*Maddox*
“You’re the mastermind behind all of this?” I ask Luna Elaine.
“That’s right,” she says, “and while you may have killed my daughter today, don’t think that it’s enough to stop me. If you want to keep your kingdom, you’re going to have to figure out who else is the enemy, Alpha King Maddox, and my revelation as the bad guy probably isn’t going to be the most shocking event related to this uprising.”
Her words have me seething, and I wish I could reach through the phone and smack her in the face. “If you honestly think that you can bring me down, you’re wrong,” I tell her. “You’re not capable of it, Elaine.”
She laughs, and it reminds me of her daughter’s witch’s cackle. Just when I thought I’d never hear that sound again, here it is, in my ear. “You are very confident, Maddox.” She says my name with a disrespectful lilt, and while I’m sure that’s because I’ve used her first name without her title, and she’s just trying to get me back, I don’t appreciate it.
“I am confident,” I tell her.
“Listen, I gave you the opportunity to prevent this from happening. You could have simply accepted my daughter as your next Luna Queen. You could have bedded her, which would’ve been enjoyable to you–she was very well trained in the art of lovemaking–and you could have an heir on the way right now. Your weakness would have been disposed of, and the other pack leaders would’ve recognized you as a strong, capable king. But now… well, she’s out of the picture, your breeder is nothing but a woman-child of unaffluent bloodlines, and even if she does manage to give you a child after all her body has been through, no one will accept that child as your heir to the throne. They’ll call the child a bastard and say he or she is not worthy of the throne. As they will not be because her parents are mere peasants. Who would want a child of such meager ancestry as the next ruler of our kingdom?”
My teeth grind together as I wish to tell her how wrong she is about everything she’s just said to me. But I can’t. Telling her the truth about Isla, that she’s actually a princess, that she’s already pregnant, none of those pieces of information are necessary for me to disclose at this juncture, and the last thing I want to do is give Luna Elaine more reason to come after Isla.
“You are wrong.” That’s all I can say, and it’s enough. “You will regret going against me, Elaine. Trust me, by the time this is over, you are going to be reunited with your daughter, but before you go, you’re going to wish you’d never ever crossed me.”
As her laughter begins to fill my ear again, I am ready to slam the phone down, but I have to ask the question I called in an effort to find the answer to. “Tell me the truth, Elaine. Zabrina’s true mate–it was Geofrey’s oldest son–wasn’t it?”
“I won’t tell you jack shit,” she says, no longer laughing.
“I am still your Alpha King, and you will!” I demand.
She scoffs at me, a chuckle escaping into my ear before she says. “It doesn’t matter. Zabrina had fooled many men in many packs into thinking they were her true love. You found that out today. Our reach is long and wide. You cannot stop all of us.”
“Tell. Me.”
“Fine,” she says. “Yes, her true mate was Thomas, Geofrey’s oldest son. It doesn’t matter now. All of her suitors are coming for you. All of the men that taught her how to pleasure a man so that she would have a chance to be your Luna Queen.”
“You will regret this.” Those are the last words I say to her before I slam the phone down and drop my head, rage and disgust flowing through me.
I sit there, seething, trying to decide what to do. She says there are enemies everywhere, ones I don’t even know about yet. This kingdom I love so much, one I’ve sworn my life to protect, is falling apart all around me. For the first time since I was a boy, I’m starting to doubt my abilities to do this.
Can I remain king?
“Sir?”
“Not now, Seth,” I say, not even looking up at my Beta who is standing in the doorway.
“It’s important, Your Majesty.”
I sigh deeply and lift my head to see him standing with his hands folded in front of him, and by his face, I can tell that he has something to tell me I’m not going to want to hear.
“What is it?”
He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, and then, in a voice so quiet I can hardly hear it, he says, “She was pregnant.”
My first instinct is to ask him who he’s talking about, but I already know. “How did we miss that?” Didn’t we examine her when she was in the prison?
“She was only a couple of weeks along,” he explains. “But in her current condition, Mystica was able to tell.”
“Shit,” I mutter. “So she didn’t even know?”
“No, she didn’t. But if anyone finds out–”
“No one will find out!” I bang my fist on the desk. “See to it.”
“Yes, sir,” he says. “But if they were… whoever the father is, well, it could be a problem.”
I almost laugh. If the news he’d just given me wasn’t so somber, I would have. Zabrina deserved to die, but the growing life within her did not. I would’ve spared her until the child was born if I had known, even though it was clearly dangerous to keep her alive. Now, I have killed a prisoner but also a child.
