about – sweet, smart, eccentric, but utterly human Breena. My best friend. Surely if she was a fairy princess, I would know about it!
And yet she didn't know about me . I sighed. I'd managed to keep the fact that I was a werewolf from her for almost sixteen years; she could just as easily have kept the fact that she was of Fey stock a secret from me. I was hurt – however irrationally – by Breena's lack of disclosure.
But if Breena was trying to keep her fairy life a secret, she wouldn't have shown me those pictures of Feyland and asked me about them – she would have certainly tried to hide the portraits from me, lest I suspect her secret identity. Instead, she had painted hundreds of pictures, filling her room with canvases, sighing to me as she painted: “It feels so real, Logan. I recognize these places – but from where? Do you know them?”
The only thing that made sense, therefore, was for Breena to not have known what she was. And if Breena really was the Summer Princess, and didn't even know it, then she was in more danger than I thought.
The pieces of the puzzle started to come together in my head. It all made sense now. Breena being the Summer Princess would explain everything – her painting abilities, her memories of Feyland, Delano's attempted abduction, Kian, everything...
I remembered Breena's mother, Raine Malloy. She had seemed so nice, so normal. Could she have once been the lover of one of the most powerful fey in Feyland?
I was interrupted in my thoughts by a low, harsh growl, followed by a loud bark. I stopped, pricking back my ears. I let out a friendly howl, letting any Wolves in the area know that I came in peace, and that I wasn't interested in any trouble.
Unfortunately, it appeared that the other wolves didn't feel quite the same way. Two dark-furred beasts came snapping out of the trees, leaping onto me. Their muzzles snapped; their teeth were bared. Four yellow eyes stared out at me menacingly from two familiar heads.
Jacob , I thought, baring my teeth. Paris.
My traitorous cousin, Jacob and his friend Paris had once been my boyhood friends. As a child I had played with them, grown up alongside them. We had spent many trips between Oregon and Feyland together, shuttling back and forth between the mortal world and the fairy one. When I was younger, I had imagined that the three of us would stay lifelong friends.
But then came that terrible day, a day the memory of which even now filled me with rage. As I snapped back at Paris and Jacob, baring my teeth and clawing at their soft fur, I remembered the last time I had saw them. The day they decided to mutiny under the treacherous wolf Balthazar. The day they decided they could no longer live under the kind, but moderate, leadership of my grandfather. The day they decided they would rather throw in their lot with warmongering, battle-hungry fiends like Balthazar rather than do their duty to our clan.
The day they killed Grandfather, the Wolf King.
The pain was still fresh. Only weeks had passed since I had watched the life drain out of the man I loved more than anything in the world; I had woken up many nights since then in a cold sweat, hagridden by nightmares of that moment, of watching him die. And in all those nights, I had dreamed of what I would do when I finally met them again. When I finally had the opportunity for revenge.
Jacob and Paris stepped back, taking human form. A sign they wanted to talk, to halt the hostilities.
As much as my body ached for revenge – as much as I wanted to sink my teeth into their chests – I too stepped back and transformed. Grandfather wouldn't want me to behave dishonorably, I knew – and to avenge his death by treachery would be worse than not avenging it at all.
“What do you want, Jacob?” I snarled. “Paris?”
“Listen, we don't want more trouble. Just get out of here and we'll pretend we never saw you.” Jacob was avoiding my gaze. I could tell that he was ashamed of what
Rebecca Hamilton, Conner Kressley