Chapter 3: The Secret
1743 Words
-Ronan-
They were surprised. Most of them were, at least, as I entered the room where they were all sitting at a long brown table. Only my little informant was smiling because he knew why I was there. I had some questions I needed answers to, and it seemed like these people held those exact answers.
The room started to have a faint smell of nervousness. Yes, they were definitely hiding something, I concluded internally. I found my place at the end of the table. I looked at everyone for a little while, my eyes lingering on my informant before I turned them to Colum. He had a seat at the table as well.
Yet only the most powerful alphas in the U.S.A. did, and that made about 10 seats, but there weren’t many of us left. The humans were the ones who were pretty much ruling now, so it was a wonder 10 people still sat here, not including me.
I continued to look at Colum for a little while. He could meet my eyes, but something told me he didn’t want me here either. He knew, I thought. He knew why people were suddenly nervous. I could see it in his eyes, and I bet he could see in mine how displeased I was. He better have a f*****g good explanation for this, I growled in my head.
“My King, what are you doing here?” one of them asked.
“Can’t I be here?” I countered, turning my attention to one of the oldest members here.
He seemed to only turn more nervous. As king, even if I wasn’t invited to the meeting, I technically had the right to come here anyway.
“Now, what is on the agenda today?” I asked and let my eyes run over all of them.
I could see the nervous look on everyone’s faces. Only my informant was still looking quite happy. Why had he brought me here? What was it he hoped to achieve?
“Well?” I pressed.
“You came here with a purpose, didn’t you, my King?” Colum inquired.
He could read me, just like I could read him, and I knew there was no reason to play games now.
“I heard there was a reason to come today,” I said.
“Did you?” he questioned, and I saw his eyes briefly travel across the table to my informant before they returned to me.
“So? What is so important about this meeting? Huh?” I questioned.
Everyone was quiet, glancing at each other, and it got on my nerves. There was a reason people were acting so strangely, but even if I knew effective ways to intimidate people into talking, I believed a different approach was better today.
That’s why I hadn’t even brought anyone from my trusted circle, not even Enzo. But of course, he was also a vampire and couldn’t travel in the daylight. As king, I had made sure long ago to surround myself with people I could trust, creating an inner circle. I thought Colum was part of it, but now I was wondering if that was true.
“We were going to tell you,” Colum assured me.
“Tell me what?” I asked, now very annoyed that I had been kept in the dark.
“We just wanted to wait a little.”
“For?” I inquired.
They all glanced at each other again.
“Until you were prepared,” the oldest member replied.
“Prepared? Prepared for what?”
“A new mate,” Colum answered.
The room went dead silent, and my eyes narrowed as I glared at my friend. What the hell was he talking about? A new mate? I repeated internally. He knew I didn’t want a new mate. I never wanted a mate again after Adrianna died. She was the only one, and she always would be. He couldn’t be serious?
“What?” I growled lowly.
Colum glanced at the table in front of him briefly, sighing a little, before he met my eyes.
“I was going to ease you into this,” he told me.
“Ease me into what? You know I had a queen, and that was the only queen I wanted. She was pregnant with my child!” I exclaimed.
Everybody knew about Adrianna. She was the last female hybrid. Of course, she had made history, and so had her death and my son’s.
“I know,” he replied, his voice calm and collected, which only pissed me off more, but I knew he was also keeping a calm tone to avoid riling me up more.
“Then what the hell do you think you are doing telling me to get a new mate?” I yelled.
“This was why we didn’t want to tell you yet,” he said, trying to make me see reason. “You aren’t ready.”
“I will never be ready! Are my words not clear enough to you?”
He looked at me with such a sad look, as if he truly understood my pain, and maybe he did. A little of it at least because he knew how hard it would be if he ever lost his mate and child, but he hadn’t. So, he had no right to tell me to move on when he had never experienced the loss I had.
“This is different,” he remarked.
“Different? You mean she is different? The one you have found,” I growled.
He nodded.
“What? Is she from some perfect wolf line that I simply cannot refuse?” I asked mockingly.
He shook his head. “No.”
“Vampire then?”
He shook his head again, and now I felt confused. If this wasn’t some fancy highborn that they wanted me to get mated to, then why was this so important to them?
“Then what?” I pressed.
Colum glanced at some of the other members, but they all knew there was no way they could keep this a secret any longer. I would get my answers one way or another.
“Colum!” I called.
“She is a hybrid.”
Again, dead silent. There was nothing but the sound of our breathing filling the room, perhaps accompanied by the pounding of my heart—though I wondered if it was only audible to me.
A hybrid, I repeated internally.
I didn’t want to believe that was true because Adrianna was the last female hybrid. There was no one else left but her. I was certain of it. This simply couldn’t be true! It wasn’t possible, so I started to lightly shake my head.
“Yes,” Colum said.
“No!” I countered. “There are no more!”
The thing about hybrids was that we had a very strong and deep connection to each other. Even if we weren’t related or even mates, we were all deeply connected. If it were true that there was another female hybrid out there, then everything in me would demand that I go out and find her and protect her.
But I also knew that every vampire and werewolf out there would demand more from me than that. They would want me to mate with her and continue the hybrid line. Hybrids had always been the rulers. We were a mix between the two races, but we were also our own race. We couldn’t be created by pairing a wolf and a vampire together, which was why it was crucial that I mated with this secret and most likely nonexistent hybrid female.
This was why they had been desperate for me to be with her and so secretive about it. They probably knew I would deny her existence, and that was why they wanted to ease me into the idea of her.
“There is one left,” he said.
“How?” I questioned.
Colum seemed a little lost here.
“That is what we have been trying to figure out. We aren’t completely sure yet,” he revealed. “We have some people looking through the history books and your family line and such. We are trying to figure out how she came to exist. We do know she is a bit more vampire though, so we believe she had a parent that was a hybrid and one who was a vampire.”
I tapped a finger against the table in front of me, turning my eyes to my informant. I knew now why he had asked me to come and why he wanted to be the one to bring me here. He wanted the glory of being the one who informed me of this secret hybrid.
He didn’t want to wait and spend time getting me used to the idea of her, probably because he wouldn’t be the one doing that. That was Colum’s job, which meant when I finally accepted it, he would be the one who was rewarded for it. However, my informant was an i***t. I was almost madder at him than anyone here.
“Where is she?” I inquired, ignoring the information Colum had given me.
Colum looked at the table in a way that worried me.
“What?” I asked.
“We… We don’t have her anymore,” he admitted.
“Excuse me!”
“The vampires somehow got to her last night.”
“Of course, they did,” I snarled.
They wanted to be the ones who handed her over to me. I looked over at my informant to see what he was thinking about this, but he looked shocked, as if he didn’t know this and knew his chance of getting on my good side was slipping from his hands.
“How perfect,” I groaned sarcastically before I got up from my chair.
“Where are you going?” Colum asked.
“Well, where the f**k do you think? I will find out if this is true, and if it is, then… well, I am certainly not leaving her in the care of any of you. You are all incompetent for losing her!” I growled.
I turned away, tired of this stupid meeting, and I had some questions that I still needed answers to. Like who the f**k was she?
- Writer
