The Ivory Throne

4. Inca

***Celina***

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Jadiel murmurs, the sound of his voice making my heart flutter as he bows for me. “I’ll get the wrong idea.”

“How the hell did you get into my room!?” I snarl, scrambling to my feet as Jadiel walks towards the window without a care that he’s just been caught snooping around my room.

“You know, I’m more interested to know how you got here,” he says. “You’re aura doesn’t give off Silver wolf, but you’re clearly no Gold wolf. Enlighten me. Please.”

“I’m not telling you s**t until you explain how you got in here,” I snap.

“The perks of being the owner,” he says with a grin. “I know where everyone stays. All I had to do was ask the front desk where the pretty girl with the white hair was staying and the concierge was able to tell me which rooms your party had reserved. If your aim was to be discreet, your hair kinda gives you away. You’re hard to forget.”

I feel my face heat up at his compliment and it infuriates me.

“We picked rooms at random,” I snap, his grin only deepening.

“Yes, but only this room had your scent all over it,” he explains, walking towards the foot of my bed and pushing open my luggage.

I storm over to him and slam the luggage shut so he doesn’t see what else I have inside.

“Get out of my room,” I warn, Jadiel leaning forward so that his rich scent fills my nostrils.

“Or what?” he asks, a chuckle lingering in his voice. “Are you going to call your fiance on me? You should. I’d love to meet my competition.”

My cheeks burn with anger as he so nonchalantly walks away, meanwhile, his scent alone leaves me flustered.

“It’s funny,” he says under his breath. “I don’t smell another man ever being in here. Why is that?”

“He has his own room,” I mumble, knowing it’s a weak lie at best. “We won’t share a room until after our wedding.”

“How traditional,” he chuckles. “You don’t strike me as the traditional type. So tell me, will you be taking his last name too? Olivier Artaud… That’s French isn’t it?” he asks, raising an eyebrow in curiosity.

“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” I reply, Jadiel shrugging in agreement.

“Perhaps,” he sighs. “But you know, I still don’t know your name,” he chuckles. “I could continue calling you Mate, but I don’t think you quite like that. So, what should I call you?” he says, sitting down on the edge of my bed.

“You shouldn’t,” I answer, his teasing smile still hanging on his lips.

“No worries, Mate,” he says, tilting his head in thought. “I’ll call you Inca,” he chuckles. “Porque siempre estas hincada a mis pies {because you’re always kneeling at my feet}.”

“Don’t you dare-”

“Then give me a name,” he pries, a challenge in his voice as he shrugs innocently.

I storm up to the door, and open it for him. “Get out.”

“Ah, don’t be a bad sport,” he sighs, his comprehension skills pushing my last nerve.

“I said get out!”

He sighs tiredly as he taps his knees before getting up and stalking over to me, his large frame towering over mine.

“So, I guess dinner is out of the question?” he whispers in my ear, resting his arm beside my head as he traps me against the wall.

Before I can answer, we hear a growl coming from the door and I turn to find Oliver standing there watching with a murderous look in his eyes.

“You have three seconds to get out,” he says calmly, though the hatred in his voice is very obvious.

“You must be my competition,” Jadiel smiles, pulling away from me and holding out his hand to Oliver.

Oliver does not reciprocate the gesture, crossing his arms as he stares at Jadiel’s hand.

“One,” Oliver counts, an amused smile on Jadiel’s face.

“I’m curious to find out what happens at three,” Jadiel smirks. “I love surprises.”

“Two,” Oliver snarls, Jadiel chuckling to himself as his watch rings.

“But it’ll have to be another time,” he sighs. “I’m running late for a meeting. Te veo al rato, chula, {I’ll see you later, cutie},” he says, winking at me as he pushes past Oliver and disappears down the hall.

“Counting?” I mutter once the coast is clear, Oliver rolling his eyes as he slams the door shut. “What is he, five?”

“You weren’t exactly helpful either,” he mutters back, a small voice giggling in front of me.

Aurora materializes out of thin air, wearing nothing more than her medallion while her hands shield her intimate parts. I forget my sister can become invisible when she feels like it.

“Were you here the entire time?” I snap, feeling betrayed as she laughs.

“I showed up with Oliver,” she giggles, Oliver grabbing her a towel to cover herself. “I only came to back him up in case Jadiel decided to use his powers.”

“I could’ve handled him,” Oliver mutters, Aurora and I both looking at him skeptically.

“I’m sure you could,” she smiles, Oliver mocking her tone as he starts to search the room.

“What are you doing?” I ask, Oliver mumbling as he searches.

“You think the creep didn’t bug your room?” he asks, my face growing pale.

