Page 48 of The Sacred Wolf

“What do we say?”

It was my turn to swallow hard. “I don’t know.”

“What are you on about now, Kiana?” Maximo’s brow furrowed in annoyance. “Have you gone crazy? Why would Elyse bite her human… friend?”

Thankfully, his gaze was locked on my sister, and he didn’t seem to have noticed my dalliance with Evan in WTF-land. Still, it was only a matter of time before he caught the panic in my scent because my underarms had turned to faucets and an odd dizziness was creeping from my belly toward my head.

“By the Great Goddess Leto,” Mateo murmured, his eyes widening to full moons.

Uh-oh.

“Double shit,” Evan’s inner voice was pure fury. “Abort mission!”

I shoved his thoughts away so I could concentrate all my mental effort on begging the universe to change Mateo’s mind, to make him stop looking at me that way, like I was an apparition or a sorceress or…were those freaking tears in his eyes?

But the universe was not on Team Elyse today.

Max’s Beta, the second most powerful member of the Manhattan pack sank to his knees in his impeccable two-thousand-dollar Tom Ford suit like he was one of Ayla’s hippies, his dark head bowed.

“Elyse, I am yours to command.”

This is bad..

Max’s head snapped toward us, and he jumped up from his chair, nearly knocking it over in his surprise. “What in the Gods’ name are you doing, Mateo?!”

Double fluff.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Elyse, who the hell are these smelly weirdos?” My twin demanded five minutes later as soon as the Children of Leto filed into the room, bowing low before both of us. I would’ve thought Kiana would have been more into the whole worship bit, but occasionally, it was obvious we were cut from the same cloth. She desired very specific kinds of attention, and this… this was not it.

“Kiana, for once, could you just try to be nice?” I implored, smacking Jasper’s hand away as he reached for my collarbone.

The vegan-leather and tie-dyed cotton coterie that was the Children of Leto could not have been more out of place than in Max’s office with its kitchen-island sized desk, eight-foot windows overlooking Central Park, and scattering of Victorian-era furnishings as intentionally ornate as the handwoven Persian rug if they had been on their way to the Met gala.

“Seriously, what does bathing in a vat of patchouli have to do with prophecy?” My sister sidled closer to me and hissed beneath her breath, and for a moment, I felt a flush of warmth for this glimpse of camaraderie long ago lost.

“Mirror twins,” Ayla breathed, her eyes dreamy. “Just like Chann and Marrak. I can’t believe we’re fortunate enough to have found you.”

The only person in the room more annoyed to see the Children of Leto than my sister was Max, his nose frozen in a wrinkled position that marred his otherwise dashing visage.

“I’d say this is a disaster,” Evan seethed, as Monty began audibly praying in his direction. “But it’s not. It’s a cluster—”

“Shut it,” I fumed at Evan. I didn’t love Evan’s apparent open door to my private headspace. My mind was crowded enough with my wolf pointing out my shortcomings at every turn. The only thing welcome about Mateo having summoned the Children was that Ayla might have some insight into what the ever-loving-hell was happening.

“Please,” Max said, pinching the bridge of his nose and looking even wearier, if that were possible, than he had just ten minutes prior. “Explain it to me again. I’m having trouble registering this…uh, this…”

“Utter nonsense?” Kiana offered.

His mouth twisted in what I assumed from his scent was deepened annoyance that he agreed with my ever-disagreeable sister, but all he said was, “Enough. I’m the Alpha of Manhattan. All of this, whatever we want to call it, is happening in my territory. I need to understand it.”

Mateo cleared his throat, his gaze straying toward me with the goggle-eyes typical of the Children. “Well, Your Grace…” he began.

I rolled my eyes. I’d never heard Mateo use the honorific with Max. The power in the room seemed to have upended him.

I wanted to retch.

“…when I joined the Children, I was barely more than a pup, just in college, and the prophecy seemed like a piece of history that was never to be reborn. But what we know, if we believe history, was that Chann and Marrak had special powers. And if what Elyse has told us is true—”

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