Filed to story: Mated to the Alpha and His Beta Novel Free >>???
“The lights. The power surges. That was from the spiders being killed?” I asked her.
Stella nodded solemnly. “I haven’t been able to see exactly how they did it, because the spiders themselves don’t know. But they’re frightened, and that alone should tell you of the danger. I can tell you one thing, however. The only way that anyone or anything could bring harm to those spiders is if they also have access to Brightsky.”
“Someone on the inside is feeding the High Council information,” Malachi said in a voice as dark and co and deep as the void. “That’s the only explanation.
Stella nodded. “Yes. And while I haven’t been able to find out how they killed the spiders, I can tell exactly how they got the information they could use to do it.”
Malachi’s eyes blazed crimson, and I felt a similar glow in my own eyes. Not my wolf, but my vampire side, reacting. Stella’s gaze swirled with multiple flashes of color.
“You know who their source is?” Malachi asked.
Again, Stella nodded. “Yes. It’s Gabriela.”
Lanie–
didat physically st agger back, but everythme made me tweeted and turned white Lity howled Red consumed my vision as my vampire and wolf selvs fought for control, and there was more inside me too parts of me I never felt before Didn’t know how to New elements of myself were trvale to rise and take ves Stella raised a hand toward me. She didn’t say anything, but instantly, I felt the relief of being settled back inside myself. Me, Lanie, Luna and mate to Xander, Mason, and Zane Mother to Stella, Alaina, and baac Granddaughter to Malachi S ervant to the Moon Goddess, “Thank you,” I said to my daughter She nodded. ‘It’s shocking news, I know”
“Gabriela,” Malachi said with a snarl. She will have to be killed of course”
“No,” Stella replied in her same calm voice. She has h o idea that she is the one providing the High Council with their information.”
I couldn’t stay sitting. I had to move. I paced the floor at half double speed and for my muscles responding with a groan. Not at the effort of moving that much faster than normal, but with the restraint of stopping myself from buzzing around the room like an angry wasp.
“If she’s a spy, how can she not know that about herself?” Lasked, spinning to a stop on one heel to face Stella.
“She’s not a spy, exactly. But they are using her.”
Stella touched her fingertips to her temple again, this time only for a second or so.
“She hasn’t been around as much. She’s been suspicious of me. Things have been different with bec said to Malachi. “I should have known something like this!” Stella shook her head. “How could you have? All you’ve been told since we got here was boW SONID
Brightsky is.”
Malachi’s expression twisted. “And it is. Or at least, it has been at least until you all arrived. Stingiga spy, no less!”
“I told you, she’s not a spy. She’s a victim of the High Council’s intrigues as much as anyone they le eve used for their own gain. Perhaps more, because, unlike her husband, Gabriela did not choose “Stolia looked at Malachi, then at me. No Fiora joy came out of her this time. Only a calm and steady tooling of truth. ‘Gabriela has found friends and a life here in the enclave. That’s a good thing for her.
Something she and frankly, deserved.”
I paused before answering. “How much do you know about your grandfather, Orion, and what he did?”
Stella smiled gently. “I know everything I need to know about everything, Mother.”
“So you’ve pointed out,” Malachi said. “But what your mother wants to know is, exactly what do you know, so she doesn’t have to find a way to be nice about telling you that your father’s father was a villain.”
“I know of his betrayal,” Stella told me. “I also know what you have not yet learned, and that’s about his deal with the High Council.”
1-
“I know about him and his plans for the hybrids,” I began, but Stella shook her head.
“Orion Constantine worked toward his own interests for a long time before any of what you know about him came to pass. He offered what did not belong to him in his pursuit of power,” she said. “He gave them his wife.”
I paced again, more slowly this time. I wracked my brain trying to recall anything Xander’s mother had ever told me about the High Council, its plans, Orion’s part in them, and also her own. It all felt asthough it had happened to me so long ago. I was having a hard time recalling even how long we’d been at Brightsky.
Weeks? Months? Surely, we could not even have been here for a year yet.
“Time passes differently here,” my daughter said aloud, although she had to be reacting to the onslaught of my increasingly louder thoughts.
Malachi whipped his head to stare at her. “What are you telling her that for?”
“Because she deserves to understand everything, and I’m doing my best to put it all together,” Stella retorted in a harsh tone unlike her previous cool calm.
