She was getting used to relaxing around Rafe, but that was in private. Here? Before her fathers and their council? She was more used to pleading for her sanity than she was shooting the shit and smirking at father-daughter jokes.
A wrinkled hand came out of the voluminous robes, and she jolted when it reached over to cup her jaw.
“All will be well, child,” Bahkir told her softly, but again, loud enough to register with the rest of the room’s occupants.
“Thank you, your greatness,” she whispered by return.
The silken skin slipped across her cheek before it returned to the folds of the cloak covering him, then, the Elder turned his attention on the TriAlpha once more. “She is right. You have grown soft in your rule if those in positions of power can manipulate those below them. What are we if not the measure of how we treat those beneath us?”
Damien coughed. “Our population has tripled in the past four decades, your greatness. Governing such numbers has presented… challenges.”
“Exactly. Challenges that a Triskele will help with. Plus, it will enable her to travel the nation in search of her mates.
“The child is suffering without them. She should have been allowed to roam at will until she found them. Instead, she’d been locked away like a criminal.” Bahkir huffed out his anger at that.
For a second, Thalia was stunned to hear that anger, because she knew it was on her behalf.
For so long, she’d been alone. Only the naturals around her to keep her sane. But now, she had two champions.
Her mate. And the Elder.
She blinked back tears, not wanting to showcase the weakness in front of men who should have loved her but instead, had been too suspicious of her very existence, too emasculated by her gender when their main duty was to provide the next heir to their seat, to do anything other than scorn her.
She realized her mating had freed her in ways she’d yet to explore.
And one such way was a phone call. A call she intended to make soon. To the family who’d been forbidden from seeking her out once she was exiled, to the loved ones who hadn’t forgotten her or loathed her regardless of her sex.
A shudder whispered through her at the joyous notion of being able to contact her grandparents again and gather more champions to her side, but before she could remain joyful overlong, Bahkir was stating, “But, though you were fools in your handling of her, her unique situation has made her very strong. More than you can imagine.” He half-turned, leaned on her mate for support as he looked at her, those beady eyes seeking her out once more. “You see, do you not, child?”
Thalia cut Rafe a nervous look—had he told the Elder? She wasn’t even sure what both men were doing here. Rafe had agreed to stay in their suite and... She blew out a breath. What had he said? Bahkir sought her mate out whenever Thalia was otherwise engaged, be it a nap or locking horns with her fathers.
Uncertain what to say, she just murmured, “Excuse me, your greatness?”
Bahkir sighed, his impatience at her prevarication evident. “You see the weaknesses of those among us, don’t you?”
She swallowed thickly, hating that this subject was being raised in front of hundreds of men she considered her enemy. Who had seen her as weak, not strong, for far too long.
Working her jaw as she weighed up the pros and cons of making such an admission, she nodded. Seeing no other option, not when her mate, who knew the truth, was standing beside an Elder intent on dragging that truth from her…
And Bahkir was intent.
Of that she was certain. There was a resolve about him that set her on edge.
Like he’d been sent here on the Gods’ bidding, and he had no intention of falling at the final hurdle. And didn’t that home truth rankle?
“What is he talking about, Thalia?” Luca queried, leaning forward. “How do you see weaknesses?”
“The greatest Alphas have always been able to discern the frailties of their foe,” Bahkir intoned.
“The frailties?” Damien asked, a scowl marring his brow. “Injuries?”
Thalia swallowed. “Of a type.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Explain, Thalia. What is the Elder talking about?”
“My She-Wolf calculates the easiest way to take anyone down.”
Silence fell at her stark admission.
“Take down as in challenge?” Luca demanded.
She shrugged, wariness overtaking her at the hostility emanating from him. She wouldn’t put it past him to confine her to her quarters, mated or not, for her being a potential threat to the TriAlpha.
Hell, they’d already had her exiled for being a potential threat to her mother; it wasn’t totally beyond her imagination for her to expect them to do it twice in one lifetime.
“What kind of weaknesses?” Adam asked, also leaning forward, but more out of curiosity than irritation.
“Means in which to challenge someone successfully,” Bahkir retorted on her part, exasperation lacing the words. “What else would Your Highnesses expect it to mean?”
She shot the Elder a look, but was presented with nothing other than the voluminous hood that covered his head and hid him from the gaze of the public.
She slouched her shoulders and ducked her head, trying to appear as non-aggressive as she could in the face of Bahkir’s revelation.
The TriAlpha weren’t stupid but they weren’t above ignoring an Elder’s advice if it behooved them.
“She will be a perfect Triskele. The position will enable her to travel the nation, sorting the wheat from the chaff from local packs, strengthening your leadership as she goes. She might find her mates along the way, but her healer mate will also be along for the journey and together, they can prepare for their position on those thrones.”
Her fathers stiffened at the mention, unpolitic though it was, of the day when they wouldn’t rule the roost in the Lyndhoven palace, but as it was Bahkir who had made the reference, there was no comeback.
No reprisal.
If she’d said that, on the other hand, she’d have found herself being escorted back to her quarters.
