“I last spoke with her three hours ago.” Conrad exhaled. “By all accounts, I was the last person who spoke to her. She hasn’t been seen since—not by anybody—and she’s nowhere in the palace.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Nothing of note. The wedding plans, the arrival of your delegation. She was a little…” Conrad hesitated, and Seth fought to keep himself calm. He had to be patient, here. Worried as he might be for Lana, this was still a tense diplomatic situation. A wolf alone is a wolf in trouble, he heard his father’s voice murmur in his mind…
“A little what?”
“Stressed. Distracted. Understandably so.”
“Do you think she ran away?”
Conrad’s jaw tightened. “It’s a possibility.”
“From being Queen? Or from the wedding?”
“That’s enough,” one of the soldiers said in a low voice, her green eyes fixed on his face as she took a menacing step forward. “You are speaking to the Prince.”
“I am aware of that,” Seth snapped, squaring up to her.
“Stand down, Acantha.” Conrad raised a hand, and the woman stepped back. The Prince looked exhausted. “What are you asking, Alpha?”
“Do you have reason to believe she was unhappy about the wedding?”
“No,” Conrad said, his brow furrowing. “She’s under no obligation or duress. If she wanted to withdraw from our arrangement, she would be free to do so. Lana is the Queen. What is the purpose of this?”
Seth closed his eyes. “Might I remind you that both of our communities have suffered dozens of unexplained disappearances over the past six months?”
Conrad caught his breath. “But—she was in the Palace. Surely not.”
“I hope not,” Seth said simply. “But if you want to find her… Prince Conrad, I know you were intending on waiting until after the royal wedding to have this discussion. But I think we need to move now. For all our sakes.” He took a breath. “And most of all, for Lana.”
Conrad looked at him for a long moment, clearly conflicted… then nodded slowly. “The Alpha is right,” he said, glancing at the soldiers. “War room meeting. Now.”
Dragons moved very quickly when they needed to, Seth observed. Within the hour, more than thirty shifters were seated at an imposing stone table in a room on the lowest level of the palace—Seth and his wolves on one side, Conrad and his advisors on another. He hadn’t seen this space before. Something told him it was rarely used… and rarer still by wolves. The expressions on the faces of the dragons on the other side of the table made that abundantly clear. He just hoped they could set their culture shock aside long enough to focus on the problem at hand—namely, that Lana was missing, and possibly in trouble. Seth watched their faces closely as Conrad gave a quick, concise summary of why they were there, watchful for any signs of suspicion or hostility towards the wolves.
“In short,” Conrad said, “we don’t know where she is.”
“Forgive my ignorance,” a gray-haired dragon at the other end of the table said, his voice low and ponderous. “But there appears to be a pack ofwolvesin here? Have I missed something?”
There was a quiet titter from among the dragons. Seth felt his pack bristle behind him, and quickly held up a hand to silence any protest they were considering offering. “Like you, we’ve experienced dozens of unexplained disappearances over the past six months,” he said, keeping his voice deliberately level. He knew what it sounded like when someone was deliberately trying to goad him into an emotional response, and he wasn’t going to let that happen with so much at stake. “Prince Conrad and I have agreed to join forces to solve this shared problem.”
There were low murmurs from the dragons at that, but Conrad was nodding his agreement. “For those of you who haven’t yet met him, Seth is the Alpha of the valley pack. We are grateful for the help he’s offered in searching for our missing Queen.”
That caught their attention. A murmur of dismay rippled through the group, and the gray-haired dragon seemed to recede in his seat a little. The green-eyed palace guard who’d been in Conrad’s office earlier leaned forward.
“Prince Conrad, you’re certain her disappearance has the same cause as the others?”
“We’re not certain of anything,” Conrad said after a momentary hesitation. “But it seems the most likely explanation.”
“And the most serious,” Seth pointed out. “We have been deeply troubled over these disappearances for months. It’s well and truly time we joined forces in getting to the bottom of them.”
“And just what will that entail?”
“Working together,” Seth said, aware of the eyes of his pack on him. “Sharing our respective insights and information. We will put our collective wisdom at your disposal… all of it. If you agree to do the same.”
That brought about some disgruntled muttering from the dragons. Two men he recalled seeing moving in and out of the Archives looked especially indignant about what he’d said, and though it took him a few false starts, he managed to speak up in a voice that shook with outrage as well as nerves.
“W-with respect, Prince Conrad, and esteemed—colleagues, guests, and—I mean to say—our Archives contain ancient secrets, traditional, sacred, it would be disrespectful to so much as, I mean there are—”