The Wannabe Warrior
Chapter 150

Zane POV

The news of my Madison being taken was devastating.

Mary and I cried till neither of us had any tears left and then sat and had a coffee and talked about the good times we had with Madison and the good time we shall have in the future when she returns to us, both of us trying hard to console the other, and lift up our spirits and in belief of her safe return.

Dad arrived not long after we had finished our coffee, and had gained control of our emotions. Dad looked like he had little sleep and I felt for him. I think Jonathon would look no better than we do and losing his only daughter, a living reminder of his late mate and the loss of his mate’s hereditary skills, would be a big blow for him. I am just glad he has a new mate now and she may be of some comfort to him at a time like this.

Mitch and the buses returned by lunch time, and had the boxes taken straight to the private library.

I joined our little group of a few trusted men, and we gathered around the table and nervously took out the contents of the boxes that Madison so desperately wanted. No! She needed us to see them, and placed them one by one into piles.

I was not unsure yet, what was so important that Madison needed them to be brought there, to risk her precious moments of trying to escape to tell Mitch about them. I looked at the growing piles and thought of my Madison and her last desperate wish sitting in front of me. Seeing each pile grow made my heart heavy, something here, Madison, had risked her life to get to us, and we had to work out what she wanted us to see.

What she saw as important enough for that risk.

I was both anxious to replace out and feared the results at the same time, something on this table was going to change our lives.

Again!

I could just feel it, with an unknown feeling of certainty, that dad was going to be hurt again, and I worried if he could take more jolts to his trust. His self-esteem, as he had since Madison came into our lives and turned everything around and opened our eyes to how far and how long a person was prepared to go to take power.

After all the boxes were emptied onto the table, I moved to the bag on the floor and lifted it onto the table.

Then I took the papers out of the bag without looking at them yet and placed the papers on the table and then dived back into the bag for the photo album.

Casually, I flipped open the photo album. It opened on about the third page, and, with a loud shocked gasp, sat heavily on the chair beside me and stared at the first picture. I looked at dad across the table, going through a file of papers, and my stomach plummeted as I looked back down at the photograph.

The picture that started back at me was of my aunty Gladys, with a child and Emery. Gladys was dad’s twin sister. I have seen very little of her over the years. But what was she doing with Emery? The thought that she was Emery’s mate disgusted me and I wonder how she managed to hide that fact all these years, and where was she now?

‘Dad, come look at this.’ I called dad to look at the album and the others came over too.

‘That is Gladys, and she is with Emery, and look. They seem to have a child. Do you think they are mated? And that baby is their child?’ I asked incredulously.

‘Start from the start of the album, son, let’s see what we have here.’ Dad suggested, and dad, Jonathon, and Mitch surrounded me, as we started to go through the album, one page at a time.

Pictures of Gladys pregnant, another at the child’s birthday party blowing out candles, lots of her and two children as they grew up, rarely with anyone other than the children, except two photos that included Emery and three that included mum and the three of them were together laughing at something. They looked happy in the photo. A couple of photos had my mum holding the youngest child and she looked happy too and was at some of the birthday parties. I remembered she had gone to visit her sister, or so she said, when all along she was going to spend time with Aunty Gladys.

After gasps and other expletives, we reached the end of the album and dad reached over for the paperwork that was with the Album.

‘Looks like Gladys had become the mate of Emery and had two children, one died in one of the rogue raids gone wrong about six years ago. She moved away from the Dark River Pack around the time Emery was kicked out and the pack they had formed together, though it had not yet been recognised as a pack, they had called it the Chrystal Mountain Pack, and it was somewhere to the north. Maybe that is where they have taken Madison.’ Dad hands the paperwork over to Jonathon to look at while he flips back a few pages in the album.

‘But why was all this in the Dark River Pack house?’ Mitch asked as he pondered the photos on the table.

‘Emery was part of the Dark River pack, and was kicked out for some reason. Gladys had moved there. Before he was kicked out and she used to come and visit often and after Zane was born, she was not happy. I had a son and rarely visited after that. I had no idea she was mated or that she had two children. She never said a word when she visited and kept her mark hidden and, you see, her perfume used to make me sneeze, the perfume must have covered her scent so that I did not even notice a change in her scent to recognise she had mated.’ Dad said thoughtfully as he remembered about his younger days and his fatherhood days.

‘But wasn’t Gladys your twin sister? Surely, she would have been happy for you?’ Jonathon asked softly.

‘Gladys did not like that I was named successor after I got mated and produced a son. Gladys was older by two minutes and thought the title should go to her as she was the oldest, but the line always went to the son, never the daughter, and if the king had no sons, he would choose one, who would succeed him, more often than not, they would have an arranged marriage, so the daughter would still be queen and the family b***d line continued.’

‘Do you think Gladys was behind the pheromone potion? Could she have had some kind of control over Luna?’ Jonathon suggested, and the idea had merit.

‘Luna is in some of these pictures. That is for sure, they knew each other from before I met Luna, so they could have arranged something together. Gladys’s son was older than Zane, so maybe when Zane was born, Gladys had to change her plans. We had just foiled, I think, that plan, and this whole war is about, her revenge on my father’s decision to make me king, and the rogues and a lot of elders and those packs we have found to be traitors, are all behind her revenge for succession, maybe to put her son on the throne. Now she is too old to be queen. Let’s look at the other paperwork from the boxes and see what else Madison had found for us and had hidden it on the bus for a reason.’

We moved around the table, each of us taking a pile and sat down to start reading and digesting what we had before us. Madison had been thorough and had sent a lot of information to us to try and replace what she was trying to tell us.