This sounded clearer. Every day that passed, it was getting easier to communicate with her in that way.

My brow puckered, but I didn’t reply to her, instead, to Conrad, and knowing it would piss him off, I murmured, “Clean that up.”

His nostrils flared with outrage, and where with Eli there’d been no hatred, here there was.

Loud and clear.

My lips curved at the sight of it. I wasn’t sure whether Conrad had the balls to orchestrate an attack on a human woman just to get to Austin and me, but I knew he detested us enough to transmit it for all to see.

“Yes. Conrad, you made a mess. Fix it.”

When his wife scuttled toward him, her hands fluttering around her hips as she approached, evidently wanting to make things better for her shamed husband, I stated firmly, “Return to the others, Larissa.”

She flinched, then glowered at me, but she stopped in her tracks. “You have no dominion over me.”

“Don’t I?” Eli inserted on my behalf, making her flinch again.

“Of course, Alpha.”

“Then do as he says. Return to the others. Conrad, you will clean up your own mess. Get a mop and bucket from the staff.”

Conrad’s eyes widened in distress before Eli growled and he rushed off, evidently not wanting to debase himself in front of the alpha again.

I didn’t smirk, even though I could have. I hated Conrad with a passion. He’d always been the one visiting my mother one night, and then sneering at her the next day while ignoring Austin and me, treating us like we were fucking lepers.

“Calm down, brother. We can’t change the past.”

I knew we couldn’t, but sometimes, it was hard not to remember.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

I sighed at Sabina’s question. Something inside me was resolved at having her there, in a place where only Austin had ever been.

Often times, his presence had been an intrusion.

Sharing that space, a space I didn’t want to share in the first place, could have been annoying, but it was her.

The woman who was somehow mine.

My brother’s.

And my alpha’s.

It felt too easy. Too simplified. But it was also beyond complicated. So many rules were being broken, so many natural orders that brought things to a crazy head that would culminate here.

Today.

“Nothing,” I answered Sabina, my lips curving slightly as she huffed her annoyance at me.

Evidently, she didn’t believe me.

I cast a look around the council chambers, watching as people took a seat as far away from Eli as they could. Jane Clary even edged around the sofa, her eyes on Eli, as she used her hands to guide herself down to the damn seat, all while keeping her focus on him.

Was he really that scary?

I supposed he was.

Just not to me.

The door opened at the far end of the corridor, and in walked Conrad with a mop and bucket. I dipped my chin, knowing that if I didn’t, everyone would see my smirk of amusement at the sight of one of the richest men in town mopping up his own piss.

I didn’t really care if I hurt his feelings because the bastard didn’t deserve any consideration, but I didn’t want to come across as an asshole. Especially as I took a particular satisfaction in seeing the wet spot on his pants.

“Too late. You already seem like a butthole.”

Rolling my eyes at Austin, I muttered, “Like you’re not an ass too.”

“Prick.”

“What? You’re the prick or I am?”

“Boys, is this helping?”

Sabina’s voice was like pouring calamine lotion over poison oak. Soothing enough to stop you from tearing your skin off as you scratched yourself, but leaving just a hint of irritation behind.

She wasn’t, after all, a miracle worker.

The day my brother didn’t irritate the crap out of me was the day we were cremated and returned to the Mother herself.

The sloshing sounds of Conrad’s inexpert housekeeping caught my attention as he cleaned up the mess he made, loathing throbbing through him with every stroke, but he did it. I had to give him that. Mostly because, he knew as well as I did, that Eli would sit there all fucking day if he had to.

In his short tenure as alpha, Eli hadn’t made much of an impression because he’d just carried on in his father’s footsteps, mimicking him to the point it was like having Paul sitting there some days.

But—and that was a big but—everyone knew Eli was twice as strong as his father. And Paul hadn’t been a pansy behind that desk.

Rubbing my chin when Conrad finished up and dragged his tools to the chamber where he promptly dumped them outside the door for one of the housekeepers to pick up, I debated telling him to take his bucket of piss back to where he’d found it after he cleaned that up as well. The only reason I didn’t was because he was a dick and could be cutting to the staff, but also, because I needed to get this show on the road.

I wanted the council to get underway so Eli could lay some things out. Some things I’d never anticipated happening today or at any other point in my life.

Hoping for acceptance was one thing. Actually getting it? Well, it felt like I’d won the lottery.

Maybe that was why I was on edge more than usual. Just sitting here, feeling smug and superior, wasn’t like me, but these people, the council, brought out the worst in me. Every one of them represented something about the pack I loathed, something I hoped to help change.

Surely Eli felt the same way too?

Couldn’t he see the corruption in this room? Couldn’t he see it working away at the very foundations of the pack like worms through a rotting corpse?

I wondered if Eli was about to come into his own, if he was about to take the step away from his father’s reign and take the mantel of his power for himself.

Hope was a dangerous thing, and I’d already wasted a lifetime’s worth on getting what I was about to achieve, so hoping that he was about to bring change could have been asking too much, but I’d help him. I knew Austin and Sabina would too, and he needed that. He needed more than just an omega at his side. He needed support from the three of us.

We could help shape him into who he’d been born to be, but we were the sum of the company we kept, and in this room? There was only pomp and ceremony, no pride or honor.

With Conrad having slouched back inside, his shoulders slumped as he hovered beside his wife, who was sitting on one of the sofas, I waited for Eli to stand.

Having never been here for this event in the past, I had no idea how they worked, but when he started speaking, without standing, I got the feeling Eli’s position behind the desk was a new one.

Maybe they felt like it was his way of putting distance between them, and they wouldn’t be wrong.

Change was coming.

They just didn’t know it yet.

“You’ve noticed Ethan’s presence here, and Austin would be here too if I didn’t require him elsewhere.

“Since my mother’s passing, certain things have come to light, and with the pack’s past leaving us behind and the future embracing us, I’ve decided there will be a shakeup.

“Consider yourselves all warned. I am not my father. Your comfortable positions on the council are no longer guaranteed because of who you are and the money you have in the bank.”