FreeNovel
Chapter 76: Changing Course
Troy
“Are you sure about this?” Keaton tossed a bundle of supplies taken from Damian’s camp into one of the
skiffs, glancing up at me as I handed him a basket filled with what looked like a varied assortment of
dried food.
“I don’t have time to return to Dianny. It’s halfway through August already. We have until late October
before
“Before the ice, I understand.” Keaton wasn’t happy about my decision to break from the Persephone
and head north with Maeve and Pete, but it was the only option. I had spent the majority of the morning
convincing Maeve that I loved her, going as far as to mark her, cementing our bond in the most
permanent way possible. Maeve was royalty, however, and I had a feeling her dad was going to be
pissed that I had marked his daughter without blessing our union first, but I didn’t have much of a choice.
I wasn’t about to let her go. “But I’m not talking about that.”
“What, then?”
“Alpha King Ethan is going to kill you, Troy.”
“And leave his grandchildren without a father?” | retort ed, leaning against the skiff as I tried to steady
myself. The bandages around my chest were already matted with dried blood, and I was exceedingly
lightheaded. I needed rest, but we needed to get off this Goddess – forsaken island first.
“Don’t be a prick,” Keaton said with force. His displea sure was palpable. “I just saw you die and come
back to life. And now? I’d hoped the plan was to get Maeve back to Winter Forest and leave her there”
“You knew I was never going to just abandon her, Keaton. Come on.”
Keaton crossed his arms over his chest, shaking his head.
“What do you have against Maeve? Seriously,”
“I have nothing against her,” Keaton bit out, his voice edged with bitterness. “In fact, I quite like her. Had
it not been for her, I would have never met Myla. But she is blind to your situation, Troy. Totally oblivious.
She didn’t know about the weight of your deal with Damian, did she? Not until recently.”
He was talking about the fact that I was the rightful Al pha of Poldesse, something I had never
considered actually claiming. I had known since Damian intercepted one of our
cruisers a year ago and had the crew send word to our compound in the Isles that I needed to see him.
Keaton and I had thought it was about business. We had been working for Damian for several years at
the point but had never done business with him directly. We just smuggled goods to and from the Isles.
I didn’t mention it to Maeve because it didn’t matter to me, and I figured she’d drawn her own
conclusions based on the fact I was Romero’s grandson, but it had gone right over the top of her head.
We had been busy, anyway, chas ing a damn gemstone to the ends of the Earth.
“I’m going to let Poldesse dissolve-”
“You can’t,” Keaton said firmly, “There would be a pow er struggle, Troy. Poldesse would end up in
someone else’s hands, and who knows who that would be? Damian had close ties with prominent
families all over the Isles, people that have no business having that much power.”
“Then I say I’m Alpha in name and let-”
“And let the people of the Isles suffer under the rule of a regent, likely one of Damian’s men?”
“No, it would be you. You’d be my Beta.”
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Keaton let his arms drop to his sides, flexing his fingers. “You’re not thinking rationally,”
“I just been stabbed through the heart, Keaton!”
“You lose in either situation!” he shouted, throwing his hands in the air in frustration. “Goddess, Troy.
Poldesse IN VADED land governed by Alpha King Ethan. It doesn’t mat ter what your relationship is with
Maeve. You will be held responsible for all of it, especially with Damian dead.”
“What would you have me do, then? Run? Hide like a coward? Leave Maeve to fend for herself?
Abandon my kids like my parents did to me? Absolutely not-”
– “This moment,” Keaton said as he pointed to the space between us, “decides everything. Your path.
Your future-”
“Alpha Ethan won’t kill me,” I said with conviction, the force of my words sending a rush of pain through
my chest. “I’m more worried about her brother.”
Keaton rolled his eyes and turned away from me, busy ing himself with tying up a canvas sack of goods
we packed while taking down Damian’s camp.
“This goes beyond your fear of Ethan killing me-”
“I don’t think you’re thinking this through-”
“The only time we’ve been separated was when I was sent to Valoria,” I began, taking a deep breath.
“You were angry with me about that too.”
Keaton straightened to his full height, giving me a look that instantly reminded me of the first time I had
ever met him. He had been eight years old, the leader of a pack of orphans who varied in age, some
younger, but most were older than him, young teenagers who bent the knee to a skinny, scrappy kid in
cut-off jeans three sizes too big for him. His parents had died in the war, at least that was the story he
told.
I’d never been loyal to an Alpha.
I’d only ever been loyal to Keaton. He was the only fam ily I had ever had.
“I’m afraid I won’t ever see you again.” Keaton struggled with the words, tilting his head back and
groaning before making eye contact with me again, shaking his head. “It was different when you went to
Valoria for Damian. We didn’t have much of a choice. You couldn’t tell him no.”
“I’m not walking into a trap, if that’s what you think-”
“I don’t think that. I just know… Troy I know the second you step foot on the cruiser, everything we
worked for is over. Our crew… our ship. It’s always been ours, not just mine.”
“I know. We have mates to think about now, Keat.”
He considered this, a soft smile touching the corner of his mouth.
“Who would’ve f*cking thought?”
“Not me,” I laughed shortly, reaching up to touch the fresh stitches. We stood in silence for a moment,
watching as the crew pulled down the large canvas tent and folded it up.
“If I don’t hear from you, or about you, I’ll come to Win ter Forest and kill Alpha Ethan myself.”
“You should come visit anyway. None of us have ever been that far north. Myla will want to visit Duck.”
Keaton grinned, shaking his head as he met my eyes. The actual words he wanted to say seemed to
pass behind them, etched into his face. Instead, he said, “Do you think Maeve will let Duck stay with the
Persephone?”
