Riven (4 page)

"Now? I need
time to get ready."

Given the number
that the heat had just done on me, I'd stripped down to one of
Jasmin's old tank tops and some capris. Somehow it didn't seem
glamorous enough of an outfit to be wearing out on my first date with
Alec since we'd broken up.

Alec cocked his
head to one side and looked me up and down. "I think you look
perfect. Besides, if you put on more clothes than that you'll just
overheat again."

He had a point.
Also, I didn't really have much else to wear. Rachel had promised, or
maybe threatened was a better description, to take me shopping as
soon as everything with my mom was squared away. I kept telling her
that we should just get my mom to box up my old clothes but she'd
refused to cancel the shopping trip because she figured that I might
need my New York clothes the next time I happened to be in New York.

Actually,
I
was rich now too, but I honestly didn't understand how Rachel thought
sometimes. Maybe now that my mom had agreed to let me stay I'd be
able to convince Alec to take his money back.

Alec gently pulled
me to my feet and then led me through the house and out back. He was
holding my hand, which was nice, but I was still waiting for the
other shoe to drop. Eventually he'd remember that there was a chance
he'd addict me to his touch and start cutting down on the physical
contact. For now I figured that I'd just soak in being with him and
deal with the inevitable freakout when it actually happened.

"Where are
you taking me?"

"Dinner,
silly."

My face heated up,
but I gamely stuck my tongue out at him. "You know what I mean.
I half expected that 'a nice dinner' meant that you were going to
bundle me into one of the jets and fly to Salt Lake City."

Alec smiled as he
shook his head at me. "No, you've pretty much managed to
convince me that expensive trips aren't your cup of tea. I thought
that maybe a picnic would be more your speed."

"Actually, a
picnic sounds perfect."

We walked for
several more minutes in companionable silence before coming around a
set of hedges and into view of a gorgeous gazebo. The structure was
so light and airy that it would have been breathtaking under normal
circumstances, but today it was hung with swaths of green silk.

"It's
amazing. Just like the Ashure Day Dance."

Alec squeezed my
hand and led me up into the gazebo and over to the picnic that he'd
had laid out on a blanket. There were green cushions scattered
everywhere so that it didn't feel like we were even sitting on the
ground.

Once he'd poured
me a glass of grape juice and I'd dished up from the seven or eight
different dishes that were waiting for us, Alec sighed in
contentment.

"It's so nice
to be able to leave all of the politics and dominance stuff behind
for a little while."

"What
happened after I left today?"

Alec popped a
grape into his mouth and chewed it to buy himself time, but I wasn't
about to let him get away with keeping me in the dark anymore.

"Hey, I'm as
deep into this stuff as I'm going to get. The Coun'hij isn't going to
let me sit on the sidelines at this point, so I'm better off knowing
exactly what is going on."

"You're
right, you're right. I guess I'm just a little nervous that I'll say
the wrong thing and you'll leave again."

I shook my head.
"I'm here for the duration. I know that there are some tough
choices ahead, but I want to help you chart a course through them if
I can."

Alec nodded and
then took a deep breath. "The other three cars were just more
envoys from other packs. So now we've also got people here from Flagstaff,
Carlsbad and Las Cruces. Pretty much all of the border packs that are
within a day or so drive of here with the exception of a couple from
California."

"So what do
they all want?"

"You saw
Raynor and Rebekka. Those two are feeling the situation out, trying
to figure out whether or not they can improve their lot by entering
into an alliance with us in some form or fashion. Two of the others
were the same way, people who are trying to avoid getting crushed
between us and the Coun'hij at best, pure opportunists at worst. The
last one was different though. The Las Cruces group came to offer an
oath of fealty."

My jaw hit the
floor. Russ hadn't been far off at all when he'd said Alec was some
kind of royalty.

"That's
great. The more packs that you can bring to your side the better off
we'll be in our efforts to bring down to the Coun'hij."

Alec nodded, but I
knew he wasn't convinced, or rather he was worried about something
related to our discussion.

"What's
wrong?"

He tried to get
off with a shrug but I shot him a stern look, which earned me a smile
and a real answer.

"With humans
it's a lot easier to tell when they are lying. With shape shifters
you can still usually catch people in a lie, but not always. What if
one of the people promising to help us is actually just a really good
liar? That's a big part of how the monarchy was destroyed the first
time around."

I was suddenly
incredibly glad that I'd been brainstorming during my hour of forced
convalescence. The solution was so obvious that eventually he would
have stumbled onto it himself, but this way I got credit for it and
he'd maybe start thinking of me as a resource rather than just
another person who needed protecting.

"That's easy,
Alec. Get Shawn down here to witness their oaths. He'll be able to
tell whether or not they intend to keep them and then you'll know
exactly who you can and can't trust."

I'd seen Alec less
stunned after being hit in the head. It made me want to giggle, but I
managed to keep my expression suitably serious.

"You're
brilliant, Adri. Shawn won't love the idea, but if we turn it into a
big enough bunch of pomp and ceremony then he can just blend into the
background and there's a good chance that nobody will know that he's
there, let alone the reason he's there. You just solved one of my biggest
problems!"

I felt a little
flush of pleasure at his tone. This was better by far than his touch.
"Okay, hit me with the rest of your problems and let's see if I
can solve the rest of them too."

Alec leaned back
and gave me a measuring glance. "How about if you tell me what
you think my other problems are and what you think I should do about
them. I'm interested to see how much you've picked up so far."

Wow, I hadn't
expected a test quite so soon. Nothing to do but give it my best shot
and hope he was impressed by how much thought I'd put into it at
least.

