Page 33 of The Hunted

Except it wasn’t shocking at all.

“What did you just say to me?” Zale hissed. “Or did you forget who sits on this throne?”

Poe tipped her chin up. “That throne will be mine someday. You seem to forget that, Father.”

“Not for a hundred seasons or more. And what will you do until then?”

Arelle’s hold tightened around the baby cradled in her arm. And for the first time, she dared to speak if only to remind Poe that she had other priorities to consider here. “Poe—”

That was all she got out.

As fast as the conversation turned bad, it just as quickly ended with her sister pivoting on her tail and leaving the room. Without permission, and with no expectation of decorum from anyone else in the room at her exit.

Arelle let out a shaky exhale.

Her father’s harsh stare turned on her. “Follow her. Remind her of her place—what we all expect, Arelle.”

“You could try—”

“I can and will do nothing. The maiden will take the child. It’ll give your sister time to think clearly without her infant squawking every moment.”

No, it wouldn’t.

She knew better than to argue.

Arelle handed off the baby, who cried loudly when they unfurled her tail from around her aunt’s arm. She didn’t like the maidens who were charged with looking after her. Not because they treated her badly, but rather … she knew they weren’t her family.

Moving to follow the same path her sister had taken, Arelle only hesitated when her father’s voice rang out from behind her when he said, “As for you, Arelle, we’ve not finished our discussion about your mating. Soon, Mav will arrive with his traveling party from the Emerald Lands. It’ll have been a long and tiring trip, so I, of course, expect you to be on your best behavior. We’ll resume the discussion of what will happen after his arrival when everything else calms down.”

“I—”

Glancing over her shoulder, Arelle’s words quickly cut off at the sight of her father’s arched eyebrow.

She wanted to refuse.

How could she take a mate now?

After everything?

She only needed to witness her sister’s pain at having lost her mate—even if right now, it was only the belief that her mate wouldn’t return—for Arelle to know she never wanted that. But wasn’t that half the problem?

If one took a mate … one could lose a mate.

Arelle didn’t know Mav. Only the stories she had heard about him from others, but that made no difference to her. If she never mated, then the pain she watched her sister suffer through day and night wouldn’t someday become her own.

“Well?” her father demanded when he resumed his position on his throne.

She shivered.

Just say what he wants to hear, Arelle.

“Yes, Father.”

• • •

“Poe! Poe, wait!”

It seemed like the louder Arelle called for her sister, the faster Poe swam through the colony. Not that she blamed her or anything. She simply picked up the pace, determined to catch up and let her sister know that things would—somehow—be okay.