Eli rocked back in his seat like he didn’t have a care in the world. Knowing him, he didn’t. I knew what concerned him rarely concerned the council, and vice versa.
Honestly, I was surprised he hadn’t changed the council since he’d taken over from his father, but in a way, Eli was respectful, and I figured that was why he’d kept the same assholes on, hadn’t brought in fresh meat to rejuvenate these lofty chambers in honor of his father’s memory.
Everyone knew Merinda had suffered since her mate’s death, and everyone had been on tenterhooks around her.
I had to wonder if, now, after her passing, Eli would shake things up further.
Dear Mother, I hoped so.
Anything to see that prick, Conrad, get his just deserts.
“All will be revealed once the council is in session,” Eli said softly, eying Brandon with a matching discontent that came from his lack of appreciation at being questioned.
Even I rarely questioned Eli when he spoke with that tone of voice, but apparently, Brandon was an asshole with an inability to discern whether or not he should shut the fuck up.
Not that I minded if Eli tore his ass crack wide open… Brandon was a douche.
Had been since middle school, when he’d had his first rite and his wolf had presented itself as being powerful enough to be beta.
Not all powerful wolves were assholes, but unfortunately for the Highbanks pack, a lot of the powerful men and women here were.
I wasn’t sure if it had something to do with the water, some mass chemical spill that put us in line to be surrounded by more idiots than usual…
“Anyway,” I inserted when Brandon stood there, head bowed in the face of Eli’s irritation. “Not sure when you stopped being able to count, but there’s only me here.”
“Tweedle Dee and Dum are rarely separate for long,” Conrad sniped, twisting around to find Austin. “Where is he anyway?”
“He’ll enter when I ask him to.”
If they didn’t hear the forbidding note in Eli’s tone, then I wasn’t sure what hope they had. He was seconds away from his anger snapping. I could literally feel his wolf’s outrage throbbing through his damn skin.
I stared at him, wondering at that. Wondering how I could feel his wolf, even though he was still in his human skin…
Had I never felt that before?
Or had I always felt it, and it was just more powerful at the moment because I was so close to him?
I wasn’t sure which was true, but I figured it had something to do with Sabina.
Knowing she was in the outer chamber with Austin filled me with a kind of strength I’d never had before.
She was as in the dark as we were, but really, her confusion went to a whole other level than ours did. At least we understood how our society worked. It was totally new to her. But the link between us was as alien to us as it was to her, so in that, we had a level playing field. But…
Always a but.
Her presence fired me on, giving me strength as I leaned against the edge of Eli’s desk, perching myself there as I folded my arms across my chest.
I was a strong wolf, powerful, and if I hadn’t been a twin, if I’d just been a regular man, I’d have probably been able to take Eli on in a challenge. I wasn’t sure who’d win. Maybe Austin would even whoop my ass first, but there was a fire in us all that burned at a similar heat.
Even while Eli was bristling, I felt it but wasn’t affected by it. Unlike Conrad and Brandon, who were cringing at Eli’s displeasure. That they were still questioning things told me how annoyed they were to have me here.
Pedants.
Pissants.
Someone slipped behind Conrad, and a quick glance revealed it to be his wife, Larissa. She blanched at Eli’s dominance, then quickly muttered, “Everyone’s here,” before tugging on Conrad’s elbow and slipping away to avoid the alpha’s evident outrage.
“He should leave. You know it’s bad luck to have him here.”
“Well done, Scrappy,” I remarked drolly, “you have a voice.”
Conrad glared at me. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“You’ve made my welcome quite evident throughout the years,” I murmured, priding myself on the lack of intonation in that statement. He’d tried to make our lives hell on a regular basis.
“Conrad, get over with the others,” Eli barked.
“But, Alpha, they shouldn’t—”
The growl snapped through the room like a whip of fire lashing through the atmosphere. When the scent of urine floated through the air, I smirked, perched my ass harder on the desk, and settled in for the show.
“Well, that wasn’t embarrassing, Connie, was it?”
The councilman didn’t even look at me. His eyes were trained on Eli’s like an electromagnet had turbocharged the link between them, making it impossible for Conrad to look away.
“Do you purposely challenge me?” Eli grated out, his voice like silk slithering over broken glass.
“N-No! Of course not, Alpha,” Conrad stuttered, and before my eyes, I watched as he tried and failed to break the hold Eli had on him, wriggling around like a mouse caught in a cat’s paw as the alpha forced him to shift.
All around us, there was the throbbing hush of people who couldn’t believe their eyes. I could feel that pulse in my veins, could feel it tunneling down into my being.
Most had scuttled away to the far end of the room, just out of range of the wrath-fueled dominance Eli was pouring out in waves. Even Brandon was starting to quiver in the face of it, but me?
It rolled through me, charring me but not hurting me.
When something inside Eli clicked, I felt it. I felt that click like it was my own control being attacked, and when another growl rumbled along the air, I wasn’t surprised at the wave of shifts that occurred.
From a room filled with twenty-four fawning councilors in their human skins, to a mix of humans and wolves suddenly cowering against each other.