"I think you
need to start concentrating your forces. You're a pretty big
deterrent all by yourself, but we're going to need more fighters if
we're going to really start pushing the Coun'hij. I think you should
put out an open invitation to the dispossessed to come in from the
cold. Some of them won't be interested and some of them won't be the
kind of people you want here, but there are probably at least a few
who wouldn't mind being part of a pack again. Given that you're going
to be dominant to any of them, you can probably slot them into the
power structure inside our pack without anybody getting hurt too badly."

Alec nodded and
gave me a check mark in the air. "Very nice. Jasmin must have
told you how impressed I was with the way that Jaclyn Annikov has
been able to enforce an artificial dominance structure on her pack,
but I expect that the idea with the dispossessed was pure Adri."

I nodded and then
threw out my only other decent idea. "I think you need to figure
out how to unite some packs that are geographically close together.
Ulrich agreeing to support you is nice, but he's so far away that we
can't do much to help each other. Once you've got a chunk of
territory sworn to you then you can shift some of the fighters out of
the safer areas into the places where you're most worried about
attack by the Coun'hij."

"Well done,
Adri. You're exactly right. Do you know what my last problem is?"

I must have looked
even more crestfallen than I realized. Alec reached over and lifted
my chin up.

"You didn't
fail, Adri. I'm impressed. So far, you're ahead of anyone else in the
pack other than maybe Ash and Donovan. It's all the more incredible
because you didn't grow up thinking in terms like this."

Alec pulled me to
my feet and handed me a taper. "Let's get these candles lit.
It's going to be dark soon."

As soon as my
taper was burning steadily I started moving from candle to candle. It
seemed like there were hundreds of them, but it actually only took us
about fifteen minutes to finish the process.

The ritual of
holding the fire to a wick until the candle started burning was
surprisingly calming. I looked over at Alec several times as I was
working my way round the edge of the gazebo, and each time he met my
gaze I was struck by how content he looked. Alec might not have all
of the answers when it came to dealing with the Coun'hij, but he was
back to being the confident guy I'd fallen in love with months ago.

Once every candle
had a tiny flame slowly dancing above it, Alec and I stepped back to
the center of the gazebo and just watched the lights move for several
minutes. At some point Alec wrapped his arms around me and I leaned
back against him, reveling in the solid feel of his chest behind me.

"Thank you
for tonight, Alec. It's perfect. I missed being with you every single
day that I was in New York. Being back here is so amazing that
sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure that it isn't all just
a dream."

"I missed you
too. After you left, everything started falling apart. I tried to
hold things together, but it was like I was missing my rudder. Every
storm that came through just blew me completely off track. Knowing
that you're here, that you still care about me, helps give me hope
that we'll be able to weather everything that's coming towards us."

There was
something in Alec's voice that told me he was ready to talk about his
last major problem. Some girls would have thought that he was
ruining a perfectly good moment by taking the conversation back
around to his work, but I wasn't one of them. That was just part of
who Alec was. He was so incredible exactly because he was willing to
take responsibility for so many people. It was one of the things that
I loved the most about him.

I turned around so
I could look him in the eyes, but left his arms resting on the small
of my back. "Out with it. What's the next storm racing towards
the pack?"

"Not towards
the pack, towards you and me."

"What do you
mean?"

"Of the six
packs that sent representatives today, four of them are angling for
an alliance by way of marriage. That's the only explanation for why
they'd have brought so many girls our age with them."

I felt almost like
I'd been slapped, but I knew Alec wasn't trying to hurt me, not after
preparing such an incredible date. He was trying to equip me with the
knowledge I'd need to survive the craziness of watching dozens of
incredibly hot shape shifter girls throwing themselves at him.

"So it's
Tasha and her mom all over again?"

"Sort of.
These girls have the same kind of goal as Tasha had, but I'm not
willing to entertain their advances like I was with Tasha. My power
finally awakening for real means that I've got options now that I
didn't have back then, but more importantly, I know that you still
love me. I'm not marrying any of them."

I felt my
heartbeat slow back down with the added proof that Alec hadn't
brought me here to break up with me. It wouldn't have matched at all
with what I knew of his character, but a part of me had still assumed
the worst was about to happen.

"Thank you
for warning me. I'll try not to get jealous or anything."

Alec's smile was
odd, a curious mix of happy and sad. "A warning isn't very much
to take into what's coming, Adri. In a shape shifter pack the
jockeying for position carries through to more than just who's going
to give everyone orders."

The relief that
had just washed through me evaporated. "What are you trying to
tell me, Alec?"

"When a
dominant starts looking for a mate it isn't unusual for the eligible
candidates to engage in some pretty spirited competition for the
dominant's attention. As things stand right now you'll have half a
dozen female shape shifters doing their best to make your life
difficult. Even the less aggressive of them will have a hard time
believing that I'd really choose a human, not given how much benefit
there could be to binding another pack to me via marriage."

My throat had
gotten so dry that it was hard to talk. I looked around the gazebo,
taking in the silks and the candles as a way of buying myself time.
Alec was painting a pretty bleak picture. I'd never dealt very well
with the popular girls on the few occasions when I'd roused their ire
for some reason or another. What Alec was describing was a hundred
times worse than that, but I knew what I had to do, what I wanted to
do.

"I'm not
leaving, Alec. At least not as long as you still want me. My place is
by your side."

He nodded at me,
took my hands in his, and then lowered himself down onto one knee. "I
didn't want to do it like this. I've known since before Agony came
the first time, but in a perfect world I would have given you more
time than this."

Alec reached into
his pocket and pulled out a velvet box, tiny in his massive hands. "I
don't want you to ever think that this was driven by anything other
than a pure desire on my part to be with you. If there is any doubt
in your mind then refuse me right now and we'll weather the storm the
best we can until you're sure."