The three of us search the entire room for any hidden cameras, mics, or other spyware and to our luck, we find and sense nothing. From the corner of my eye, however, I see my purse hidden under my luggage when I knew I had hidden it under the bed. Dread fills the pit of my stomach as I search its contents.

“s**t,” I mumble, running my fingers through my hair in frustration.

“What did he take?” Oliver asks.

“My passport.”

.

.

.

***Jadiel***

Oh what I would give to see the look on her face when she realizes I took her passport, I think to myself as the elevator door closes. I love getting under her skin.

It’s not the only thing you want to get under, Omar, my wolf snickers.

True, I laugh, typing in the access code to the basement level and flicking open the passport. Now let's see who we have here.

The smile disappears from my face when I see her name in bold letters.

Celina Maite Altamirano-Reyes.

Celina Altamirano-Reyes… as in Sofia and Mateo Altamirano-Reyes? The former King and Queen of Sol de Oro? But I thought they were dead. That entire family is supposed to be dead.

“You’re f*****g kidding me,” I groan, closing the stupid booklet and slipping it back into my pocket.

So what if she’s an Reyes ? Omar growls. A mate is a mate.

She’s not just a Reyes, I snap. She’s the daughter of our greatest rivals. The daughter of the man who killed my father. I knew there was something familiar about her. How could I have been so f*****g blind and missed it when I first saw her? She looks just like the picture! I groan, frustrated with the fact that her mere scent alone sends my wolf into a frenzy.

Being near her was difficult enough without wanting to tie her up to the bed and f**k the attitude right out of her.

Goddess, imagining what she must feel like is going to be pure torture.

It would be a long session too, Omar chuckles. She’s got more attitude than a f*****g chihuahua barking at a pitpull.

The elevator doors open to the basement level, two armed guards greeting me as I step off. Everywhere I turn, there’s an armed man waiting on orders which means one of two things; my step-father is inspecting merchandise, or he’s holding an interrogation. Either way, it’s best I not stick around for too long.

I round the corner into a small waiting area outside my step-father’s office, my mother all by herself reading over some documents.

“Where’s La Chispita (the little firecracker)?” I ask, my mother flicking through a few pages.

“Don’t call your sister that. She was five,” my mother mutters as she continues to search the documents. “She left with her friends to Tampico for some shopping,” my mother answers haphazardly.

“What are you looking at?” I ask, looking over my mother’s shoulder.

“Just the contract for the hotel. I want to make sure everything is ours,” she replies.

“Is there reason to believe it's not ours?” I ask, growing suspicious when my mother shakes her head.

She’s not exactly the most honest woman in the world.

“Just double checking is all,” she shrugs. “I thought I saw a ghost today and it had me thinking.”

“What did this ghost look like?” I reply, my mother finally looking up at me.

“No one,” she says with a small smile. “Shall we go?”

I decide not to bring up the issue of my mate until I can verify Celina is in fact Sofia and Mateo’s missing daughter. The last thing I need is my mother meddling in my business. I help her up, Felix, my Royal beta stepping out of my step-father’s office.

“Do not go in there,” he says. “Blood everywhere.”

“Ugh, we just installed new carpets,” my mother groans as Felix hands my mother the several licenses we acquired for the casino. “I don’t know why he insists on using the hotel for his interrogations. There are plenty of other places to do it.” She looks down at Felix’s feet and gags. “Change your shoes. You’re going to get blood on the carpets upstairs.”

Felix mutters under his breath as he kicks off his shoes and orders a guard to give him his.

“Are you too lazy to get your own, Asshole?” I laugh, escorting my mother back to the elevator.

“Why go upstairs when we got a perfectly good guard with the same size shoe as me,” he chuckles, pushing the button to close the doors.

We head upstairs to the hotel restaurant, a hostess leading us to a private seating area overlooking the ocean. Moments later, we’re joined by our associates who will be designing and constructing the slot floor layout, live game table layout, and CCTV layout for the new casino we plan to add to the entire Hotel Reyes chain. I’m not at all keen on the addition but my mother and step-father insist it is the best move for the business. Of course, I suspect my step-father, Efrain, wants to use it as a front to launder his cartel money, but my mother swears he will not involve me in any of his dealings. I’m not sure who to trust anymore, but one thing is certain; my parents will not be dragging me down with them. Everything will be legitimate, from the game and drinking licenses to the management software. If all hell breaks loose, I will come out on top.