The sight filled me with amusement, for these were the ones who’d treated us so badly all our lives.
But even as I let their shame fill me, even as I bathed in it somewhat, I twisted around and murmured, “Eli? We have things to discuss.”
The alpha, in the brink of releasing a growl that would probably have more than one shifted beast in the room pissing themselves too, adding to the growing puddle emanating from Conrad’s feet, blinked and cut me a look.
I stared at him, let him see that I was unaffected by his wrath, and murmured softly, “Sabina.”
The word had him jerking back, and I wondered if, in the haze of his wolf raging against the verbal challenge from men who weren’t strong enough to clean his boots, never mind help him lead the pack, he’d forgotten exactly what it was she meant to us.
With that singular mention of her name, however, it secured his attention.
He straightened his shoulders and muttered, “Conrad, shift back.” As his anger ceased rumbling through the room like storm clouds in the night sky, I could feel them start to relax, could feel them lessen their holds on their wolves.
Conrad shifted back, but his face was a ruddy red. On another man, in another world, I’d have probably seen hatred on his features. Hatred and the urge for revenge. But because I was looking for both, hoping for both, I was disappointed to see only shame.
He wasn’t behind Sabina’s attack.
And his shame was focused on the fact that the alpha had debased him so utterly.
Conrad had, it seemed, lost the pissing contest between them.
“What are you chuckling at?”
Austin’s words slithered into my brain. I could hear nuances, could hear moods, and all without him uttering a word.
I wasn’t sure why we had this ability, but it made it damn handy in situations like this one.
“There was a real-life pissing contest in the council chambers,” I informed him. “Conrad lost. He’s standing in a puddle of piss.”
Austin snorted,
but it was Sabina who stunned me by muttering, “Gross.”
She sounded clear as a bell tolling through a valley, and it stunned me because, even a few hours ago, when she’d accidentally transmitted her appreciation for my brother’s ass when he bent over to pass her a paper she’d knocked off the table at breakfast, it had been faintly rusty.
This sounded clearer. Every day that passed, it was getting easier to communicate with her in that way.
My brow puckered, but I didn’t reply to her, instead, to Conrad, and knowing it would piss him off, I murmured, “Clean that up.”
His nostrils flared with outrage, and where with Eli there’d been no hatred, here there was.
Loud and clear.
My lips curved at the sight of it. I wasn’t sure whether Conrad had the balls to orchestrate an attack on a human woman just to get to Austin and me, but I knew he detested us enough to transmit it for all to see.
“Yes. Conrad, you made a mess. Fix it.”
When his wife scuttled toward him, her hands fluttering around her hips as she approached, evidently wanting to make things better for her shamed husband, I stated firmly, “Return to the others, Larissa.”
She flinched, then glowered at me, but she stopped in her tracks. “You have no dominion over me.”
“Don’t I?” Eli inserted on my behalf, making her flinch again.
“Of course, Alpha.”
“Then do as he says. Return to the others. Conrad, you will clean up your own mess. Get a mop and bucket from the staff.”
Conrad’s eyes widened in distress before Eli growled and he rushed off, evidently not wanting to piss himself in front of the alpha again.
I didn’t smirk, even though I could have. I hated Conrad with a passion. He’d always been the one visiting my mother one night, and then sneering at her the next day while ignoring Austin and me, treating us like we were fucking lepers.
“Calm down, brother. We can’t change the past.”
I knew we couldn’t, but sometimes, it was hard not to remember.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
I sighed at Sabina’s question. Something inside me was resolved at having her there, in a place where only Austin had ever been.
Often times, his presence had been an intrusion.
Sharing that space, a space I didn’t want to share in the first place, could have been annoying, but it was her.
The woman who was somehow mine.
My brother’s.
And my alpha’s.
It felt too easy. Too simplified. But it was also beyond complicated. So many rules were being broken, so many natural orders that brought things to a crazy head that would culminate here.
Today.
“Nothing,” I answered Sabina, my lips curving slightly as she huffed her annoyance at me.
Evidently, she didn’t believe me.
I cast a look around the council chambers, watching as people took a seat as far away from Eli as they could. Jane Clary even edged around the sofa, her eyes on Eli, as she used her hands to guide herself down to the damn seat, all while keeping her focus on him.
Was he really that scary?
I supposed he was.
Just not to me.
The door opened at the far end of the corridor, and in walked Conrad with a mop and bucket. I dipped my chin, knowing that if I didn’t, everyone would see my smirk of amusement at the sight of one of the richest men in town mopping up his own piss.
I didn’t really care if I hurt his feelings because the bastard didn’t deserve any consideration, but I didn’t want to come across as an asshole. Especially as I took a particular satisfaction in seeing the wet spot on his pants.
“Too late. You already seem like a butthole.”
Rolling my eyes at Austin, I muttered, “Like you’re not an ass too.”
“Prick.”
“What? You’re the prick or I am?”
“Boys, is this helping?”
Sabina’s voice was like pouring calamine lotion over poison oak. Soothing enough to stop you from tearing your skin off as you scratched yourself, but leaving just a hint of irritation behind.
