Logan
Brie keeps toying with her coffee mug. It’s like a nervous tick. Like she needs to do something with her hands at all times.
If I were in a different state of mind, I’d probably be thinking about what those hands would feel like braced against my chest. I would again be questioning why I rejected her, ignoring and damn near forgetting why I needed to in the first place.
But right now, I’m blinded by absolute, stunning rage.
“Brie–”
“Not many,” she says under her breath. “Maybe… ten Alphas.”
I close my eyes, trying to pull myself together. Of course, I’ve seen the headlines, which are normally dominated by Blake, who tends to put himself in precarious situations at night clubs and other seedy establishments in Crescent Falls… but whispers about Brie have been more common since she turned twenty-one.
She confirms where my thoughts are headed when she says, “The public has a special interest in us now that we’re nearing maturity. I’m twenty-two. Blake will be twenty-one this winter, and Aris isn’t far behind. Everyone wants to know who our mates will be. It’s like a game to them.” She unfolds her legs and brings them up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her knees. “But it’s the Alphas I worry about. They’re watching all of us closely, wondering how the dynamic in the kingdom will shift as we start mating, and marrying. Things will change. Allies will change. There’s already an undercurrent of uncertainty now that my grandparents have announced Maeve is going to ascend the throne in three years. That sounds like so much time, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not. Three years from now, everything will be different in their eyes. There will be a full blooded Firestone witch on the throne again for the first time in… three thousand years. Some people aren’t happy about it. It scares them.”
She’s not wrong about the undercurrent. Crime has risen across the board. New rebel groups seem to pop up every day. Alphas have been pushing buttons, warring with what were once peaceful neighbors.
Hell, Ryatt even tried to convince Cole, once the Alpha King of all of Tarsian after his father’s death, to retake the territory after two of the three Alpha Kings there failed to maintain their thrones, falling to Alphas and rebels who split Tarsian into warring factions once again.
Cole and Misty had refused… for now, it seems. Their children are still in their teens and were born and raised in Crescent Falls. They’re not throwing their own kids into the fire.
But it’s not all bad. Many, if not most, of the people of Eastonia are rejoicing in Maeve’s ascension.
A few bad apples with enough charisma to sway a larger crowd can have the biggest impact, however.
I’ve seen it happen. It happened to me.
“I have an advantage being a princess,” she says, propping her chin on her knee while staring absently at the water. “Even without powers, I’m highly connected. Having a seat at my family’s table is like winning the lottery. It means power and wealth. It means influence.” She sighs heavily, looking down at her toes. “But it’s just not enough. I’d settle for a Beta–”
“Do you hear yourself?”
She bristles. I regret the harsh tone, but I’m beyond thinking or seeing rationally. “I know how it sounds. I don’t expect you to understand.”
“You’re essentially selling yourself for the benefit of your family.”
“I’m doing this for my sister,” she grinds out. “I still have three years. I have time to make an impact–”
“It’s not your responsibility–”
“It is,” she rasps. Her eyes suddenly well with tears that she quickly blinks away. “You don’t–you don’t have family so you can’t understand.”
The words hang in the air before crashing around us. I don’t flinch, but she sure does.
“Logan, I didn’t mean that.” She wipes her hand over her face, tugging her legs closer to her chest. “I didn’t mean–you just can’t possibly understand what I’m trying to accomplish. It’s why I rejected you, for Goddess’ sake.”
“Because I’m not an Alpha.”
She sighs. “Precisely.”
She’s right. I’m not an Alpha.
I’m the rightful Alpha fucking King of Emberfyll.
But I can’t get home, so it doesn’t matter.
Silence settles between us, so heavy and thick I can taste it as I sink into the armchair again.
“Why did you need to reject me?” she asks on a breath, like an afterthought.
I close my eyes as her words work through my body, slicing into me like knives. Last night when she’d asked about Emberfyll, I hadn’t told her the full story. Aviva and Ryan are the only ones who know. There are things I’ve told Aviva in particular that I doubt she ever repeated to Ryatt.
Brie doesn’t know about the war in Emberfyll. I didn’t tell her about losing everything, left to starve on the shore while the enemy crept closer, and closer, threatening my parents and the pack we had left.
But she knows I lost everyone. I washed up in her kingdom as an orphan and stayed one… by choice.
She’d also seen what I’ve been working on when I had my laptop out earlier.
“I am buying a boat,” I tell her, nodding to myself. “Soon. I have something lined up.”
“That’s–that’s great but an odd reason to need to reject someone–”
“You don’t get to say that, considering your reasoning is you need to marry someone with a higher, more persuasive rank than I have,” I cut back.
She frowns at me.
I roll my lower lip between my teeth, debating my next words. “I’m going back to Emberfyll. That’s always been the plan. A mate would have just gotten in the way of that happening. I can’t put down roots in a land where I don’t mean to stay.”
