*Isla*
“Did you hang up on him?” Poppy asks me. She is pacing the floor about ten steps away from where I am sitting in the chair next to my bed, still staring at the phone. “You did, didn’t you? Bastard! Serves him right.”
I do not bother to remind her that Alpha King Maddox is our sovereign and we should not be calling him names. Given the circumstances, she can call him whatever she’d like to.
The Moon Goddess knows I’ve called him enough names myself in my head over the last couple of hours that I can’t be pointing out what she’s doing as if I am totally innocent. I just haven’t said anything out loud.
I didn’t want to believe it was true.
After I spoke to Antony, I came back to my room and walked in to find Poppy standing in front of my bed with her arms folded. I couldn’t tell if she was about to cry or if she wanted to scream, but I knew at that moment that whatever it was that had her so worked up it had to do with Maddox.
And since I’d just heard the worst news imaginable about him myself, I had to assume it was the same.
The other maids had heard the same information that Antony had told me about in the garden—that there was to be some sort of a contest amongst the Alphas' daughters from chosen packs and that Alpha Maddox would be choosing one of them as his next Luna Queen.
Of course, I hadn’t heard it myself, which made me think I wasn’t one of them, but even if it was, it didn’t matter.
I am not about to lower myself to auditioning to be the next Luna Queen when I have been living here in the castle as his lover for months. I’m carrying his child. He has told me that he loves me more than once. What more can I do?
No, even if my father were to call me right this moment and tell me the news and say I am also allowed to be in the consort group, I wouldn’t say yes.
When I look up at her, I see that Poppy is shaking her head so methodically, she looks like it might come unattached and fly across the room. “When those maids told me what was going on,” she begins, and I have already heard this and don’t really want to hear it again, but I am too numb to tell her to stop, “they thought it was so funny. It was like they were rubbing it in my face that I didn’t even know what Alpha King Maddox is up to.”
Rubbing it in her face? I keep my question to myself. I know what she means, and I definitely know how she feels.
“Those little bitches were just laughing! I think they only asked me to come up there so they could make fun of me.”
Again… why is this about her?
I say nothing. I know the real reason she was asked to come up there was so that Antony could get me alone. I don’t bother to say it, though. It doesn’t matter. The room is cloudy through my veil of tears. I just want to curl up and go to sleep. I wish I knew how Maddox was capable of being so cruel.
When the phone rings, it jars me, much like it did the first time it had rung. I can’t even see it, though, my eyes are so watery.
“Don’t even answer it!” Poppy warns. “Let him stew. Let him think about his selfish ways! To not even tell you the truth when you asked him point blank!”
To be fair, I had not asked him point blank. I had asked him if he had something to tell me, and he’d said no. If he didn’t want to tell me, that is his business. But it doesn’t make me excited to speak to him.
“I’m going to answer it,” I tell Poppy, wiping my eyes. “He’ll just keep calling until I do.” The last time, I hadn’t wanted to answer either, but after the ringing began to echo in my ears, I decided I’d better just do it.
“Hello?” I say as Poppy shouts in the background that I should let her speak to him.
“Isla?” Maddox sounds concerned, like maybe he realizes something is actually wrong. “Did we get cut off?”
“No,” I tell him. “I figured if you don’t have anything you want to tell me about, then it’s probably best that we don’t speak right now. Do you still not have anything you want to tell me about?”
He is silent for a long moment. I can hear my heart hammering in my chest and wonder if he can hear it, too.
“Isla, what have you heard?” he asks, and suddenly he sounds defensive, like maybe I am the one who has made the mistake here.
“What do you mean?” I ask him. “Is there a possibility I might have heard something upsetting, Maddox?”
His sigh is deafening. “Isla, there’s a lot of talk right now about me finding a Luna Queen. The other packs don’t know about our… circumstances. Their Alphas are pushing me to choose one of their daughters to reign beside me. It’s a power play on their part, and nothing more. I am completely opposed to it, I assure you. And I think you must know that. But… all of this is part of going to war.”
