A Plan
Gideon POV
The silence in the room is loud. There’s nothing but a soft tick of the antique clock mounted above the fireplace. It’s an old thing, brass and bond. It’s a relic from a time when our kind dared to wear their power like crowns.
I prefer rooms like this, which are still and tense. They are the king of silence, where air waits for orders.
Maps are currently spread across the table in front of me. Inked borders, dotted paths and marked weak speak that no longer exist, not in Xander’s pack, not since he rose to power. He’s fortified everything.
He turned that once–vulnerable ridge into a fortress and worst of all, he’s kept his people loyal.
He thought I didn’t know, I did. What makes a weak man? A woman, that’s what. I was so sure that selling Serafine would entice him and it did. He jumped so quickly to take her. She did far more than I planned. I wanted him destroyed, burnt, and not focused.
He was that, I know for months after she left he was going from pack to pack, and word got back to me that he’s looking into Threadborn. I remember that, I found a book about it years ago.
It made me wonder why Xander would be searching for answers, that’s when I connected the dots. Serafine wasn’t normal, and the fact Xander was searching himself, told me that Serafine was the one who ran.
The kind of loyalty that he has from those in his pack doesn’t come from fear like in mine. it comes from belief, and belief is harder to kill than a body.
“I want a new layout,” I mutter, not looking up.
Soren is my third, he moves quickly, and gathers the old map and replaces it with one that was drawn recently. This one has more detail. It has updated guard patrols, shifting trade routes and even an approximate reach for his Threadborn Guardians. It’s impressive,, if not infurating.
“You really intend to strike at him head–on?” Soren asks, careful with his tone.
“I intend to do what I should’ve done years ago.” Destroy Xander and everyone in that, pack. He’s foolish to think I didn’t know it was him while he played a rogue. I knew.
He doesn’t respond. He knows better.
My fingers begin to tap against the wood, and each beat is deliberate. There’s no clear point of entry right now, there hasn’t for a while. While I could launch an attack from the eastern ridge, his archers have fortified those cliffs. I mean, I could go from the
A Plan
northern pass, but that requires cutting through rogue territory and I won’t risk the political fallout.
This isn’t about destroying him. It’s about breaking him. Piece by piece. I really want to see his pack scatter, his wolves fall to their knees. I want to drag him into the mud and remind him that his strength, it was build on arrogance and lies.
He praded Serafine like a prize, claimed her as his mate, when we both know that
bond was never meant to exist.
That girl was mine to control, she was meant to destroy him, and I made a mistake and underestimated her. She fucking escped.
A knock on the door pulls me from my thoughts.
“Come,” I call.
The door opens, and Elijah steps in. I see the phone in his hand. His expression is unreadable, but the tightness in his jaw gives away enough.
“It’s Gabriel,” he says. “From the settlement.”
I stand slowly, extending a hand for the phone.
The moment I press it to my ear, Gabriel’s voice cuts through, hushed and eager. “She‘ s had the baby.”
For a moment, I say nothing. Just breathe.
“You’re certain?” I ask. I know she was pregnant but I don’t want to make moves until
she’s had it.
“Yes. A boy. The woman at the library took her to the healer. We didn’t follow too close, but we confirmed it. Silvermane still guards her. The Hollowfang too. They haven’t left her side.”
Moving to the window, I stare out at the darkened fields that stretch toward the hills. ” Still no sign of Xander’s pack?”
“None. She’s been quiet as well. She’s kept to herself, she works, sleeps, reads, but she‘ s… different.”
Different. The word curls through me like smoke, of course she’s different.
“Keep watching. Don’t engage. I’ll come myself.”
“Yes, Alpha.”
Ending the call, I slowly lower the phone.
Soren eyes me. “Is it true?”
I nod once. “She’s had the child, a boy.”
Elijah exhales. “And you believe bringing her back changes everything? That it will help
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A Plan
your plan on Xander?”
I turn to face them both.
“You weren’t there the day she was born,” I say quietly. “You didn’t see and feel how the forest responded. The way the wolves howled without command. You didn’t see the way that her bloodline drew power like gravity itself. I kept her caged, medicated and silenced because I feared what it meant and what she would become. But not…”
I trail off, not needing to finish because they all understand.
What I didn’t expect was her to change so much when she found her mate. She was always weak, always useless and pathetic.
“She’s awakened?” Elijah asks.
I nod. “She found her mate and that kind of bond, to someone like her, it changes everything. Whatever she is, it’s unlocked whatever the old bloodline buried. We know little about Threadborn and Veyrathi. But her son, that first born, it will have power, it will be in their blood and spirit.”
Sighing, I lean back.
“Interesting fact, Xander is a descendant of a threadborn, I traced his family back hundreds of years and found a link. Still no answers of what they are capable of though. So think about it, Serafine for some reason was gifted with the threadborn part, but Xander? It ran in his blood which makes the child born of it.”
Soren crosses his arms. “So we take her. And the boy.”
“Yes. We take them both.”
“And then what?” His eyes narrow. “You think she’ll obey you after what you did?”
“She won’t have a choice,” I say. “Her child will. If she refuses I threaten her child, if the child refuses when older, I threaten it’s mother.”
There’s silence and I turn back to the table, placing the phone beside the newest map.
“I want a route planned. We leave tonight. Quiet. No insignias. We go as traders, maybe wanderers, something simple, figure it out. When we find her, we watch and we wait. And when the time’s right, we take her and the child.”
“What about the guardians? We can’t defeat them.”
Smiling, I move and place down the gun. “Pure silver, it won’t instantly kill the guardians but it will immobilize them and slowly kill them.”
“And Xander?” Elijah asks.
I smile slowly.
“Xander will follow. Of course he will. And when he does, he’ll come to my land, on my terms, and he will fall. He won’t expect his mate and child to be the ones to kill him, but
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A Plan
they will.”
Soren frowns. “And if he doesn’t?”
“He will.” My voice turns cold. “Because that child is his. And if there’s anything that arrogant bastard won’t walk away from, it’s blood. He will already be making plans to get them, so we get there first.”
Walking toward the shelf I pull out a small box from behind a stack of aged ledgers. It’s oak, carved with runes and I barely understand them but once I paid a torture to
acquire it.
Inside is a ring, it’s silver, old, and etched with the crest of the Veyrathi line. It belonged to her mother, once. Her mother had no idea either, maybe she wasn’t strong enough
to be what was needed?
“She doesn’t know what she is,” I murmur. “Not truly. But she will. And once she does,
she’ll have to choose.”
Soren tilts his head. “Between?”
“Between what she was raised to be… and what she was born for.”
The room holds still.
There’s power in names, in bloodlines and in forgotten truths. Serafine was always meant to be more than a daughter or a pawn. She was meant to become the thread that rebinds our kind to the power we lost.
I mean, that’s what I tried to do with her mother but she wasn’t Veyrathi, sure she had the ring, or maybe she was but not strong enough? She doesn’t see it, but she will. I will raise her son in a way that benefits me. I will reclaim the strength that was stolen from me.
All I need is time, and this time, I won’t let go.
“How do you know your plan won’t just kill her like it had her mother?”
“Her mother wasn’t Veyrathi, or if she was there was only a small amount. Serafine? She came across as useless and weak, but now, even I know she’s powerful and that power when used, when extracted, can burn packs to the ground with one look.”
“My first target, is Xander’s pack.”