The designers present their plans and I carefully study each of them, scrutinizing every detail until I have the perfect plans before me. As we pause to eat our lunch, the soothing scent of cucumber and cornflower fills the restaurant, Omar immediately awakening to search for his mate. I keep my cool, pretending not to notice my beautiful mate as she struts past me in a little blue dress with a square neckline that shows just enough cleavage to let the mind wander to depraved places. Long black tattoos spiral from her palms up past her wrists and there’s a tattoo of the moon and sun on her spine.

I’m not at all amused that the Alpha from earlier, Olivier, has his arm wrapped around her tiny waist as he leads her to a table near ours, but I remain unfazed as I watch them sit down from the corner of my eye.

That prick has a death wish, Omar snarls when Olivier takes Celina’s hand and kisses it.

Ignore them, I snap. I have no interest in mating with a Reyes anyways.

Liar, he snaps, and while he speaks the truth, I mean every word. There’s no way in hell I’m mating with a Reyes.

“Everything okay?” Felix mindlinks me from across the table. “You look like you’re sitting on a cactus.”

I roll my eyes at the i***t and find myself quickly losing focus as Celina flirts with her fiance, touching his arms and complimenting his physique. From time to time, I feel her eyes on me and I realize she’s trying to taunt me.

Big f*****g mistake. I’m a petty motherfucker.

“I need you to do me a favor,” I say through a grin, Felix listening tentatively. “Get me all the information you can on Olivier Artaud. I want to know every detail about his family, his business, his pack. The quicker the better.

“Why?” Felix ask and I lose my patience

“Just f*****g do it,” I snap, suddenly noticing the tenseness in my mother’s shoulders when my mate walks past out table and heads towards the bathroom.

Felix excuses himself from the table, promising to give me all that he can on the Artaud family. Meanwhile, my mother seems to grow more and more uncomfortable the longer we remain in the restaurant.

“I’m sorry gentlemen, but I’m afraid I’m not feeling well. We’ll have to continue this discussion another time,” she sighs. “Migraines.”

I know my mother well enough to know she has no migraines, but dismiss the designers on her behalf, thanking them for their work as they leave.

“Care to explain yourself, mother?” I snap as she starts to pack up her things to leave.

“Primero vamonos {First, lets leave},” she hisses. “And then we can talk.”

She gives me her hand to help her get up and as I turn to leave, I collide with my mate, my arms wrapping around her instinctively as we crash against the table. We land on the floor, Celina on her back with me on top of her. She looks like a goddess beneath me, her white hair framing her delicate face like a little fairy, a storm swirling in her gray eyes as she glares up at me.

How is she so beautiful?

Just like before, I feel the strange urge to bow to her, Omar demanding I pay my respects to her. I follow through, unable to stop myself from bowing down to her.

What is she?

“Get off of me, imbecile,” she snarls, pressing her two hands against my chest.

Reality comes racing back towards me and I quickly clear my thoughts.

“You need to come with a siren,” I mutter as I stand up. “Atropellas a todo el mundo {You run over everyone},” I add, holding out my hand to help her up.

Ignoring me, she grabs onto the table to help herself up and walks away without an apology, my mother also bowing to her as she pushes past us. She moves with such rage, and as she sits, she refuses to even look in my direction, her lips pressed together in an angry pout.

Goddess, this woman is going to drive me insane.

“Jadiel!” my mother snaps in her high pitched voice she only uses when she’s annoyed. “Vamonos,” she whisper-yells through gritted teeth.

“Ya, ya, jefecita {yes, ma’am},” I smirk at her and pat her head, a crazed look in my mother’s eyes when she looks up at me.

I stop knowing damn well this five foot three woman can and will hand me my ass.

We make our way through the restaurant and I manage to reach the elevator without ever looking back at my mate, hoping to drive her up the wall by not acknowledging her at all. When the elevator doors close, my mother turns to me with a grave look on her face.

“That girl you ran into, do you know who she is?” she asks.

I learned years ago that when it comes to my mother, it’s always best to keep some things to yourself. She’s a survivor, and like most survivors, she’ll take any opportunity she can get to stay on top.

“No,” I shake my head.

She rummages through her purse for the papers she was looking through earlier.

“I think she’s Sofia’s daughter,” she sighs.

I feign ignorance. “Sofia? Reyes?”

“Sí, la stupida esa,” my mother mutters. “Even in death, es un cadillo en fundillo, {she's a thorn in my side}.”

She flips through her papers and shakes her head.

“Sofia was supposedly pregnant with twins before she died but when they found her body, no babies,” she explains. “No bodies were ever found or buried with the family and Mateo’s siblings disappeared entirely.”

“And this is a problem because…?” I pry, already knowing the answer but wanting to see what she says.