“Oh,” I say nonchalantly. “Is that all it is? Just part of what boys do when they go off to fight? They arrange for swarms of beautiful young women to be waiting with open arms in their homes when they return from battle? Do they all conveniently forget to tell the woman who is carrying their child, or is that just something a king gets to do?”
I am so bold when I speak to him now, I hardly recognize my own voice. Poppy’s eyes are full of mirth as she watches me, chuckling under her breath. I half expect her to lift a hand and wait for a high-five, but this isn’t really one of those sorts of moments. I am mad. I am downright pissed. And I want some real answers.
“Isla,” he says, and I know that tone. I am being ridiculous. I am being too much. I have let something silly hurt my feelings again. “Please, don’t be like this. I wanted to tell you about it in person.”
“Well, you didn’t get that chance, Maddox, and now I have found out about it other ways.” I cannot betray that it was Antony who initially told me about it because that’s not something a commander would tell his charge.
“Who told you? Rather, who told Poppy?” he asks.
“It doesn’t matter. The whole staff knows—and I am the laughingstock of the entire castle. ‘Stupid Isla who doesn’t even know the man she’s sleeping with is ready to fuck a whole bunch of other women the moment they stick their toes in the castle.”
I hear a low growl in my ear and know I have made him mad now, though I’m not sure which one of my comments does it until he asks, “Who is making fun of you? I want to know right now. I want names.”
I wouldn’t dare. It’s not the maids’ fault, after all. They shouldn’t have been making fun of me, but I can’t blame them for repeating what they heard. That’s what maids do, after all. If it weren’t for them, a lot of us would never have any idea what the hell is going on.
“I’m not telling you that,” I say. “You can’t blame them. This is your fault, Maddox.”
Again, he is growling in my ear. “No one makes fun of you and gets away with it, Isla. No one.”
I can’t help the chuckle that comes out of my mouth. It sounds a bit crazed, but I don’t bother to try to rein it in. “Well, whose fault is it that I look like a fool? You didn’t think it was worth a moment or two to warn me? To tell me in advance, ‘By the way, the other Alphas have gotten it into their heads that I need a wife, so I’m trying to appease them,’? Assuming that’s what this truly is. An appeasement.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he demands, and now I feel like he’s trying to turn the tables on me, to be the one who gets to be angry.
Fuck that.
“What do you think it means?” I ask him. “You want me to trust you that this is all just for show and that you’re going to do… what? Date these girls for a little while and then send them home? And that’s going to make their fathers happy? What if you can’t do that, Maddox, and in order to prevent another uprising you have to marry one of them? Or what if you actually fall in love with one of them?”
“You can’t possibly think either one of those scenarios can play out,” he says, and he still sounds angry.
“I have no idea what can happen,” I tell him. “After all, I’m just a meager servant girl, dumped here by her Alpha to pay a debt. I’m not intelligent enough or regal enough to know what royals such as yourself do in your free time.”
“Isla! I have never once treated you like you are less than me—never!” he says.
But I do have a retort for that. “Really, Maddox? You don’t think so? Well, I’d hate to be the one to tell you this, but you just did! Not bothering to tell me the truth about all of this is treating me like I don’t matter, like I’m too unimportant or stupid to comprehend it or to get a say in what happens. And maybe a few months ago, you would’ve been right to treat me that way. But now? I know who I am, thank you very much. I am a princess, Goddessdamnit! And I will not be treated like I am unimportant to you. So if you want to pick and choose from among the more important Alphas’ daughters to find a wife--or even just pretend to--you have to know I will not sit by and watch it!”
With that, I slam the phone down so hard, it shook.
Tears are streaming down both of my cheeks when Poppy drops to her knees and wraps her arms around me. “You showed him, Princess Isla, you badass!” she says into my shoulder. “I think I’ll rip the phone out of the wall so he can’t call back.”
I giggle through my tears at her statement. I feel both completely broken inside and vindicated, like I finally stood up for myself and spoke my mind.
“No, don’t do that,” I tell Poppy. “I may need to call my parents.”
She pulls back from me so that she can look into my eyes. “Are you thinking about going home?”
All I can tell her is, “Maybe.”