She wasn’t, after all, a miracle worker.
The day my brother didn’t irritate the crap out of me was the day we were cremated and returned to the Mother herself.
The sloshing sounds of Conrad’s inexpert housekeeping caught my attention as he cleaned up the mess he made, loathing throbbing through him with every stroke, but he did it. I had to give him that. Mostly because, he knew as well as I did, that Eli would sit there all fucking day if he had to.
In his short tenure as alpha, Eli hadn’t made much of an impression because he’d just carried on in his father’s footsteps, mimicking him to the point it was like having Paul sitting there some days.
But—and that was a big but—everyone knew Eli was twice as strong as his father. And Paul hadn’t been a pansy behind that desk.
Rubbing my chin when Conrad finished up and dragged his tools to the chamber where he promptly dumped them outside the door for one of the housekeepers to pick up, I debated telling him to take his bucket of piss back to where he’d found it after he cleaned that up as well. The only reason I didn’t was because he was a dick and could be cutting to the staff, but also, because I needed to get this show on the road.
I wanted the council to get underway so Eli could lay some things out. Some things I’d never anticipated happening today or at any other point in my life.
Hoping for acceptance was one thing. Actually getting it? Well, it felt like I’d won the lottery.
Maybe that was why I was on edge more than usual. Just sitting here, feeling smug and superior, wasn’t like me, but these people, the council, brought out the worst in me. Every one of them represented something about the pack I loathed, something I hoped to help change.
Surely Eli felt the same way too?
Couldn’t he see the corruption in this room? Couldn’t he see it working away at the very foundations of the pack like worms through a rotting corpse?
I wondered if Eli was about to come into his own, if he was about to take the step away from his father’s reign and take the mantel of his power for himself.
Hope was a dangerous thing, and I’d already wasted a lifetime’s worth on getting what I was about to achieve, so hoping that he was about to bring change could have been asking too much, but I’d help him. I knew Austin and Sabina would too, and he needed that. He needed more than just an omega at his side. He needed support from the three of us.
We could help shape him into who he’d been born to be, but we were the sum of the company we kept, and in this room? There was only pomp and ceremony, no pride or honor.
With Conrad having slouched back inside, his shoulders slumped as he hovered beside his wife, who was sitting on one of the sofas, I waited for Eli to stand.
Having never been here for this event in the past, I had no idea how they worked, but when he started speaking, without standing, I got the feeling Eli’s position behind the desk was a new one.
Maybe they felt like it was his way of putting distance between them, and they wouldn’t be wrong.
Change was coming.
They just didn’t know it yet.
“You’ve noticed Ethan’s presence here, and Austin would be here too if I didn’t require him elsewhere.
“Since my mother’s passing, certain things have come to light, and with the pack’s past leaving us behind and the future embracing us, I’ve decided there will be a shakeup.
“Consider yourselves all warned. I am not my father. Your comfortable positions on the council are no longer guaranteed because of who you are and the money you have in the bank.” As outraged voices swelled and surged, Eli’s tone merely boomed all the harder. “My father’s way was not my way, and while I’m certain that some of you truly deserve your place here, I know most of you don’t. I’m also certain that I will be challenged in the upcoming weeks. No one likes change
, after all. But you’ve already seen a mere smidgen of my power, a power that managed to prove that the council head does not deserve his seat at all if I can, with a simple growl, trigger his shame.” He eyed the still wet but semi-clean patch on the floor. “You are my council. I am your alpha. I do not answer to you. You will no longer summon me as though I am a dog. You keep me accountable, but I will not allow my next council to think they can decide when a new meeting should be called just because they think it’s time for a chat around pack-provided wine.” He narrowed his eyes. “Would anyone like to say anything?”
As he uttered the words, it was almost like a gust of air swept in alongside them. The second I felt it, the entire room seemed to burst with reaction. The wave of power didn’t make me shiver though, not like the rest of the council, who began trembling at Eli’s might.
Even Brandon wasn’t safe from the aftereffects, which only proved that he wasn’t the right beta for the job.
No one uttered a word, because they were too dominated to.
I had to smile at that particular move. It certainly quickened things up.
Of course, it made him look like a dictator when he wasn’t. He was, essentially, cutting through the bullshit, and my own BS monitor was very sensitive, so I appreciated that more than most.
Truth was, someone might have looked upon this scene and considered him a tyrant, but he wasn’t. The council had been abusing the pack’s generosity for years, and the average members, like Austin and me—for all we were high-ranking and had Eli’s ear, we were still ordinary—knew that the council did nothing in our favor. If anything, they were just a set of asses with lofty manners and principles that didn’t align with anyone who had less than a couple of million in the bank.
If one of them wanted to, they could challenge Eli and try to overturn him, face down his rules, but we all knew they wouldn’t. Brandon might, but I doubted it. He was too chicken.
Mostly, this was a ruse shaped in expedient terms. The ruse was we’d drag out the person who might have targeted Sabina with the intent to cause chaos in the pack.
WOLF CHILD: A PNR RH Romance (The Year of the Wolf Book 1) Page 10