MALRIC
"Your mother was with an assassination organization known as the Hollow. Her code name was Star."
Hollow.
Star.
Those words echoed in the room even as Malric turned them over and over again in his head while he skimmed over the painstaking investigation reports that his uncle had taken great effort to make.
This was not the first time the name Hollow was coming up before him. As an assassin organization that operated to kill high profile individuals, he somewhat knew of them. But had never been inclined to take them seriously.
"The Hollow is definitely part of the Cult." He commented while his uncle, Zander, a man in his late forties, paced the room with an inscrutable expression.
"So it seems…." Zander trailed off, "they are definitely part of the cult, but my investigation proves it might not be so simple."
Malric chuckled. "Seems it makes you quite uncomfortable to confirm that my mother was an undercover spy sent to kill my father, your cousin."
Zander paused. "But she never did kill him."
"Yes. Because the mate bond happened rather inconveniently." Malric stated matter-of-factly, realizing how very pathetic his parents' marriage was. "Although given she decided to find far more creative ways to destroy my father, I wouldn't dare say her resolve to kill him was softened."
Zander sucked in a deep breath. "My findings seem to point that your mother had a falling out with the Hollow a few years before her death. She seemed to have gone into hiding with your father. If not for the fact that she made contact with you before they were assassinated, we would never have found their bodies."
Malric folded the investigation report. "Keep investigating her identity as Star." He commanded.
"As you wish, your majesty." Zander bowed, "What about the Hollow? Shall I probe further about them?" He asked.
At the same time the door to the room opened, and Malric's four Betas entered, each looking as bored as the other.
Malric faced Zander squarely. "If they could send my mother, I am sure they would be no less inclined to send another assassin through the Selection Contest. So I wouldn't bother wasting your invaluable time and resources. I shall take care of it on my own end."
Zander stilled, staring at him for a moment. Then he bowed, "I understand. I shall keep investigating Star alone."
Without another word, he left, yet the words that had been exchanged settled in the air like something putrid, and his Betas picked up on it, resuming from where Zander had dreadingly stopped at.
"So you do know that this Bridal Selection Contest invites all the security risk factors we have only dreamt of until now, and yet you hold it." Aedryn NorthSteed, the Beta of the West commented while he plopped against a couch, stretching himself like the languid, lazy cat he was.
Which was funny because Aedryn's father, his Uncle Zander and the most hardworking man that Malric knew, just left the room while they pretended not to know each other.
Aedryn was nothing like his father though.
"Is it not obvious," Kael NorthSteed, Beta of the East, said slowly, pale eyes settling on nothing in particular. His peculiarly misaligned eyes made it hard to know what he was looking at.
"The Alpha King simply means to draw our enemies to the light. Instead of having them hide in the dark, would this not be better?" Kael finished, ever formal.
Aedryn sat up from the couch, eyes brimming with something that could almost be mistaken for childish excitement. "Is this a bell around the cat approach?!" He exclaimed in a voice filled with almost misconstrued delight.
"They will surely send their people to infiltrate the Selection no matter what it takes… So in reality, Your Majesty sets a grand trap?"
A dark chuckle travelled to them from none other than Thorne NorthSteed who stood by the door, fiddling with and admiring a silver dagger.
It was testament to years of grown resistance to the element that he was not burned by that much contact with silver no matter how fleeting, as baffling as that fact was.
"Bell around the cat approach?" He repeated in a hoarse voice like the sound of death itself, "that is quite the understatement, Aedryn. This is mouse roasted above the fire approach. And it turns out aside from the fifty brides coming our way, all four of us in this room make part of this mousey congregation."
"Do speak the common language, Thorne," Aedryn huffed, "I swear I do not understand you most of the time. Were you a fortune teller in your previous life? Always speaking glib words? "
"What Thorne means to say is that this grand trap will have our head rolling if we are not careful enough," Valen NorthSteed, who had been silent until then explained.
Amongst the five of them cousins in the room, he was the oldest being in his late thirties.
As one, they all looked up at Malric as if expecting some grand explanation to the event that might very well shake the very foundation of the North he was trying so hard to protect.
Aedryn turned serious, springing on his feet easily like a panther on the hunt.
"Since that is the case, Your Majesty should withdraw the Selection order," Aedryn said in a grave voice, "we can't afford to have another woman like your ex-wife, or worse, your mother getting close to you."
At that, images flashed in Malric's head.
Of a six-year-old boy cornered by his mother.
Of a star-crested dagger in trembling hands.
"If you die," she had whispered through tears, "we will finally be free."
His four cardinal Betas all looked at him, waiting silently for his words that will stand as the ultimate. They were the only ones allowed to dare comment on his wounds and scars, and that was what they just did.
And yet, they waited patiently even when all that greeted them was his silence as vast as the sky itself.
His wolves stirred uneasily at the rare recollection of memories he buried deep… and he re-buried them once again.
What he did though was to walk to the middle of the room. And then he tore the rug from the floor, revealing an intricate masterpiece personally carved to the oak wooden floor boards by himself the night before.
But it wasn't just any carved masterpiece.
Details, plans, pawns, they were all carved there. For him to reference in this long game.
"The Selection Contest is our first move," he said.
His betas circled the rectangular carvings inlaid to the floor, eyes taking it in with awe and quiet determination.
Kael nodded. "The Cult infiltrating the selection is the second move." He observed, true to being his finest strategist. "But what is the third move?" He asked.
The answer to the question lingered between all of them, yet Malric felt compelled to answer.
"The third move is the elimination." He answered, voice cutting through the frigid cold of that season.
For every one out of the four fortresses of his that the brides scaled, the blood of theirs must be sacrificed.
Their greed for his seat, their hunger for his head, their yearn for the ruin of the North were all he needed to put this game into motion.
So he easily anticipated them infiltrating the selection. The harder they were to hunt, the more interesting it would be.
"Say how many assassins will infiltrate the selection?" Thorne commented, attention stolen back by his silver dagger which he now admired with a rather eager, bloodthirsty frosty stare.
Aedryn chuckled. "The real question is how many will be found out on the first day." He drawled, "it is truly their misfortune that at the Silverhold Fortress, it is Beta Kael they will first meet."
Malric stared at the carved map of the Palace displaying the four fortresses that formed a protective circle around his palace right there at the Arctic Keep.
Nights filled with blood flashed through his eyes, bleeding his sight just as he muttered,
"Open the gates… let them come."