Alpha King’s Wolfless Mate by Scarlett Higgins

Chapter 117

**Blake POV

After weeks of training with their respective commanders, the new recruits were meeting to train with me again. I was gratified to see how much they had improved in such a short amount of time. I still wasn’t sure if they were ready to tackle what was coming, but at least I knew that we had a chance. We might just be able to keep Lanecreek at bay.

I had wasted so much time when I first returned home on hosting formal events and attending to royal business when I should have been building up the defenses of my pack. Keeping up appearances had seemed so important at the time. I wanted to show the kingdom that things were going to return to normal.

I should have known better. After all that we had been through, a few months and a couple of parties 1/10 17:20

wasn’t going to undo the damage that had been done. I was naive.

There was no point in dwelling on it now. I had learned an important lesson. Nothing came before the safety of the pack. When all of this mess with Lanecreek was behind us, a complete overhaul of our defenses would be done. I wasn’t going to have a laps e like this again.

The drills we were running were more difficult than any I had put the recruits through on my own, and they were far exceeding my expectations.

I didn’t want to exhaust them too much with the ball just a few days away. I would make sure that they got a little time off so that they were ready for whatever might happen.

“Take five,”I called out.

The men stopped in their tracks and turned to me. After a moment’s hesitation, several of them started to move toward the water station

while others sat on the g round to rest.

Christian broke from the group and hurried toward me. He was sweating, like all of them were, but it was the expression on his face that worried me. He looked grave. He stopped a few feet from me and bowed politely.

“Christian,”I greeted.

“I’m sorry to ask,”he started.“Iknow that you’re busy. But, can I talk to you for a minute?”

I wanted to laugh. He was polite and deferential with me, but I had seen the way he joked around with Nora. I’d been a little jealous, at first. I thought he was flirting. It took a while for me to realize that he was just being friendly.

“What’s on your mind?”I asked.

He looked nervous and took a step forward. He glanced over his shoulder, to be sure that no one else was close enough to hear us.

“Sir,”Christian said carefully.“Something bad is coming, isn’t it?That’s why you’re training us so hard.”

Of course, some of the recruits had noticed. This wasn’t the normal course of training. Some of them had parents and grandparents that had served as warriors, obviously they would discuss their own training with their families. I was only surprised that no one else had asked me about it yet.

They were probably afraid. Honestly, on the wrong day, questioning me was a very risky thing to do.

Christian was a good friend to Nora and I knew that Maisi e trusted him. If he was worried enough to ask me directly, despite how nervous he obviously was, then I owed him some kind of an answer.

How could I answer him without causing a panic? If the people got word that an attack was imminent,

there’s no telling how they would react. The pack had already suffered so much. I couldn’t expect them to sit back quietly and wait for me to figure out what the hell was going on. I couldn’t let the word get out until I knew more.

But Christian wasn’t just a member of the pack. He was well trusted and, according to Maisie, he was well on his way to becoming a general himself one day.

I looked at Christian closely. As nervous as he was, there was a keen intelligence behind his eyes. He was too smart to gossip about something like this.

“I have reason to believe thatLanecreek is planning an invasion,”I said in a low voice.

“That explains a lot.”Fear flashedacross his features before he looked down at his feet and I could see the way his jaw tensed as he g round his teeth.“That’s why our training has been so accelerated. And why

Maisi e has been in so many meetings.”

I cursed myself for not realizing that Maisie’s near daily meetings in the castle might raise some eyebrows. It was beyond foolish of me not to consider how it might look. Especially after she’d been gone for so long.

“We need to be prepared foranything,”I answered. There was no one close enough to hear us, but I lowered my voice.“With my uncle involved, there’s no telling what could happen.”

“What?”Christian asked in shock.

I cursed myself again. No one in the pack knew my uncle had reappeared. I hadn’t made it public and he’d been keeping a low profile. I hadn’t meant to let that fact sl*p, but it was too late to take it back now.

“My uncle,”I explained.“He’sGraham’s Beta.”

“Goddess help us,”Christian saidsoftly.“I thought he was dead.”

“We all did, for a while,”I stated.“But we aren’t that lucky, it seems.”

“What can we do?”he asked.

He was doing a good job of hiding it, but I knew he was scared. I’d basically just told him that the boogeyman was real and he was coming to get us.

“Be prepared,”I answered.“There’snothing else we can do. We know they’re planning something and we have reason to believe that it involves an invasion force that will strike less than a week from now. You’ll all be briefe d soon.”

“How do you know so much aboutthis?”he asked hopefully.

“We have an informant inLanecreek.”

He nodded approvingly.“Well, whatever happens, sir, I’ll defend this pack with my life. We all will.”

He stood a little straighter and looked me in the eye.“You can depend on us.”

“I know that I can,”I replied.“That’swhy you’re here. Now, go get some water. We have work to do.”

Christian bowed, then turned and ran to the water station.

Christian was willing to die for the good of the pack. I knew that there were many here that felt the same way. It was reassuring, in a way, to know that the pack meant as much to them as it did to me. But it also turned my stomach.

The responsibility for all of their lives, for every life in the pack, was on me. If I messed this up, people would die. That was all there was to it.

And I didn’t have enough information to form a truly solid strategy.

I growled under my breath. What the hell had happened to Margot? I

hadn’t heard from her in days. There had to be something more that she could tell us. This close to the ball, there must be preparations underway.

If the warriors were running drills, or if my uncle had been holding clandestine meetings, I needed to know. Hell, anything she could tell us would be helpful right now. Yet she’d suddenly vanished. It was frustrating.

And concerning. I hated to think of what my snake in the grass cousin might have done to her if he’d somehow caught on to what was happening. I’d know soon enough. We had scheduled a meeting for tomorrow night.

If she didn’t show up, we would know that something had gone wrong.

Either way, this would all be over soon. We only had a few days left.

All I could do was make sure that everything was in place and pray to

the god dess for mercy. My pack had suffered so much already. I didn’t know that they could take another blow. We had been tested to our limits.

I had been tested to my limits. I couldn’t withstand another blow.

If this went wrong and I lost my pack or, perhaps worse, I lost Nora…

Well, I wouldn’t be responsible for what I did. A desperate man is a dangerous man, after all.