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There will be NO CHAPTER tomorrow (8/9 December depending what timezone you\'re in) because I\'m running a mass-release / Goodbye Forever event over at King of Beasts. If you aren\'t reading that book, go to linktr.ee/aimeelynn and jump into my facebook page and enter the daily draw--there\'s paperbacks of QUEEN coming up as prizes in the next few days!

*****

ELRETH

She wanted to snarl at her brother\'s declaration. He was so certain, and she didn\'t know enough to know whether he was pessimistic, or entirely realistic.

It was like Gar had stood up and taken a shit right in the middle of the circle and no one wanted to look at it, but they couldn\'t ignore it either.

Elreth went very still, her entire body humming with tension. She looked at Aaryn to find him leaning on the arm of his chair and staring at her sadly.

A jolt of fear crackled through her—it was too much. Not for her, but for him. He had too many things to deal with all at once. He was going to give in to that darkness he was so afraid of if she didn\'t do something. She couldn\'t expect him to carry her through this. She needed to be the strong one.

"Dad?" she said suddenly, reflexively. She shouldn\'t have called him that in a meeting with the councilors, but hell, everything else was going to shit, the traditions might as well, too.

Her father cleared his throat and looked up from her mother\'s pleading face.

"Yes, El?"

"You kept the patrols going even when there was no known threat—so you\'d obviously assessed for one. Other than guards on the Portals and patrols, did you have any security measures you\'d intended to take if there was evidence of the humans coming through?"

He blinked a couple times and cleared his throat again, obviously struggling to focus. Then he rubbed his stubbled jaw. "I think… Behryn and I discussed setting traps, but discarded the idea because an injured human could likely still use a weapon. It didn\'t seem worth the risk of potentially hurting our own people."

Elreth considered the whole picture—there was only one entry into Anima, an actual bottleneck. If the humans could only come through one at a time, assuming they didn\'t have Protectors…

Oh, shit.

She looked at Aaryn. "How many disformed are trained and in the human world?"

He looked at her mother, his forehead wrinkled with thought. "I don\'t know about before my time, but in the last three or four years… I know of five that went through before I became Alpha, and four more since—to stay, I mean. The ones that haven\'t returned."

"And do all of them keep in touch with Anima, or have they truly defected?"

Her mother piped up then, her hands gripping Elreth\'s fathers so hard her knuckles were white. "We have them keep in touch with the Guardians. They don\'t have to stay in the area, but there are ways and means in the human world to keep in contact over great distances. There\'s approximately fifty disformed that live in the human world and I believe we still have contact with over forty of them."

Her father stared at her mother, his eyebrows high in shock. Elreth was sure her expression did the same.

Fifty? Fifty Anima that had been dissatisfied enough to leave Anima and stay in the human world which was, by all accounts, not nearly as inviting or enjoyable as the WildWood?

"Why so many?" she breathed.

"It\'s not that many when you think about how long this has been going on. Two or three a year. Less some years, more on others."

"And they all have… questionable loyalty to our people? What if the humans get them?"

"I assure you, even those that went through bitterly don\'t want to see Anima destroyed," her mother said quietly. "They leave the society, not their roots. If anything, being over there makes them more aware of just how Anima they are."

Elreth wasn\'t so sure. "Can we make contact with all these Anima? In fact, I won\'t ask, I\'ll tell. We have to make contact with every last one of them—or at least try to. We are facing a threat greater than any before. If a Protector can bring through others safely… all they need is a couple on their side and they can bring an army through."

Her mother\'s throat bobbed and she nodded. "I\'ll… I\'ll send word through."

"Wait… you can\'t do it from here?"

Her mother looked surprised. "No, the technology needed to contact them is all on the other side. We can\'t reach them from here. We\'ll have to send someone through to make contact, then bring us back word."

Elreth frowned, chewing the inside of her lip.

Was it worth it? If the Protectors could go through safely, the only risk was in potentially putting another one in the hands of a human on the other side. And yet… she\'d closed the Portal for a reason. The more contact the Anima had with it, the more likely something could go wrong.

Back and forth, she argued with herself about the risk, but she kept landing on a single fact.

Literally the one way to know which Anima were loyal to them was to bring them all back under the embrace of the Crown. And the only way to do that, was to send someone—probably more than one someone—to speak with them and convince them they were needed.

"Do the Anima over there know about the prophecy?"

"No," her mother said emphatically. "They know that we had a purpose in training them and that we continue to work towards that. But they don\'t know what it is."

Elreth nodded. "Bring them back," she said.

Her mother\'s brows popped high. "What?"

"They need to come back, all of them. We need to hear what they know, find out if they\'ve had any contact with humans or told anyone about our world. We need to measure them for honesty and loyalty—"

"Elreth, some of them have been gone almost twenty years. They have mates, and families. Whole lives—"

"And they will lose everything that made them who they are unless we can protect Anima. This is unavoidable. We need all of them back on Anima soil. They can bring their mates and families if they wish."

"Some of them can\'t! Some of the humans can\'t! And what if they get stuck here? If there\'s an invasion, or anything else—if the Portal has to be closed for any reason, you\'re sentencing them to leave their loved ones, their entire lives!"

"It can\'t be avoided. They need to come and be assessed and perhaps we can send them back."

"And if they won\'t?"

Elreth swelled with Alpha rage. "If they think to defy their Queen, they need to know: Any Anima that does not report to the crown to answer to their lives and who they\'ve told about us will be considered hostile, and tracked as a potential enemy."

"What?! Elreth, why would you—"

"I will do anything," she snarled at her mother. "Anything to keep this world safe. And if that means eroding relations with a group of us that defected, then I will live with that. This is war and I will not leave any additional weapon in our enemy\'s hands."

Her mother was about to speak again—to protest—but her father caught her hand and shook his head. They had a hurried, whispered conversation that Elreth made herself ignore. But she didn\'t breathe easily until her mother turned, white-faced and nodded tightly.

"Okay," she said, her voice trembling. "I\'ll send someone. We\'ll tell them. But it will take some time. Some of them will have to be sought out."

"Whatever it takes," Elreth said ruthlessly, ignoring the strange looks from Aaryn and Gar.. "Whatever it takes."