High Stakes

LENORE

My superpower was consistently getting the short end of the stick… and then getting beaten with it. It was why I should have been suspicious when my father summoned me to a council meeting when he hadn’t spoken to me in almost a year.

This was hindsight talking, not what was running through my mind as I followed William — one of the pack’s Betas and the one who had told me my father had summoned me — into Davrian Hall.

“Do you think it has something to do with the vampires?” Virginia asked Wayne, her twin brother, as we drew closer to them. They were standing next to the door of the meeting room.

“Why would he summon us if it was?”

“To make us join the fight against them?”

My brows snapped together. I hadn’t really thought about why our father had summoned me, but I really hoped it wasn’t because of what Virginia had just said. I couldn’t even defend myself against a werewolf, not to mention a vampire.

Wayne frowned before shifting his gaze to me as William and I got to them. He gave me a nod while Virginia muttered an ‘hey’, and I gave a slight nod back. Though we were siblings — step-siblings to be specific — we didn’t really have a relationship.

William opened the meeting room’s door and gestured for me to go in. “After you,” he said and I pressed my lips together before walking into the room with the rest of them in tow.

“We need to consider this carefully,” one of the council members seated at the round table in the center of the room said. “He hasn’t reached out to us in a very long time and now he—”

“There’s nothing to consider,” another member cut in and I glanced in the voice’s direction to see that it came from the Luna’s father before quickly looking away, not wanting to catch his gaze. The man despised me more than anyone else in the pack. He seemed to believe I was the one who singlehandedly ruined her relationship with my father — not the fact that my father had cheated on her and constantly treated her like dirt.

“The amount of vampires that have been spotted lurking around the pack have been increasing again and though we’re prepared for conflict, we have no idea what their true numbers are and what time they’ll attack. We don’t even know if they plan to attack and, most importantly, if they’ve been lurking around on orders from their King, so no. There’s nothing to consider. We can’t afford to piss their King off by ignoring his request,” he added.

My ears perked up while William showed me and my siblings where we should sit. The vampire King made a request? My eyes caught my father’s the next moment and he immediately looked away like he just made eye contact with Medusa.

Ugh.

“Do you even know what you’re saying?” a councilwoman asked in an annoyed tone. “Sure, we can’t afford to piss him off, but his request is outlandish. How can we send one of the Alpha’s children to a diplomatic gathering on his land? Have you forgotten what happened at the last one?”

Silence settled upon the room at that.

I didn’t know the full story about the feud between werewolves and vampires because no one here truly cared about how it started — they only cared about how it would end — but I did know what happened at the last diplomatic gathering of the two species fifty years ago. The first vampire prince had killed the werewolf prince and soon after there was a war between the two species in which the werewolf royal family fell. When the war ended, no one wanted to pick up their crown due to fear of how the vampires would react, and packs turned from just groups of werewolves living together to communities of werewolves with hierarchy involved.

“What the hell?” Virginia muttered while I shifted in my seat. The woman’s reaction to the request of sending Cameron, my older brother, to a dangerous place was normal, but my stepmother’s father was also completely right about them not being able to afford pissing the vampire KIng off. I could still remember the vampire invasion that happened the first time my father pissed him off.

If they did decide to invade again, it wouldn’t be my problem since I’d be out of here in a week. I got a full-ride scholarship to Caldwell, the university I wanted to attend, and I had no intention of coming back to this godforsaken place.

I did feel bad for my siblings and stepmother who would still be stuck with the pack.

“We won’t be sending Cameron,” my stepmother’s father replied. “We should send Wayne or Virginia.”

Virginia made a startled noise in the back of her throat while Wayne cursed under his breath. I frowned.

Of course, even in a situation like this, the man was still looking to raise his and his family’s position in the pack. That would only happen if the diplomatic gathering went well though, but either way, he was endangering his grandchildren for his ambition.

“He asked for the Alpha’s child,” the woman from earlier stated and his jaw tightened.

“And?” he bit out while my siblings stiffened.

“You just said we can’t afford to piss him off, but you want to send Wayne or Virginia.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Once again, silence settled upon the room, but unlike the first, thick tension filled the room.

My stepmother’s father would not receive an answer to that question but everyone here knew what that council member meant. Everyone in the pack did. That was why Virginia and Wayne were my step-siblings, not my half-siblings.

“He could test if they have Alpha blood. We can’t send them,” the woman replied, obviously wanting to calm my stepmother’s father, but he didn’t look pleased with that statement.

“Who do you propose we send then?!” he barked.

“Cameron isn’t the only child the Alpha has.”

I drew my brows together and while still processing the woman’s words, every gaze in the room landed on me.

...What? Then the implication of those words hit me and my eyes widened.

They wanted to send me.