The Wannabe Warrior
Chapter 143

Zane POV

Dad called us to meet in his office. It was only four in the morning, very early for most to even be awake.

He had breakfast waiting for us at his desk.

Jonathon made the coffee and we sat and ate, while we waited for dad to begin what he wanted to say.

‘I found a journal and I was a little disturbed by it. As you already know, I have identified, three Elders, and three packs and the rogues and advisor, Clarence, and now it seems that some of our own warriors are part of this conspiracy, and we have sent all of those we thought were most trusted warriors to accompany Madison and all seventy of them are against us. How I missed this I don’t know. I have yet to give Madison or Mitch a warning of their treachery. We were thinking Emery only had six men, now it seems he has had insiders for years. With Clarence gone, I thought it was over, but I guess Emery does not want to give up, and I can understand that logic, when he has had so many inside the palace as trusted warriors. Loyal to him, that is. I feel so guilty for never picking any of this up.’ Dad m***s sadly at all the treachery that had been building for so many years.

‘Don’t take it so hard on yourself, it is not wrong to have trusted those men you have had around you, many you have seen from birth, held them, blessed them, trained with them, how would you know that they would betray you, even in some rogue battles they have fought beside you.’ I tried to console dad as he is so down and feeling guilty that he did not notice this growing push against him. Even I would have trusted them, I went to school with many of them, trained and fought beside them, and all along they were planning on going against us, to take us down.

‘When will you let Madison know she has a problem up there? I am just glad she has a lot of Blue River men with her, to help protect her, and Graham too, and thank the goddess you included Mitch on this trip.’ Jonathon tried to look at some of the positives of this latest problem.

‘Will give it till six am, they should be up by then, let them sleep a little longer, they have had a big job to do up there, and I have asked Zakary to pop over when he has a chance to, he said he will go there today, so hopefully they will have plenty of men to take the traitors down.’ Dad said, and I felt bad that we sent all those traitors along with Madison to fight and they would fight against Madison. So far, Madison has managed to save Mitch and Graham, and take Peter down. Let’s hope she gets the information about the traitors before they can attack her or Emery arrives and she replaces herself in the centre of a fight and the ones who she thought were with her are suddenly against her.

My poor mate, I want her to be safe and at home with me and yet we have sent her to the deadliest place around.

‘Johnathon, I am sorry, you have your twins in a bad place. I don’t know if you want Addison to know, but I advise against it, we don’t want her trying to contact him when he could be in the middle of a fight.’ Dad suggests.

‘That is why she needs to be told, she needs to know not to contact him, if she calls for a daily chat or something, she could put him in danger.’ Jonathon looked at dad with concern.

‘She is your daughter-in-law. I will leave that decision up to you. I have failed as a king and when this is over and if we come out of it alive, I will step down and Zane can take over. I feel a huge failure.’ Dad looked like he had aged years overnight and I was concerned for him.

‘Ezekiel, my friend. You should have some time with your new mate, so stepping down would be fine, if you intend to shower your new mate with attention that she deserves and not step aside to sulk about what you could not have possibly known about, how could you, your own mate, you believed and trusted. You believe the lies she spun, the lies the others spun, you had no proof to the contrary, so you accepted and hoped your gut feelings were wrong. But deep down, I know you have had doubts, you just could not put your finger on what was wrong.’ Ryan speaks up for the first time in the meeting, speaking the truth as he saw it, being his beta and knowing the same information as dad did.

‘You are right, I couldn’t know, but as king, I should have or at least talked to you about it.’

‘But you did talk about it, a number of times, and we both could not replace why, even Mitch would back me up on this one, we had you in the gym punching that bag for hours, as you tried to work through all the things that were going wrong, and you could not see where the problem was coming from. Your mate managed to cover every time you thought you had the right track, she steered you away and muddied the waters, you were twisted inside. I remember two years ago, you had thought something odd about the advisor, and Luna made sure you changed your mind before you could really think it through.’ Ryan argued with him.

‘You are right, I did ask, but I did not follow through and I should have.’

‘But even back then, what would you have found out? You had three elders and the advisor all guiding you in a different direction, making it look like you were looking in the wrong way. You tried and I believe you kept us as safe as you could with the knowledge you had. Please, stop beating yourself up and face the facts. You had so many against you, the fact that you are still here and fighting proves you are a great king.’

‘We are here and fighting because of Madison.’ He countered.

‘That may be so, but you listened and investigated, you did not brush away her ideas, you grabbed them with both hands like a drowning man, and let the ideas take root and you supported her, and that is why it worked. You could easily not have listened and we would still be in the dark.’ Ryan would not let go, he needed his king to see, he did all he could with the information he had.

‘I need my mate home and safe, so we can stop the person who is at fault and work on what we are going to do. Dad, you should accept you did what you could with what you knew, and move forward. Let’s see what we can put together from here and get some help over to Madison and the group.’ I growled at my dad and hoped to get his head back into the game.