To me, she said, “I don’t mean it’s like time travel or anything like that. It’s just that here in the enclave, separated from the outside world, it’s easy to drift along without a solid knowledge of the passing of time. You shouldn’t feel badly about it, Mother. It’s the same for everyone here, but for us in particular.”
“No bills to pay, no real responsibilities, every need of desire catered to,” I said with a look at my grandfather. “The privilege of being the king’s granddaughter, right? Keep us content but stu pid?”
“That’s ridiculous,” Malachi said. “If anything, all I’ve done since you got here was try to help you become better. And how am I repaid? You brought a snake into my henhouse! What choice have you given me, Lanie, but to throw you all out at once?”
1
Lanie–
“No!” Stella’s command rang throughout the villa like a clap of thunder.
It was enough to stop my grandfather in his tracks. He took a couple of steps back, a hand on his chest. He looked so astounded and affronted that I couldn’t help myself. I burst into a loud round of guffaws.
“She’s stronger than you are,” I told him proudly.
Malachi’s lip curled. “She wouldn’t even be a Celestial if it weren’t for me.”
“The moment you reveal to the High Council that you know their game, you push them to attack. And you’re not ready to face that,” Stella said. “Are you ready to listen to me?”
“I need a drink.” Malachi strode to his bar cart and poured himself a tall glass of red fluid from a carafe.
He drained it quickly and poured another.
took my seat again on the couch. “Tell us everything we need to know, honey.”
Stella linked her fingers together in front of her and bowed her head for a moment. I was learning to tell what was going on with her. How she needed moments to process the information in her mind.
It took only a few seconds, but I had a feeling she’d worked through an almost infinite number of connections and scenarios before she looked back to me In that moment, my heart ached for the burdens my daughter faced. Yet, there was no denying my pride and my awe. Stella hadn’t been on this earth very long, but she’d already made such a difference.
“Yes, yes, get on with it,” Malachi said in a bored tone.
Stella didn’t seem to take offense, although I did on her behalf. My grandfather was a really arrogant pain in the a ss sometimes, and that was saying something, considering the Alpha males I was mated to.
“Gabriela was never on the side of the High Council, no matter what her husband did or wanted. They all knew it, and, even though they were hell bent on keeping the knowledge of any other supernaturalsaway from- their next generation, they had connections with witch kind.” Stella crossed to the bar cart and poured herself a drink from the jug of water.
She also got one for me, which she pressed into my hand. “Drink, Mother.”
+hadn’t realized how thirsty I was until she said something, and I c hugged the water down. Stella sat next to me on the couch again. She heaved a heavy sigh, and put my arm around her shoulders.
done.
“Take your time, honey,” I told her, even though I was desperate to discover what the High Council had “After the Great Wars, the High Council knew it was possible for them to lose control again, no matter how hard they clung to it. No matter what atrocities they planned or put into place. They wanted a failsafe.
Some guarantee of protection, and of course they couldn’t request it from the Moon Goddess.
Everything they did was performed outside of her light.” Stella finished her water and put the glass on the coffee table.
“And Orion offered them Gabriela as that protection? How?” I asked her.
“Because they knew that Gabriela would be on any side that opposed them. They had a powerful warlock integrate her with a third eye,” Stella said.
Malachi actually gasped. “That’s-
“Don’t say impossible,” I cut in. “You’ve been declaring that nothing she tells us is possible when clearly, all of it is.”
Stella smiled at me. “He has a reason to be incredulous. Integrating a third eye into anyone, much less an unknowing and likely unwilling subject is a task even the most powerful warlocks and witches would struggle with.”
“Yet, they managed,” Malachi said.
She nodded. “They killed the warlock, immediately after, and the High Council members who found him are also dead. So there’s nobody alive who can remove it from her.”
“What does the third eye do? I assume you’re not talking about an actual eye,” I added, thinking that surely I’d have seen it if Gabriela had another eye on her face.
“It’s internal, yes. It allows anyone who has a scrying tool connected to it to see what the third eye sees.
“A mirror, a crystal ball, a pool of water. Even a glass of wine can be a scrying tool,” Malachi said, sin was obvious I didn’t know what she was talking about.
For once, he didn’t sound smug or patronizing about it.
“Exactly,” Stella said.
“So, they can see whatever Gabriela is seeing by looking at this scrying tool?”
“Which gives them access to most anything here in Brightsky,” my grandfather added. “Of course, Gabriela–
hasn’t been given permission to visit any of our heavier secured areas…”
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?