Chapter 26
Rafe
Axel watched me with his dark eyes. Now that the secret was out of the bag, he didn’t seem as angry with me.
“This could have been prevented,” He didn’t sound stern but disappointed. “She could have been protected if you had let me know.”
“Let you know and risk something happening to her if you aren’t on my side?” I crossed my arms over my chest. My wolf was docile in my head. Since I had outed our biggest secret and accepted Jade as my mate, he had calmed down. He no longer felt like I was fighting that part of myself. Wolves were weird.
Axel ground his teeth together and the sound made me cringe. I rolled my shoulders back as I prepared for the reprimand I knew was coming. “I am always on your side, just like I was on your father’s but things are changing and you aren’t the same Alpha he was. I can’t continue to treat you like a child. I should have trusted your judgment.”
I lurched forward in surprise. I swore my brows shot through my hairline. “Wait, what?”
Axel chuckled as he leaned forward at his desk. “You never treated Tracey any different for the dominant wolf inside of her and you still haven’t treated her differently now with the magic. You have always been a good friend to my kids,” His voice broke on the last word. Tracey’s brother had been missing for years and we all knew it was intentional. He hadn’t been loved in this pack like Tracey had been by me and the Guardians. The rest of the pack wasn’t as forgiving or progressive when it came to his sexual preferences. Tracey had insisted he not come out to the pack, but he had done it anyway. She had wanted to protect him while he needed to live his truth. “I should have trusted you but seeing your wolf so close to the surface when you are the calmest out of all of us… it set me on edge. I was afraid you not finding a mate was causing you and your wolf to go mad with it.”
I nodded my head. I could understand that. I had worried myself in those moments. My mind had gone to a dark place when I had smelled the sickness in the air that night. “I can see why you were worried, I was worried too.”
Axel stood up from the desk and patted me on the shoulder. “You are a good leader to our people. I’m sorry I didn’t see it before. We will get your mate back, but it’s not going to be a pretty fight.”
My gums ached as my canines elongated past my lips. “I prefer to fight dirty, Axel. You should know this by now.”
All he did was grin and this time, it met his eyes.
Knox met my stride as I left the main house. He had gotten a ridiculous haircut the previous day and I couldn’t stop looking at it. What had he been thinking? His hair was just barely past his shoulders and he had shaved off the sides of his head right above his ears. He looked like he had a mullet and a Mohawk at the same time. Tracey had about had a heart attack when she saw it before she couldn’t stop laughing. It was the only thing that had gotten a good emotional response out of her in days. He had it in a little bun at the back of his head and I wondered, as I looked at him, if he had done it for that reason.
Today he was in his fighting leathers and bringing that up wasn’t a part of the itinerary. Jokes couldn’t be brought to the war room. If we didn’t stay serious we would lose our advantage on all of it. Whoever had Jade didn’t know what we knew. He or she didn’t know that we left to keep people safe. They probably thought we were going quietly with broken hearts. Little did they know we were going to start a war.
Tracey rounded the corner with a little smile on her face. It was the first time I had ever seen her in fighting leathers, and apparently Knox too because his eyes about fell out of their sockets at the sight. I averted my eyes politely but smacked Knox on the back of the head anyway. We couldn’t be distracted. There were too many people at stake.
The war room wasn’t one that my father used often. My father had used it as a private study and my mother had never been permitted inside. Even though he had loved her fiercely, he had always said this place wasn’t a place for love. It was a place to plan, a place to fight for love and justice. If the men couldn’t keep it together over the woman I knew would be my second someday, then they wouldn’t be permitted to participate.
The only reason Tracey wasn’t my second now was because she refused to challenge her father over the title. But we all knew she outranked him and the other wolves in the pack. I didn’t mind her waiting, now that I knew where Axel stood in all of this, I rested easier. He had chosen to sit out of this meeting, he wanted his daughter there in his place. He would probably end up stepping down so she didn’t have to challenge him for the place. I could practically smell it in the air. All Axel wanted was for his daughter to do great things and he knew that he was in the way of that.
I stopped at the massive utility building that looked nothing more than a place to hold heavy equipment. The metal walls were dull with age but the thick wooden doors in front of me were bright and shiny like they had been polished recently.
I turned to my Guardians and Tracey. I placed a hand on the door reverently. “This is a place we go to fight for our love. Love isn’t permitted in here. Lust isn’t allowed. If you can’t keep your actions platonic while we are in this room, you will be asked to leave. I trust that you all have had the proper training to be here and know when to be serious and when to joke around. I trust all of you or you wouldn’t be here with me.”
I shoved the double doors open. The smell of whiskey and tobacco wrapped around me. I closed my eyes for a moment to let the nostalgia pass over me. Emotions would cloud my judgment and I didn’t need them to hinder me any more than they already had. I should have come here alone before this, but there was no one else I wanted to experience this with.
I had only been in this room once. It was the night before I killed my father and took his place as Alpha.
