Easton
Arianna had gone quiet.
Not the normal kind of quiet where she was thinking through a problem or trying to decide how much she wanted to tell me. This was different. She sat at the far end of the conference table staring at nothing, one hand wrapped around a paper coffee cup she hadn’t touched in twenty minutes.
Mara’s words had changed something.
A succession challenge.
Her father had two options.
Accept it.
Or kill it.
I hated both.
Braxton had cleared most of the room after that, keeping only me, Arianna, Mara, and two warriors nearby. The other shapeshifters were being watched in separate rooms until we knew whether any of them were actually loyal to Arianna or simply playing a longer game.
Which, apparently, was something I had to worry about now.
Shapeshifters were