“Is it wise to send an unprotected female around the country?”
The question, loaded with scorn, came from behind her, and she frowned at the intrusion of the council on her personal affairs.
She hated having to speak to her fathers in front of them, but there was little else she could do. They rarely spoke with her alone, unless the request for an audience was on their side, not hers.
At the stupid question, her head whipped around and she saw the male, an older councilor, who had haled from Wisconsin, still stank of the cheese he’d overeaten when there, and was totally anti-Thalia.
He hadn’t been one of the men to attack her, for if he had, he’d have known that she could make anyone in this room show her their neck.
He just didn’t approve of her because of her gender.
She’d broken her family’s legacy by not having a cock and two brothers, and as a result, was not to be trusted by the chauvinistic windbag.
She pinned him in place with her gaze and saw his flare in surprise. Thalia spent most of her time with her back to the council. The stance was purposely rude and disrespectful, and though they bitched about it, she knew they also preferred it.
She was her fathers’ problem that way.
Wondering why Terence had decided to get involved, she turned fully to face him.
“Thalia,” Damien called out, a gentle warning to his words, but she dismissed him.
Her She-Wolf’s pride had been pricked because Terence, more than most, had several weaknesses.
They were beacons of light to her, calling her forth. Making the beast salivate with the need to target each of those spots and to make him pay for daring to question her when he didn’t deserve one iota of her attention.
She stalked him. There was no other way to describe it. Each step required an exact placement of her foot, one she didn’t even know she calculated, but one h
er body and beast decided for her. Tension didn’t throb through her body, if anything, her limbs were loose and relaxed, but she was coiled. Ready to strike as each step dialed up the power in her muscles, making her ready to attack.
She felt the shift in the air as it throbbed with the strength she was exuding, and as she stepped toward the bench where Terence was seated, she saw the men around him react to the feral quality of her power.
She didn’t take her eyes off the bastard who had called her out, but she saw him swallow, saw a tremor quake his limbs as she approached. Realizing that he was the deer in this situation, and she the wolf.
When she was but a foot away from him, so close as to be in his personal space, she knew she had him where she wanted him.
A stronger challenger would have strode toward her, where he’d just stood there, ensnared by her dominance.
Terence was a powerful Alpha. He’d been known to rule his old local pack with an iron fist, and his strength had seen him accede to the TriAlpha council.
But to her, he was lower than a Gamma.
She was much shorter than him. Slighter, too. Her muscles lithe and slender unlike his bulky mass. Yet, her strength appeared in other ways. Different means that had the power to make him freeze in his tracks.
With that single foot of space between them, she stared up at him, peripherally aware of the difference in their heights, aware too of the way the men around them had half-turned in their seats to avoid being caught up in the cross-fire.
Both notions satisfied the She-Wolf, enough so that she whispered under her breath, “Sit. Down.”
The man’s nostrils flared at the two words. Around her, she sensed the Elder’s amusement, her mate’s discomfort, and her fathers’ bewilderment. The council on the whole was scared, uneasy, and on edge at her dominance—a trait she’d mostly kept under wraps, and if it had ever flared out of her control, had been classified as yet more proof of her need to be caged in her quarters and locked away from her people.
Now, they were learning otherwise, and both woman and beast reveled in that. The glory of being free, of being allowed to show their strength to the most powerful in the land was almost more than she could stand.
As the adrenaline whizzed around her system, she watched as Terence’s Adam’s apple bobbed and slowly, he sat.
When his ass was on the bench, she bent at the waist and murmured, “Good boy.”
His top lip curled in a sneer, disgrace oozed from his pores, lacing the air around them with a foulness that had her bitch growling in disgust.
In response to his snarled upper lip, she smiled and took a step back. Turning away from him, she was about to head back to the Elder’s side when she felt the air shift once more. Energy bending to another’s will.
She whipped around, her hand coming out to grab Terence’s forearm before his fingers could catch her wrist.
With her hold on his arm, she pulled him toward her, then spun and kicked at his knee—one of his weaknesses. She aimed twice at that particular spot, loving the yell of pain as he sank to the ground. With her elbow, she knocked him in the temple, and enjoyed the splat as he fell sideways, and connected fully with the floor. Her calculations had been perfect—the way he’d fallen had put his head in the perfect position to crash into the ground, knocking him clean out.
She sniffed the air, turned on her heel, and retreated to her place before the TriAlpha.
Around her, she could sense the confusion in the minds of those who had witnessed her attack. But she ignored that chaos, ignored the bewildered panic the sight of the fallen councilman sprawled on the floor of the chambers caused.
Instead, she focused on her fathers’ varied expressions of mystification.
Terence was one of their strongest Alphas, and she’d just felled him in under thirty seconds.
Not that she’d counted, but the clock over the grand doors, hadn’t moved more than two minutes since Stanley Terence had had the audacity of questioning her strength.
“Does that prove that this lowly female can make her way around the nation on her lonesome?” she asked, her tone bored.
“B-But…” Damien’s mouth worked as he stared at Terence, who was still down for the count. “He’s one of our best—”
“Challengers?” She sneered. “Yes. I can see that.”