“We have more enemies than you could possibly imagine,” I attempt to explain.
Seth has a forlorn look on his face and asks, “We can do this, can’t we?”
For the first time in my life, I have to admit, “I don’t know.”
* * *
*Isla*
“What happened to Aunt Mary?” I ask. “Did she die?”
“She did die,” my mom says, but quickly enough, she adds, “but then she came right back to life.”
“And… she had powers,” my father tells me. “That became the true problem.”
“Powers?” I ask. “What sort of powers?”
“Your aunt was originally from an island near Maatua. It was a small island, a peaceful island, but that wasn’t because of how kind the people there were. No, it was because many of them had magic. People were afraid to mess with the inhabitants of KiloKilo because it never ended well for anyone who crossed them.”
“Many mages and wizards lived there,” my father says, and my forehead wrinkles into a crease. I hadn’t known that mages and wizards were real. “They were also shifters.”
“So your aunt already had some powers,” Mom continues. “Nothing too powerful. Just a bit of clairvoyance, not enough to help her predict her death, some ability to ward off evil spirits–except for her husband.”
“Are you saying that after she died and came back her powers were stronger?” I ask for clarification.
“That’s right. She could do many things she couldn’t before, like tell the future, control the weather, and even cause intense pain,” Dad tells us.
“That’s wicked cool!” Ben proclaims, but I’m not sure I agree with him.
“It was wicked,” Mom clarifies. “And when your uncle had control of her, he forced Mary to do many things she didn’t want to do.”
“Why would she listen to him?” I ask. “Why didn’t she just do something to hurt him?”
“Because he was her husband,” Dad reminds us. “She loved him. Even though he killed her, she felt the need to protect him, to help him, to work with him to get him what he wanted.”
“And what did he want?” Ben asks, but I already know the answer to that.
“Maatua,” I say, my voice just a whisper.
“Yes, he wanted to be king, but not just of the island–of the world,” Mom says.
“Eventually, Mary realized what he was doing was wrong,” Dad continues. “He waged war, and she helped him at first, but when he ordered her to kill a bunch of innocent women and children, she said no. They argued, and in a fit of rage, Mary caused a major earthquake.”
“It shook the entire island.” Mom has tears streaming down her cheeks as she speaks. “Buildings toppled. Thousands died. Mary was devastated.”
“It was then that she decided she had to do something to stop Tony,” Dad says. “So… she killed him.”
“She didn’t just kill him,” Mom says. “We were gone by then. We left right before the war began, but one of my close friends stayed until the bitter end. And according to Carol, Mary took Tony out to the pool and used her new powers to drop a large boulder on him. She stabbed him in the heart and let him lie right next to the pool, trapped by the boulder, until he died.”
My mouth is hanging open, listening to the story. It sounds awful, but it also sounds to me like Uncle Tony deserved to die a horrible death for what he’d done.
“Then… Mary cursed the island and disappeared. No one has seen her since.” Dad has a somber look on his face as he shakes his head, staring at the floor.
I let all of that settle into me, and I think about how much of it must be true and how much of it might just be an exaggeration.
If I were to go back to the island, maybe I could find Mary. Maybe I could get her to reverse the curse.
I don’t have any idea if my powers will allow me to save my baby on my own, but if there’s a chance that I can get to the pool and use the water to save my son’s life, then I will do it.
Even if Maddox forbids it.
“Do you think Mary will know who I am if she sees me?” I ask my parents.
They exchange confused looks. “What do you mean?” Mom asks. “She’s somewhere on the island, most likely. Or she went to her own island. When would she see you?”
I take a deep breath and answer her question. “When I go back to the island.”
“No,” Dad says. “Honey, you can’t do that, and there’s no need to. You saved Ben and that baby. You don’t need to go there to save the baby, and there’s nothing left of Maatua to save.”
I think he’s wrong. It’s my land, my ancestors’ legacy. I do need to go back and reverse the curse, bring back the people, make Maatua a home again. Not just for me, but for my baby.
Pushing up off of the chair, I stand near the bed as the door opens, and I don’t even have to look to see who is standing there. It’s just as well. He needs to hear this, too.
“I am going back,” I say. “I’m going to save Maatua from the curse, restore our family to the throne, and make sure my baby is safe.” Turning my face to look at Maddox, I add, “And no one is going to stop me.”