Selene
Within moments, I have five fully grown wolves hovering over my shoulder, reading the strange letter with sounds of confusion and disbelief. The tension in the room is palpable, but within moments it explodes into chaos.
“What on earth?” Odette murmurs.
“This is madness.” Drake agrees.
Aiden is doing nothing but curse, while Donovan has taken to pacing and reading the annulment papers. Sophie is the only one who hasn’t said a word, but she seems stunned into silence.
“This doesn’t make any sense, is it in code?” Aiden finally exclaims, apparently running out of four letter words.
“I don’t think so.” Donovan frowns, “we’ll look into it, but there aren’t any patterns jumping out at first glance.”
“Selene,” Sophie asks gently, “Are you okay?”
“I think I’m going to go back to bed.” I decide, convinced I’m dreaming. “This is a nightmare. It has to be a dream, so if I go to sleep here, I’ll wake up back in reality, right?”
Five pitying expressions close in on me, and I sigh in defeat, “Well it was worth trying.” Flopping down onto the couch, I read the letter for a fifth time. “I don’t understand… it’s his handwriting, but it’s like…”
“Like he’s lost his memory.” Drake finishes my thought. “Lost his memory and swallowed a pack of conspiracy theories.”
“Why is he talking about the assassination attempt like it just happened?” I ask, “we spoke afterwards, of course I know he survived.”
“More importantly, why does he think you sent the assassins?” Donovan questions.
“Maybe there was another attempt.” Odette suggests. “One Frederic pinned on you.”
“Maybe, but he wouldn’t tie himself to it as well.” Aiden reasons, “it’s one thing to frame Selene, it’s another to expose himself.”
I keep going back to the line where he says he’ll disown Lila. “No, this isn’t Frederic. Someone has made him believe I had an affair with Frederic, that Lila belongs to him.” I speak the words as they enter my head, “Frederic himself would never claim a pup that wasn’t his.”
“Okay,” Drake assesses. “So it isn’t Frederic, and we can assume it isn’t Blaise because he would just have killed Bastien on sight. Who does that leave?”
Another knock sounds on the door, and this time I refuse to answer it. “Uh-uh, things didn’t go so well the last time I opened the door. Someone else can do it this time.”
Sophie pats my hand and moves towards the front door, but Drake intercepts her with a growl, spinning her to face me and nudging her back in my direction while he goes to the door.
A familiar, herbaceous scent hits my nose a second before the wooden panel swings open and Helene appears. “Helene!” I exclaim, “Thank goodness, the strangest thing has just happened.”
The aged witch accepts the letter and legal documents from Odette, bypassing all introductions as she scans the pages. When she finishes she offers me a solitary nod. “It’s as I feared.”
“What do you mean?” I ask anxiously, guiding her into the living room and offering her a chair.
“Well, I looked into the Alpha’s whereabouts like I promised.” She begins hesitantly. “And I found… well, it’s like you suspected Selene, something is very wrong.”
“Can you tell what?” I urge her, my agitation growing by the minute.
Narrowing her eyes at me, she reaches out and takes my pulse, clucking her tongue when she feels it racing. She lurches to her feet and walks to the kitchen, moving around the open space as if she’d been there a thousand times before. While she started the process of making tea, we all look on in stunned silence, unsure how to react to her strange behavior. She seems so calm, but her words had been completely cryptic.
When the kettle is bubbling away over an open flame, she looks back to me. “Your mate is very far away.”
“We already knew that.” Aiden snarks.
Helene shoots him a glare, “I did not mean in distance, pup.”
I’m not the only one who has to smother a snort of laughter, seeing Aiden respond to being called a pup by the old crone was beyond laughable. At first he puffed himself up like an angry blowfish, before slowly deflating beneath the weight of Helene’s glare. “I mean his spirit.” She explains. “He’s lost his way, and he’s not alone. Someone is leading him astray – they’ve stolen his memory and his strength. With every day that passes he falls further, and though he’s safe for the time being, that will only last as long as he serves a use for his captor.”
“Who is his captor? Donovan presses urgently.
“I cannot see exactly.” Helene purses her lips thoughtfully. “But I can tell you it is a woman. A woman with the soul of a snake and a heart of stone.”
“Arabella.” I mutter, not understanding how I’m so certain, but knowing without doubt she is the person behind this latest misfortune.
“Arabella is in the Calypso territory?” Aiden demands.
“It would make sense.” Donovan ponders aloud. “She wouldn’t have been able to flee to our allies, and that wouldn’t leave her many options.”
“But how could she fool Bastien?” Odette questions, “when he left here he would have killed her on sight.”
“That assumes he saw her first.” Drake remarks cryptically. “it doesn’t matter what his true opinions were. He’s forgotten them now.”
The tea kettle begins to whisper, the shrill noise piercing my dazed mind and making my skull throb as Drake’s meaning sets in. “He’s forgotten me?” I repeat, feeling sick to my stomach. “And lila?”
“He is under a spell,” Helene assures me, pouring steaming water into a mug with a blend of herbs from her purse. “and a powerful one at that.”
“But what is her plan?” Sophie chimes in, “I mean it’s one thing to make him forget the past, but it’s not like she could enchant all of Elysium. She has to know the truth would come out once they return.”
“Maybe that’s why she’s trying to get Selene to leave before they arrive.” Odette suggests as Helene presses the warm mug into my pal.
“Then either she’s crazy or just plain stupid.” Drake grumbles, prompting a round of muttering nods. “Selene being absent won’t stop the rest of us from setting him straight.”
Odette shakes her head. “I know Arabella, I helped raise her and she isn’t stupid.” She slumps onto the sofa beside me, “But she is incredibly headstrong, and she doesn’t know how to take no for an answer. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if she doesn’t ever intend on Bastien returning. She just needs to win him long enough to…” She trails off, a look of dread taking over her elegant features.
“What is it, Odette?” Donovan asks.
“I never believed Arabella wanted to marry Bastien because she cared about him.” She replies soberly, “And you’ve all been talking about her motives for working with Frederic and Grigore.”
“This isn’t about jealously.” Aiden finishes her thought, the same dawning horror on his face, “It’s always been revenge.”
“Revenge and power.” I add, remember the way she used to talk about the threat my child would pose to her own heir.
“And if all she wants is power…” Drake ponders, “that’s probably why she went to Tartarus in the first place. Blaise is the most powerful shifter on the continent. She’d lost all her allies, what better place to find a new one?”
“So what are we saying?” Odette asks, “that she’s going to try to make Bastien marry her so she can lead the pack, then get rid of him?”
Donovan shakes his head, “It’s almost unheard of for a female to become Alpha.”
“But not unprecedented.” Aiden reminds him, “and Arabella doesn’t consider herself to be average in any way. She’s conceited enough to believe she could out muscle her competition, whether physically or through more deception.”
“I hate to say it,” Donovan admits, “but that makes sense – more sense than any of the other explanations we’ve come up with to understand everything that’s gone wrong these last few years.”
As one, we all turn to look at Helene, searching for her approval of the theory. On cue, she disappears into that magical void she somehow inhabits, studying us all closely before her expression goes blank and finally resets. When her search is complete she nods, “I think you’re right.
As I look around the room, studying the worried faces of my friends and family, I know what has to be done. The words are on my lips before I can think better of them. Working with Helene has taught me to trust my instincts over my chaotic thoughts, so just as I sensed Arabella was behind all this, now I sense the only solution to our problem with supernatural certainty. I stand, calling everyone’s attention to me. Taking a deep breath, I announce, ”I have to go to Tartarus.”
