Despite how hard my anxiety-ridden heart is pumping, I nod. “Okay. Then let’s stall her,” I say, quickly getting dressed before heading to the bedside table where I snatch up the phone.
“What are you doing?” Rook asks, watching as my hands fly over the screen as I text Dinah. My friend immediately texts back, and a single kernel of hope pops inside of me.
I smile over at Rook as a plan takes form. “Don’t worry, Glow Worm. I got this.”
I walk confidently toward the dirt perimeter of the challenge ring. My stomach is already tied into so many knots I don’t know if I’ll be able to eat for a week. If I’m alive, that is. But I can’t show any of that. I need to be cool, calm, and collected—everything I hope I can goad my mat into not being.
It’s exactly twenty-three hours and forty five minutes since the challenge was first issued. I’m cutting it close, and I just hope everything I’ve put into play works out as planned.
I look around at the venue for this little showdown. Apparently, this is where Rook’s guards and enforcers train in both their human form and cockatrice form. Enough trees are cleared for the length of two football fields, with nothing but dirt and sparse grass on the ground. I can see a couple of buildings in the distance that Rook told me are locker rooms where his enforcers can clean up afterward.
He forced my mat to stay here overnight, which I’m sure she was spitting mad about. My lips curl up at the thought of her having to sleep without the comforts of a bed. I’m sure she slept like shit, which is good for me. I need any advantage I can have, just in case my plan doesn’t work.
There’s a crowd of some of Rook’s lounge gathered around the perimeter. At least a hundred of them—and not one of them looks happy. In fact, they’re all staring daggers in the same direction.
My mat is standing at the end of the ring, her green tail feathers flicking with irritation as she watches me approach. Her hair is pulled back in a tight, proper bun, and she’s dressed like she’s about to go to work as a CEO in a skyscraper rather than face her daughter in a duel for power.
Rook places his hand on the small of my back as we walk toward her. “Can I kill her?” he mutters.
Despite the circumstances, I feel my mouth twitch in amusement. “Still no.”
He sighs, like it’s a real inconvenience. “Just say the word.”
“Sinclair,” my mat says, flicking her eyes over us as we approach. “You’re late.”
“Not at all,” I retort. “I came fifteen minutes early before the twenty-four hours was up. If I wanted to, I could go fuck off for a bit and leave you waiting here even longer.”
Her thin lips pull downward. “You see?” she says, motioning toward me with her voice raised so that everyone else can hear her. “This is why you’re a poor matriarch. You have no sense of decorum necessary to run a lounge. Although, I shouldn’t expect anything else from an ex-convict.”
I snort. “I know what you’re doing.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re trying to belittle me in front of my new lounge,” I reply steadily. “Trying to form a rift of doubt. But it won’t work. Because unlike you, Alpha Bowen, the male you sold me to, is a damn good patriarch, and his lounge respects him. They might not know me very well yet, but they know him, and they trust that he wouldn’t mate someone who wasn’t worthy.”
“I think we’ll see who’s truly worthy by the end of this, now won’t we?” she retorts as she moves to undress so she can shift.
Rook interrupts her. “Why issue a challenge?” he asks, his strong arms crossed in front of his chest. “Why would you, her mother, challenge Sinclair? Like she said, you were the one to accept the contract months ago for me to take Sinclair as my mate. Now that she’s here, honoring that contract, you issue a challenge within a week. That doesn’t read like you had good intentions toward me or my lounge at all.”
I can tell that she hates that he’s called her out in front of everyone, because her nostrils flare as her green eyes dart around. “My reasons are my own. I don’t have to explain them to you or your lounge.”