She stares at me, her face washed in a tangle of emotion that borders on pity, which I don’t need. Not from her, especially. I rise, resting my hand on the top of the chair, and say, “I guess it was… a perfect twist of fate that we were mates. Neither of us wanted it. It made things easier in the end.”
I meet her eyes. She looks just as secretly unconvinced as I feel.
“Yeah, I guess it was.”
When the silence settles a second time, I start toward the door, pausing to pour myself another cup of coffee. “I’ll be back later if you plan to spend the entire day here, in your room.”
“You don’t need to babysit me.”
I close the door behind me, ignoring her comment, leaving my laptop behind, and walk into the hallway gripping the black coffee like a lifeline as my senses start funneling back to normal. Being in Brie’s presence is unnerving, and we’ve already rejected each other. Maybe that takes time to fully dissipate, I’m not sure, but I’m in a totally foreign headspace around her.
And after this morning… I need to keep my head on straight.
I sip the coffee as I walk through the yacht like I’d done two hours ago when the crew started waking up for the day. I settled for the night in a stateroom a few doors down from Brie’s, but honestly, it doesn’t feel close enough anymore.
Not after walking into a conversation between two deckhands who’d immediately stopped whispering to each other the second I rounded a corner and dispersed, eyeing me over their shoulders as they disappeared into the recesses of the yacht.
But I’d noticed them. I’d taken in their details down to the way they walked, how their footfalls sounded on the polished floorboards.
I walk the length of the boat deck to deck before making my way upstairs to the cockpit where I find Charlie bent over the controls, monitoring a weather station. He looks up from the controls, swiping his dark blond hair out of his face. He’s a few years older than me, likely in his early thirties. I notice the thick gold wedding band on his ring finger as he motions for me to enter.
“Where’s the captain?” I ask, glancing around the snug space.
“Downstairs with the chief engineer, doing his rounds. I’m just… watching the weather.” He glances at the control panel again with a sigh that immediately sets me on edge.
I look out the window at the perfect, unblemished blue sky. “What about it?”
“We’ve got some reports from boats two days ahead of us, currently skirting past KiloKilo, of a big storm system causing rough seas.” He leans back in his chair, swiveling from side to side as he stretches his arms behind his head. “It’s tricky, that stretch. The closer you get to KiloKilo, the worse the seas get, even on a perfect day. Try staying in shallow water, closer to the islands stretching out from Maatua, and you risk running aground. We’re traveling through a straight, you know. To the north, you get sucked into KiloKilo’s magical fields that can sink a ship in minutes. To the south, the water gets so shallow you end up trapped on a sandbar.”
“So you’re saying we’re headed right into a storm without any options to go around it?”
He nods grimly. “A lot can happen in two days, though. The skies could clear if the storm dissipates, or it could head toward KiloKilo or Maatua, and we’ll miss it completely… but as of now, it’s headed toward us.”
I close my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose. “What kind of swells are we talking about here?”
“Ten to fifteen feet, possibly more if we hit it head on. One of the cargo ships recently reported waves in the thirties, but they’re in the storm as we speak.”
“So, slow down,” I tell him. “Give it some time to pass.”
“Tell that to the captain,” he laughs, shaking his head. “This is only my second year aboard this boat. Captain Louis has been ferrying this family since Queen Ella dropped the veil and made it possible for sea traveling between Veiled Valley and Maatua. He’s seen a thing or two and doesn’t believe this is anything to worry about.”
I’m obviously not convinced.
I leave the cockpit in search of the captain but end up standing in front of Brie’s door again. I knock before entering but find her curled up in bed, her body hugging a pillow.
She’s fast asleep that easily, even after a cup of coffee.
I edge into the room, closing the door behind me and locking it tight. I watch the sunlight play over her face, remembering for a split second a memory of her as a little girl.
She’d been all puffed up about Maeve. I’d just returned to Silverhide with Ryan and Aviva after chasing that witch into the forest. My hands were raw and burned from Maeve’s powers, but I’d saved her.
While the adults showered me with praise… Brie wasn’t convinced.
I remember her looking right at me, her nose crinkled with distaste, but then she saw the bandages on my hands.
“You saved her?” she’d asked, and I nodded, somehow understanding every word she’d said despite not knowing a lick of her language yet.
I had no idea she was my mate back then. I wonder if I’m doing that little girl a disservice now. Would things have been different if we’d met a year ago? Would I have accepted our bond knowing what I know about her now, knowing how she’d sacrifice herself to what I firmly believe is a lost cause? Could I have talked her out of it somehow?
She can’t prevent a theoretical civil war when Maeve rises to power. Even the Mystics can’t foresee that.
If I hadn’t been as close as I am now to finally returning to Emberfyll to see what’s left of my kingdom, would I have considered staying?
For her?
I sit down on the edge of the bed, facing the waves, watching the perfect, clear blue sky, wondering if fate will get in our way, again, in two short days.