The elevator door opens to the Presidential suite, my residence when in Madero, and my butler appears to take both of our coats.

We head into the conference room, my mother shooing away any of the guards and shutting the door behind us.

“It’s a problem because if I’m right, there’s a chance those two escuinclas (little girls) will try to gather their former packs and reestablish the Sol de Oro Kingdom,” she snaps. “I’ve worked too long and too hard to let Sol de Oro come back after all these years. Tamaulipas is at peace again. The packs do their jobs and there’s no fighting over territory. Estrella del Monte rules as it always should have and all these girls will do is destroy the delicate balance we have. We can’t let that happen.”

Having met Celina, I know very well that she's stronger than a Gold wolf. I just don’t know how much stronger.

“Mamá, you think I’m afraid of two girls?” I chuckle. “Have you forgotten who I am?”

“Don’t get cocky,” my mother snaps. “There’s nothing worse than a woman scorned and you’re dealing with two girls who lost their parents in a horrific way. Anger changes you. It makes you do things you never thought you were capable of.”

There’s a distant look in her eye when she says this, as if she’s reliving a memory. My mom raised me on her own for a few years before she and Efrain tied the knot. She went from destitute single mother to ruthless empress within a few years, gathering the remnants of the fallen Estrella del Monte and Sol de Oro kingdoms and rebuilding them all from scratch. This was her kingdom as much as it was mine and I’ll be damned if I let two outsiders take it from us.

I walk over to the bar and pour my mother a drink. “The Altamiranos killed my father. If there’s anyone seeking vengeance here, it’s me,” I sigh, leaning against the table and holding out the drink to her.

She takes the drink and swings it back in a single gulp. “The twin we saw in the restaurant was not the same one I saw earlier,” she says, narrowing her eyes to slits. “No, the one from earlier had the face of a naive, stupid girl. Very innocent and mild. Her name was Aurora, supposedly, y tenía la misma cara de mosquita muerta como su madre {She has the same innocent but traitorous face like her mother},” she shutters. “Right down to the eye color. Like honey. I always hated her eyes. But the one in the restaurant was toda una fiera {was fierce}. Gray eyes like her father. They’re both here and they’re waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. I can feel it.”

I realize then, that my mate was the second twin, and we now had both Reyes princesses right under our noses.

Do not tell your mother about our mate, Omar warns.

I pour a drink for myself. “Well, even if both twins are here, what does it matter? We own the hotels and the Hacienda, no?”

“Yes, the hotel is ours and no one can take it from us. The Orozcos signed away the rights to the Reyes trust in exchange for the freedom of her grandchildren, so legally, we’re covered. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be careful,” my mother warns. “Werewolves don’t follow human laws. With the Orozocos and the few Altamirano clans left, these girls could very well try to rebuild their Kingdom.”

“I can take on two she-wolves,” I retort, my mother shaking her head. “We have an army. They-”

“They are Altamiranos,” my mother explains. “And when the Altamirano’s reunite, there’s no telling what they’ll be capable of. Now with that aside, my main concern is that there’s some legend or something that makes these girls dangerous. You felt that pull, didn’t you? That need to bow down to her? It drove my wolf mad,”she adds. “I just can’t remember what it means, but they’re not your average silver or gold wolf.”

I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that pull, but what does it mean?

“There’s nothing average about a gold wolf,” I mutter, my mother chuckling as she strokes my cheek.

“No, there’s not,” she smiles. “But you must be careful. Until we can figure out what these girls are and what they’re after, it’s best to keep a low profile. Go home, mijo. Go back to Veracruz until I have an answer.”

“I’m not running from my enemies,” I snarl, pulling away from her hands. “I’m staying here. If the Reyes want to take what’s ours, they better be prepared for war.”

“Jadiel.”

“No, Mama,” I say sternly. “This is our home now. I earned my place here. No one is taking that from me.”

She stands back and smiles proudly at me. “Then we better get ready. I’ll get in touch with some old friends. See what I can find out about the twins. You, stay out of trouble. I mean it. We have to be smart if we want to win. Look through your father’s things. There’s gotta be something in those old books of his.”

I find it annoying when she patronizes me but I agree to keep a low profile as she excuses herself.

Needing something a little stronger, I walk out to the bar and pour myself a whiskey. I take the drink upstairs to my office, browsing through the hundreds of books I inherited from my dad on shelves. A large leather bound book with vines calls to me, and I set it on my desk to unlock its secrets. As I settle down to read, I remember Celina’s passport in my pocket and rummage through my pockets to empty them. It’s only then that I discover my wallet is missing, finding a little note in its place instead.

Guess we’re even, Navarro.