“I know, but it wasn’t like what happened with either of your parents.”
“I’m aware. You didn’t black out or faint, your heart rate was steady despite the emotions you experienced. Everything about last night was different, honestly, and the fact that you came to so quickly, seemingly ready for a fight, saved the female her head.” I roll my eyes as my mate snorts. “That and the fact that I believe her to have picked up the activation of your new abilities.”
Right again.
As soon as I started feeling the emotions in the room and hearing everyone’s thoughts, Lorna saw what she was looking for, and it’s why she approached the podium. She saw the same things she did when I was a child and she knew that was the time to act.
Wraith did what I asked him to and told his group about my interaction with Drusilla.
He left out that it was me—despite what they witnessed last night, we decided not to tell anyone about my gift—and said that we’d received information that proved his mother and father were the ones responsible for the events that took place the night Jonatha was killed.
Atticus issued the hit.
We knew that without the asshole touching my face but the clarity of his memories, even up to a certain point, showed him speaking with Hans to coordinate the attack while we were in town. None of which was surprising to anyone in attendance last night, but it was confirmed and lumping it with what we shared about Drusilla helped make things less suspicious.
Especially since what I saw of my mate’s mother was anything but.
The contact was too brief and not in a way that centralized my gift so I didn’t see everything, but Drusilla was speaking to Randolph and someone else the same night we went on the high speed shootout. She told them about Atticus’s plan and asked Randolph to take care of our security but once he left, she continued speaking with whoever else was there. And while I couldn’t make out everything that was said, two very important things stuck.
Drusilla knows without a doubt that Wraith is the head of the Purist movement and is leading the Uprising, and she has someone in his ranks watching him. And we shared that last night to hopefully kick up enough concern that whoever this is slips up.
“What I don’t understand iswhyDrusilla hasn’t said anything to Atticus,” I say as I tilt my head to look up at my mate, my brow furrowed in confusion. “If she has a mole moving through the group, isn’t that enough proof to go to the High Elder and have you… you know.”
“Bound and quartered?” Wraith smirks at me, his ebony eyes dancing over the way I won’t voice what could happen to him. “Beheaded? Hanged? Laid out in the early morning sun to—”
“Oh my god, stop.” I give him a playful, though serious, scowl. “I don’t like saying it.”
My wicked prince gives me a soft smile before he dips his head and presses a kiss to my lips. “I know, love, but we both understand the various outcomes of my behavior being caught out. Refusing to say the words doesn’t change anything.”
“I’m still not going to say it.”
“Fine.” He sighs with a smile before turning back to the ceiling, his stare following the filigree in the molding as he speaks. “And yes, Drusilla having a spy within my ranks reporting back to her directly is more than enough to have mehandledby my father’s law, but I’m sure she has her own reasonings for withholding the information.”
Thenone of which have anything to do with a mother’s instinctgoes unspoken but we both know it’s true.
Whatever reasons Drusilla has for keeping her spy from Atticus and his men, fear of turning in her son to have him killed isn’t one of them.
Sure, she eliminated the only other male born of Atticus’s line, using the very mortal way we come into this world to her advantage to drown Demond when he couldn’t survive it, just to ensureherson was the one to wear the crown one day. But it doesn’t mean she wanted Wraith to rule, either.
Maybe at one point, before my mate began to understand the way things worked before and after Atticus gained control, before the hate they have for each other grew into what it became, but I’m not sure removing competition was for Wraith and the crown.
If anything, Drusilla probably did that as well as a slew of other things over the years to ensure the heir to the throne survived to adulthood just to spite her mate. And protecting him for her own purposes now still achieves that. She’s probably keeping tabs on Wraith so she knows when she needs to act or not, if there’s an immediate threat to herself or her position. And to be honest, regardless of my mate not making any bones about killing her too, Drusilla isn't a priority because she can’t rule according to the old ways or our current government simply because she’s female.
Not that Wraith intends to rule that way.
He’s made it clear that he and I are equals when it comes to the changes he wants to make. Since he’s also been emphatic about me participating in all of them as well as ruling if there is ever a reason he can’t, Drusilla is the last thing he’s worried about in the grand scheme of things.
Either way, his mother needs him, though.
If Atticus is out of the picture she still can’t rule and if she wants to keep the lifestyle she’s grown accustomed to, Drusilla would have to keep her son in power to do that.
She’s a horrible mother and a dangerous, angry female, but she’s not really a threat to what Wraith is doing unless she uses whatever info she’s gained from her spy to go after him.
And even with it broken down that way, I still don’t fully understandwhy.
“Did you know for sure there was a traitor amongst my ranks before or after you touched Lorna’s hand?”
I blink up at Wraith with a frown. “After. I told you that.”
