SWNOVELS : Chapter 116
I knew Fiona was busy at work. But it couldn’t hurt to give her a little more encouragement. Send one more text that would be waiting for the next time she had a break and checked her phone.
I wrote: The pics don’t have to be sexy. I just want to see your pretty face. Missing it. X
There was no traffic on the way back to the palace. It was only heading into the city that always took forever. I sailed on the highway in the fast lane and made great time.
I took everything into my office and got it filed away neatly – my court summons and the other case-related papers Brandon had given me, as well as the
accounting paperwork copies. My filing systems were immaculate, organized and labeled and locked securely.
Then I changed again. I ditched the suit and was back in light sweats.
I ate an apple on the walk to the weight room, remembering that I wasn’t going to see Fiona for dinner this evening. I’d eat with Kayden instead and take the opportunity to spend some time debriefing about our work with the pack today.
In the store room behind the gym I found a big length of heavy rope. I coiled it across my chest for ease of carrying and went back out into the courtyard, heading west across the training field.
Third person
It was late afternoon, but Lucas had only been awake for a few hours. And he’d moved through them very slowly, battling a hangover with the help of a couple benzos that perked him up just enough to bathe and dress before he collapsed into the recliner out on his balcony.
He lit up a pre-roll and took his phone out, checking to see if his friend had gotten back to him yet about a private club event he was trying to go to tonight.
Out of nowhere, his mother slammed his bedroom door open and came storming in.
Lucas snuffed out the joint in a gold ashtray atop a table at his side, and placed it carefully in the little cradle on the rim to save it for later. The party was over for now. His mother, always a terrible buzzkill, seemed to have something especially urgent on the mind right now.
“What do you want?” he asked as she made her way to the balcony.
Scarlet eyed her son reprovingly, making a point of looking over every inch of him and glaring at the smoldering joint in the ashtray as well. “You are a mess, Lucas.”
“Thanks. You stomp in here just to tell me that?”
“Actually, yes.” She gave Lucas one of her signature smiles. Scarlet’s big, condescending smile could send a chill right down your spine. Her shiny red lips pulled taut around a mouthful of perfectly white, sharp and even teeth, and her dark eyes glimmered with an air of haughty derision.
“What do you want?” he asked again.
“So impatient,” she snapped back. “Impetuous child.
As if you were very busy here?”
She held her hands out, looking around at the scene.
The smoldering blunt. Lucas in his already wrinkled suit. The mess of his gigantic bedroom behind them, where sweaty bedsheets were balled up on the floor next to his half-stripped bed.
“Very busy,” he mumbled, looking at his phone again.
Still no notifications.
“Lucas, this behavior has to stop,” Scarlet said, finally getting to her point. “I’m done letting this slide.”
“Why?” he asked lazily.
“Because you are going to be King,” she said through gritted teeth. “And while I certainly will not expect you to do all the heavy lifting that job requires, you need to
at least look the part. This… this is unacceptable.”
Lucas chuckled. “Me, Alpha King. Would you let that go already? It’s never going to happen.”
“It is.” She stepped close to Lucas, blocking the sunlight that had been warming him, casting him in the shade of her shadow instead. “I am working on it now, son. That is why I am pressing you now. It’s time. I am taking them both out. Soon.” Her jaw twitched.
Now, Lucas guffawed. “Sure,” he said. “And I’ll take a mermaid for my Luna Queen.”
Scarlet glowered at her son, fire crackling behind her eyes.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said flatly. “I thought we were saying things that are never going to fucking happen.”
“You know, women don’t look fondly upon men who speak crudely to their mothers,” Scarlet replied coolly.
“You should watch that.”
Lucas felt a little sting of shame. His mother had gone right to his sore spot: his inability to maintain a relationship with any woman, ever. Beyond, of course, the anonymous, trashy omegas he hooked up with in nightclub bathrooms and the professionals that he regularly paid for company.
His shame didn’t last long, though. He was high enough already that it simply floated away.
“There is no werewolf alive who can take Alexander,”
he said, in a tone you’d use to explain a simple concept to a child. “He’s undefeatable.”
He resisted the temptation to touch the bridge of his
nose self-consciously while he talked about his brother. It had been broken in several places when he’d beaten the shit out of Lucas a few months ago.
Lucas had wanted to get plastic surgery to correct the damage to his face after that fight, but his mother talked him out of it, insisting that the rough shape his nose healed into naturally made him look tougher and more handsome. But he still grimaced at the sight of it every time he looked into a mirror.
“That’s a stupid rumor,” Scarlet snapped.
“No. It’s the fucking truth.”
“You watch your tone with me, son.”
“Oh my god.” Lucas wrung his face in his hands. “You are so out of your league. You want to kill the two most powerful Alphas on the planet? How?!” He
slapped the back of one hand into the palm of the other. “You don’t have the power to do that.
Alexander and the King both? Fucking forget it.”
Lucas was not wrong about one thing, Scarlet thought to herself. There was no other Alpha wolf on the planet that stood a chance against Alexander in a physical fight: that was probably true. Her stepson was a formidable foe, one she hadn’t been able to defeat… so far.
But there was a good chance, Scarlet believed, that a vampire could do the job.
An even better chance if it was Alexander alone against a whole nest of vampires.
“Tell me how you expect to do this, Mother.” Lucas was starting to sound bored. “If you won’t tell me how you’re going to make it happen, why should I take you seriously?”
“Don’t worry about the how,” she said. “That’s for Mommy to take care of.”
Lucas rolled his eyes. “Whatever.” He reached into the front pocket of his shirt, pulled out a small, flat, disposable vape pen, and took a big drag.
His mother stormed over and snatched it out of his mouth.
“Fuck!” A thick white ribbon of smoke snaked out of Lucas’s throat and up into Scarlet’s face. “Give that back!”
She threw the little device off the balcony.
“Nice,” he said. “Thanks for that.”
Scarlet waved a stern finger in her son’s face. “Shape up, Lucas,” she hissed. “Your time is coming soon, I promise you. And you had better be ready when it does.”