Chapter 48 - FORTY EIGHT — EVIL AGENDA
Deidre
The bathwater had gone cold twenty minutes ago but I didn’t care. I sat in it anyway, my entire body seething with rage, all the fury in the world rattling my nerves.
"This had to be a fucking joke!" I screamed at the walls.
Their wolves had rejected me.
Their wolves had rejected us! Lira hissed in my head, flooding my veins with so much malice. And it is all that bitch’s fault!
I pressed my fingers on my collarbone, where the marks should have been. It was so smooth it drove me insane.
A frustrating groan tore out of my throat. My arm shot out and swept the row of expensive bottles off the edge of the bath.
They hit the marble floor, glass shattering to the ground. It was satisfying but it did nothing to ease the humiliating ache in my chest.
I rose from the tub and caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror. My hair was damp, my mascara was smudged and my skin flushed.
I could see their hickeys on my body. The Alphas had fucked me and they wanted me to be their mate a month ago, so why the hell were their wolves rejecting me?!
My hand found the nearest thing, a heavy crystal perfume bottle that had somehow survived not breaking to pieces and I hurled it at the mirror with a ear-splitting shriek.
The glass cracked from corner to corner, my reflection fracturing into a dozen versions of the same furious face.
How could they mark that bitch and not mark us? Lira demanded.
"Exactly!" I spat, throwing my hands in the air. Why did she get to have their marks? That stupid bitch had even flaunted it at me this afternoon at the meeting with the ladies of the council.
How dare she? Who cared if she has their mark. I was the first Luna! I had the power.
No wonder she had the nerve to threaten you even at the council meeting.
"You’re not helping, Lira," I fumed, clenching my hands into fists.
I wrapped myself in my robe and walked into the bedroom, my mind brooding over my next plan of action with the speed of a freight train.
Should I tell Mother?
We had to find a way out of this stupid mess. No. No, Mother would spiral, and she made rash decisions when she spiraled. Rash decisions left evidence. And she had already done enough to get me here.
I didn’t need Mother right now. I needed to think. I dropped on the edge of the bed unable to stop the tremors that filled my body.
I was losing them. I should have known this would happen right from when I saw Reign kissing the bitch at the pool.
That pathetic dog had seduced him and she must be getting very good at it considering how his eyes seemed to follow her these days.
And Ragnor too! She was taking them away from me! I had found my way to get him to apologize to me after that slip-up but fuckkkk!!! I had caught him watching her while I was dancing with my father during the coronation.
If I didn’t act fast, Candace would sink her claws into them again and I would lose the only chance I had to become their only woman.
I swung my legs off the bed, pacing around the room.
No. No. I had given everything for this. The plan was to make her a placeholder Luna but even now she didn’t seem like she would be a placeholder alone. Rage burned through me in hot searing waves.
She cannot stay, Lira said quietly. You know that.
I knew that.
I had known it since the Prikaya. I had simply been waiting, watching the one hundred and fifty days run down, telling myself I could afford to wait, that the contest clause would sort itself out and that Candace was still the same beaten, collared slave she had always been.
I thought she was not a threat to me.
Big whopping mistake.
Candace was not that girl anymore. I would be damned if I let that nonsense girl ruin my plans.
Now that she was a threat to me, to my loves, threatening to take away the men that were supposed to be loving me, it was time to do what I had planned to do for a long time.
I would not lose them.
"MAID!"
The door to the bedroom burst open, my maid appearing with wide, frightened eyes, rushing closer to me.
"Back the hell up!" I snapped, holding a hand up while plugging my nose. "Eww, you reek. Get away from me. Go stand at the door, don’t bring that stench near me."
She scurried a few steps back, bowing her head. "I... I’m so sorry, Luna,"
"You’re apologizing to your Luna while standing?" I scoffed. "The utter disrespect,"
"No," she cried immediately, dropping to her knees, her forehead touching the floor. "I would never disrespect you, my Luna. I swear I meant no disrespect."
"Better." I picked up a brush from the vanity, and ran it through my damp hair, watching myself in the mirror.
I had postponed this for too long. When Candace was collared and half-starved, sleeping in a pig sty, she had been easy to control and bend. I could easily rub all I took it in her face.
But a Luna Candace?
It’s time for her to go, Lira said.
At least with her gone, even if the triplets never marked me, I would be their first and only Luna anyway. I would have no competition!
"Get me Evan," I said to the maid on the floor, "From the black barracks."
The maid’s gaze flicked up, just enough for me to catch the fear in her eyes. She dropped her head back down immediately and whispered.
"Yes, Luna," she whispered.
"Then why are you still on the floor? Get going!"
She scrambled to her feet and bailed. She ran face first into the door and a cackle slipped from my lips. Where did they get these stupid maids from?
She mumbled another incoherent apology and ran out of my room. I beamed back at my reflection in the mirror rubbing my neck.
Candace Sinclair had used up her last chance. It was time for her to go join her stupid father.