She flattened her shoulders and straightened her spine. “If you need further proof of my talents and suitability to be Triskele, then I’ll gladly display them here and now. After all, your council consists of the strongest Alphas in the land… more than ample evidence to back up my claim of suitability.”
Luca blinked. “You took him down like he was a pup.”
“It was as easy as if he were a pup,” she replied, no arrogance in her tone. Just fact.
Luca shook his head, then surprised her by getting to his feet.
She held her ground, but uncertainty filled her. Why was he stepping off the dais that held his throne? Why was he approaching her?
“Show me,” he said simply, when he stood before her.
She squinted at him in confusion, but Bahkir cleared his throat, and she took that to be a prompt to obey.
Nodding, Thalia turned on her heel with a wariness that actually upset her. She shouldn’t have felt wary around her own father, but she did.
She’d never trust them.
They’d never physically abused her, had never acted in any way that could be considered negligent. They’d just considered their mate and their kingdom over her.
And, wasn’t that what all Kings did, she supposed? Think of their position over their family?
Not that she’d reign that way. Not after experiencing, over a lifetime, how shitty it was to be routinely dismissed by one’s parents.
Shoving that thought aside, she returned to Terence’s fallen form. He wasn’t dead, but he was out for the count. As she stared at him, the glowing beacons that were his weak spots had dimmed because of his lack of consciousness. Still, they were evident to her.
Years of experimenting with this ability came to her aid.
She cleared her throat. “As you know, I spend a lot of time with the naturals.”
Luca nodded. “Too much time.”
It wasn’t particularly a reprimand, more like an afterthought, but his words irritated her nonetheless.
She’d only been with the naturals because she’d been lonely. Alone, for so fucking long because of their stupid rulings and dictates.
Still, she held her tongue. Now was not the time to rail at him, not when he was unbending enough to listen to her, genuinely listen, and hopefully would side with her on her request to be the TriAlpha’s Triskele.
“I first noticed it among them. As they don’t shift, they have no magic to heal themselves. They have to heal naturally. I saw their weak spots. Knew where they were injured.
“I had to use it to defend myself a few times when some of the males tried to cover me.” Her smile was cold as she said, “They never managed it.”
“You mean you saw traces of old injuries?” Luca asked, and for once, he didn’t sound angry with her. He sounded like a kid in a candy shop—it was then she remembered how much he’d always loved reading through the Elders’ memoirs.
Each Elder, before their death, wrote of their life. Most people read a few during their schooling, but Luca had read every single one he could get his hands on. He’d told her once he’d learned Japanese to be able to properly read through the famed fighter Tsukamoto Soshu’s memoir.
“Yes. I see traces of old injuries,” she informed him, disconcerted by that thought. He’d told her about Soshu’s memoir before she’d become persona non grata in the household. When they’d all been strict with her, not exactly affectionate, but… What? Not as cold? Still, they’d been warm and loving in comparison to the deep freeze of the recent past. She cleared her throat, needing to shrug off the memory, and continued, “If they had scar tissue, I knew that was a weakness. Joints that hadn’t se
t properly, but held no visible sign of disrepair. Things like that.
“Then, one day, it changed. I started to see more than that.” With her toe, she kicked at Terence’s temple. A sigh from Bahkir told her he disapproved of that, but she ignored him. “It’s difficult to explain, but the move I used on him? My elbow to his temple? That’s his signature move. I saw it emanate from his elbow—he’s done it enough to leave a vulnerability there.”
Luca frowned. “But how do you see it?”
“It’s a light. The stronger the weakness, the brighter the light.”
“And his knee?”
“The cartilage hadn’t reset itself properly after a fall of some kind. There was a minute weakness there, one that if targeted properly, could send him to the ground.”
“And your She-Wolf saw all this?” Luca worded carefully.
She nodded, but remained silent.
For a second, he stared at her, then, after clearing his throat, he boomed out, “Council is dismissed.”
“But, sire!” a few councilors cried like little girls, but he slashed a hand through the air in dismissal.
“Enough. I wish to speak to my daughter alone.”
Though she knew the men around her wished to grumble, there was no way they would with Luca standing in the center of their chambers, and with her, a threat, beside him.
“Take him with you,” Luca ordered as the last few rows began to file out.
The nearer a councilor was to the TriAlpha, the more powerful they were and their status was recognized by their location—Terence had been less than ten feet away from her fathers.
His powers as an Alpha were renowned among the land, and she couldn’t have asked for a better male to make an example of her dominance. Two councilors grabbed Terence under the arms, he groaned, but his head slumped forward.
The men, Boulder and Stent, flashed each other a look as they dragged him away. She watched them go, a small smile on her lips at the sight of how utterly she’d felled the larger, heavier, and stronger male.
“You look too self-satisfied for your own good, daughter.”
Thalia cocked a brow at Adam who, along with Damien, her mate, and Bahkir, had approached her as she stared at Terence.
Trinity (The TriAlpha Chronicles Book 1) Page 18