The day passed in a blink. The Council meeting lasted just long enough for the other alphas to warn me away from trying to free the djinn, and for me to reject whatever arguments they put forward, and then I confronted the other two cousins who’d been bodyguards for Cass. I tried not to think about the woman that Eloise turned to stone.

The bodyguards swore their loyalty to me, though I believed that about as much as I believed Nick when he said he loved me. Nick. He’d looked so betrayed when I chose the cackle. There had never been any doubt, at least in my mind—my life belonged to the family. All the dreams of freedom and Europe and a future where I could choose whatever kind of life I wanted... those were just dreams. Fantasies. They belonged in the realm of the impossible, and that was that. Other people could dream. Not the hyena queen.

We didn’t alert the den that power changed hands once more, and so all hell broke loose when I walked inside. It gave me a flash of insight into who really wanted me to be queen, just on the expressions on their faces—some were overjoyed, and others... not so much.

I found Savannah in one of the cells in the basement, locked up and quite the worse for wear after Cass was done with her, and made sure she was recovering in her room with her sister before I summoned the rest of the cackle into the throne room. I looked at all of them—cousins and sisters and even those I’d considered friends—and wondered what they’d said and done to protect themselves in the week that Cassidy ruled instead of me.

“It takes more than BadCreek to kill me,” I said. “A lot more. Any betrayals like that of my former security chief will be met with swift reprisal. I don’t give second chances. Let this be a lesson. If you have an issue with what I’m doing, raise it the normal way through my second-in-command. If you try to take power into your own hands, there is no helping you. It only ends one way.”

The young ones looked scared, but the older hyenas just looked... resigned. Another power-mad queen to rule over them. I’d used to think the same thing, wondering when there would be a chance for democracy or at least some kind of enlightened autocracy. It made my chest hurt. I saw in their faces the same sort of fear I remembered feeling when I watched my mother pass judgment on those in the cackle.

I’d become my mother. The realization hit me out of nowhere as I watched them watch me, and a sudden out-of-body experience showed me how I looked through their eyes. A cold, unfeeling bitch holding power for herself, untouchable and unreachable, and distributing favors to those she wanted, punishing those she hated. It all seemed so fucking arbitrary. Cass might have been a better queen than I, or at least a less bad one. I’d done my best, but I still followed the invisible rules that my mother set out. Might made right. And that... that left a sour taste in my mouth. It wasn’t who I was.

It wasn’t who I wanted to be.

Before I broke down on the throne, I ordered everyone to their rooms for the foreseeable future. I couldn’t afford to leave the den for any length of time, but I wouldn’t miss the meeting with the witches at midnight. Even if Nick acted as if I’d already betrayed him, too.

Once everyone in the cackle retreated to their living quarters, I went to check on Savannah once more. It didn’t leave much time to prepare myself before meeting Nick again at the cemetery, but I needed to know she was fine. At least until someone else challenged me.

With everyone in lockdown and Savannah monitoring the security system to make sure no one staged another coup, I sneaked out the back. Hopefully everyone believed I remained in my quarters, and no one would take the opportunity to create more trouble. It was a gamble, but I was in a gambling mood. Maybe if there was a second coup, I wouldn’t go back.

But I wasn’t even fooling myself. I was too scared to walk away from being queen of the hyenas. It was all I knew, and that felt safer than taking a leap into the unknown alone. Or with Nick.

I used the relatively short walk to the cemetery to get my thoughts in order. Nothing else stirred in the historical cemetery as I approached the tree on the slight hill in the center of the small green area, and for a long moment, I wondered if Nick set me up and this was all an elaborate prank. It fit with his personality. Either a prank or another way of getting me alone so he could proposition me.

Although hopefully he’d gotten that out of his system earlier in the afternoon. The thought made me flush. We’d gotten a lot out of our systems.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” he said from behind me, and I turned. Nick straightened from where he leaned against the tree, his expression difficult to read in the darkness. “What with consolidating control and knocking heads together and all that.”

I wouldn’t apologize. I really didn’t want to apologize. There wasn’t anything to be sorry about; I did what was right for my cackle and my family, and that was it. He couldn’t hold that against me. Except I had the sneaking suspicion he did, and that I resented myself a little for it as well. “I still have to make the deal with the djinn.”

“We’ll see.” Nick fiddled with a few blades of grass, looking at his hands more than me. “I get the feeling not much will change even if you do free the poor bastard.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What happens when BadCreek is gone and you don’t have an enemy to worry about anymore?” His eyes glinted gold, and I wondered if maybe it was the wolf talking instead of the man. “You’re going to need something external to worry about, otherwise you’ll have to confront yourself and your past and everything that’s fucked up about how your pack is run. So if it’s not BadCreek, it’ll be something else. The wolves, maybe. The jackals. It could be anyone.”

I shook my head, folding my arms over my chest. It was all bullshit, just a wounded ego lashing out however he could. “Look, we had some fun. That was all it was. It’s over. I’ve got real life to worry about, and—”

“Real life?” He laughed, teeth flashing. “You think this is your real life, Lacey? How sad is that? What you’re doing every day... that can’t possibly be all you want from life. I know you, maybe better than you know yourself, and you’ve got dreams. Ambitions. You’re meant for something more than being a petty alpha over a miserable pack. You’re so much more than that.”

“Not all of us can run away from our responsibilities like you, Nick.” I clenched my hands together behind my back, wanting to hit him or run away when his words struck a little too close to home. “I might not want to be hyena queen for the rest of my life, but someone has to look out for the family, and that’s me.”

“What happens if you leave?” he demanded. He loomed large out of the shadows and into the watery pool of light cast from a weak lamp on one of the nearby paths. “Someone else takes over. That’s how it works. So why are you martyring yourself over this pack like you’re the only one who can save them?”

I bared my teeth, furious at him and me and my mother and everyone in that damn cackle. “Because I’m not my mother, and the rest of them will do exactly what she did and will get them all killed. I can’t let that happen. I have to make up for it. She did so many terrible things, and we still haven’t recovered. Someone has to clean that up.”

“You’re not your mother,” he said. Suddenly he stood in front of me and caught my shoulders, not quite shaking me, but close. “You’re not. You don’t bear the responsibility for her crimes. You don’t owe them anything. I hope you figure that out before too much time passes, otherwise you might turn into your mother and do exactly what she did, just in service to another goal.”

“I don’t need a lecture from you,” I said. I drew breath to tell him exactly what I thought of him, but froze as more shadows were cast into the weak light.

A strange voice said, “We can return after you’re done with your little... discussion?”

I turned and saw three women standing in the cemetery, watching us with varying degrees of interest. The hyena growled as she got a good whiff of them: they looked like humans but smelled very wrong. The witches.