And this new development she was working on was too close to the local packs' land for comfort.

“No! Well, maybe, you know Wanda.” She chuckled sadly. “I don’t want to make this worse, and I have a feeling it’s about to get a whole lot worse.”

“What do you want to do about it?” I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to see her.Claim her. The only thing that could make the Sempiternal Scepter falling into the wrong hands seem inconsequential was the chance to reconnect with my mate.

“Some of those council shifters threatened to kill me and the rest of my dig team if I went looking for the Scepter again. I don’t know what they’ll do if the story goes public. If I get you involved, I might be putting you in danger.”

“We’ll figure it out.” I stepped out of the training area and lowered my voice. “Bibi’s here. She knows I’m talking to you, and I have a feeling that she thinks you want to come back to the show. If that’s the case, she’ll want us to meet up ASAP, and there will definitely be a camera crew in tow.”

“Oh.”

Shit. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her about Bibi. But if I was to have a chance with her, I had to tell her the truth. About everything.

“What’s Bibi doing there?”

“Helping me get you back.” But an ancient artifact might have been able to accomplish what a drag queen couldn’t. “We can tell them what happened, or we can make this look like a date.”

Wendy paused for a moment.I really wanted her to pick door number two. And this time, she’d give me a chance.

“It looks like we have a date tonight.”

Chapter

Six

Wendy

The only thing that could distract me from freaking out about the prospect of an actual date with Gabe Wylde that would be filmed and watched by millions was having a piece of the Sempiternal Scepter in my purse.

I didn’t have time to go home after the groundbreaking and get my old texts and notes without Wanda losing her shit, so I’d been desperately searching for information online to refresh my memory about the legends. I was fairly certain I’d found the holy grail of all shifter relics, but there was no website that could confirm or deny my suspicion.

This is what I could remember: The legends were incomplete. At least, my version of them had gaping holes in them. Gabe had told me the story the same night he’d told me that he’d never take a mate. He could’ve made the whole thing up to soften the blow of rejecting me. According to sixteen-year-old Gabe, shifters used to be immortal. But some of them weren’t loyal to their king at the time, he got pissed off, hid the Scepter, and punished them by making them mortal. The lore had mostly been passed down by oral tradition, and a few veryvague references in textbooks that would only make sense if someone knew what they were looking for.

Very few humans did.

I’d been frantically refreshing the local news site, thanking the moon and any other heavenly body willing to listen that the story had yet to drop.

So far, so good.

“Wendy.”

I gasped and put my hand on my chest when Wanda opened the door to my office.“What’s wrong?”

---