“No,” | said slowly, both of us knowing that wasn’t a fight we wanted to take on.
*
**
Duck was running along the deck of the cruiser, his
snout gliding across the waxed floorboards as he examined his new surroundings. I could still see the
Persephone on the Horizon as it headed west, its sails at full mast.
I turned toward the windows of the control room where Pete was seated behind a large dashboard with
several dif ferent screens and navigation tools, his eyes wide as he marveled at technology he had likely
never seen before.
“This isn’t a cruiser,” Maeve said from the railing as she tied her hair into a bun. “This is a yacht.”
“Whatever it is, it’s going to get us north much faster than the Persephone.” | swallowed the hurt lingering
be hind my words as I watched the Persephone gain more dis tance. It felt like a chapter of my life had
closed, and the fu ture felt uncertain.
Maeve rubbed at the spot where her neck met her shoulder as she walked across the deck toward the
control room, which had a door leading down into the lower level of the boat. Beneath the deck was a
large master bedroom and bathroom, a kitchen, a few storage areas, and a bunkroom.
It was much smaller than the Persephone, but its size would prove useful as we made our way back
through the southern pass. We were lighter and faster. I had estimated our journey to Winter Forest to
take a month at least, but at the rate we were already moving, we could easily shave off a week.
“I need to change your bandages before you go to bed,” she said over her shoulder.
“I won’t be going to be for a while,”
“Then before I go to bed. You’re supposed to be rest ing!” She stopped walking and was staring right at
me, dressed in one of my worn-in button-down shirts and a pair of cotton shorts she had made by cutting
off the legs of an old pair of sweatpants I had tucked away in my room on the Persephone.
Nothing fit her anymore, that was true. Her slender, athletic figure had softened and rounded. She could
bal ance things on her stomach now, and the buttons of her shirt were tight against the growing swell. I
had never seen anything more beautiful in my life.
“I’ll rest,” | assured her as she slipped back into the in side of the boat, stopping to talk to Pete for a
moment be fore disappearing from view.
Duck had followed, of course. Maeve was his person, and he hadn’t let her out of his sight since he was
brought onto the cruiser.
I turned toward the railing, catching a final glimpse of
the Persephone before it faded from view.
“Do you think we’ll ever see her again?” Pete said, nod ding toward the speck on the horizon as he
walked over to me, standing at my side.
I nodded but felt an overwhelming sense of finality as the sun began to set and the calm water was
swallowed by darkness. “Keaton will come to Winter Forest when it’s safe. We can get you home… at
least whenever you’re ready to do that.”
“Eh, we’ll see. I’ve seen enough of warm water and trop ical weather for a lifetime. I’ve never seen snow,
you know.”
“Me neither,” | admitted, wincing as | adjusted my stance. My chest was killing me. My whole body
ached.
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“Hey, Troy?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you… uh, see anything? When you died?” Pete said with a blush. He was shy, that was obvious. But
I liked the guy.
“No… I don’t think I did. Just Maeve’s face, I guess. I honestly felt like when you’re just on the edge of
sleep, you know, when you’re still aware beyond the point of being
able to keep your eyes open?”
“Did it hurt?”
“Getting stabbed? Yeah-”
“No, I mean, when you started to… go…”
“No,” I answered honestly, glancing over at him. “I was cold, that’s it. I was more… upset. I wasn’t ready
to die, you know. I didn’t want to leave yet. I felt guilty, more than any thing”
Pete tapped his fingers on the railing, his face falling as he flushed with sudden emotion. “It was just me
and my ma when I joined the crew of the Persephone. She didn’t want me to do it, but… I had to get
away, see some things, do something other than fish. I had an older brother, Nathan. Nate. He died
when he was sixteen. I was eight.”
“Pete, I’m sorry,”
He waved his hand in dismissal, shrugging as he looked out over the water. “He nearly drowned in the
cove by our house back on Drifter’s Rock. He survived that, but… I’m not sure what happened. Drifters
was a small village, with no real leadership. People kept to themselves. But there was a Poldesse sheriff
on the island. Nate got sick from the amount of water that got into his lungs and… well, the sher
iff wouldn’t let my ma leave the island with him to get help in Avondale.”
Texhaled through my nose, nostrils flaring as I thought back to the Reconstruction period after the War.
Pete was just a little bit older than Maeve, so when he was eight, Poldesse was still operating in secrecy
with Damian assign ing elite warriors to the smaller islands to keep the villages under his thumb. I didn’t
even know the name of the Alpha of Poldesse in those days. I would’ve been eleven or twelve, and
Damian had yet to cement himself as the true Alpha and was likely still working under the influence of
Romero from afar.
“Nate said he wasn’t ready when he died. He was… he was begging. It was the worst –” Pete cleared his
throat, looking down at where his fingers were wrapped around the metal railing. “Thank you for telling
me how it felt, Troy. I feel better knowing that maybe… Nate wasn’t in pain.”
I didn’t know what to say. I reached out, wincing as the motion sent a fresh ripple of pain through my
chest as I patted Pete gently on the back.
“Anyway –” Pete said as he cleared his throat again, shaking his head. “What’s the plan now?”
“Head north. Skirt around the Isles, and only make land fall when we need to stop for supplies. We need
to get to Winter Forest before the weather turns. We only have a two
– month window before the northern pass begins to freeze.”
Opaline was being held in one of the storage rooms on the boat, our captive. I wasn’t exactly sure what
was going to happen to her when we reached Winter Forest, but I couldn’t risk her escaping while the
Persephone scoped out the situation in Dianny.
She was technically a prisoner of war, and I meant to hand her over to Ethan myself.
Hopefully, that would soften the punishment I was ex pecting when we arrived in Winter Forest.
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