Home > Queen Heir (NYC Mecca #1)(3)

Queen Heir (NYC Mecca #1)(3)
Author: Jaymin Eve, Leia Stone

Calista was at my side, so I quickly asked: “Is Winnie accounted for?” My little sister was only five, and since the death of our mother I’d taken over the role of her protector.

“Still asleep,” Calista said. “I have given instructions for her to be locked in with her advisor and royal guard until further notice.”

I nodded. Winnie would hate the house arrest, but it was for the best; she was a vulnerability for me now. I let my eyes linger on her closed door before shutting a steel trap over my emotions. I couldn’t think of anything else except the Summit.

“Let’s get moving,” I barked. I knew Finn would meet up with me no matter where I was. Nothing kept him from me when he wanted to be at my side. As we passed through the door and into my personal elevator, I caught my reflection in the mirrored doors.

I look like a queen.

The red silk collar of my shirt was so prominent against the white-blond of my hair, done up in Calista’s braid crown. The bright shirt also contrasting against my alabaster skin, inherited from my Danish and Norwegian mother. I never knew my father, but I was told his heritage was Polynesian islander. Which explained my dark lashes and brows, and what some have called disconcerting turquoise eyes. Right now those turquoise eyes were pinched in anxiety and my alabaster skin was washed out. I might have been dressed like a queen, but I didn’t feel like one.

Calista followed me closely as we took the elevator down to the ground floor. My home was in the penthouse of an eight-story high-rise with over 160 units that housed my most dominant wolves and their families. Although it was built in the early 1900s, it was completely modernized. It was one of the first things I’d insisted on when I inherited it at my rightful age of sixteen.

“Talk to me, Calista.” My voice was brisk as I strode from the elevator and out into the underground car park. “What should I expect? Have you been briefed at all?”

An heir’s advisor lived for this moment, to coach an heir through the Summit. They trained their entire life for it. I glanced down at her. I was five foot ten and she was at least five inches shorter, petite and pretty, with short, pixie-styled brunette hair, and large dark brown eyes. She held nothing in her hands, and was dressed simply in jeans and a tank, but underneath the cute packaging my advisor had ninja skills and a brain like a supercomputer. Her photographic memory stored information in perfect and precise order, so I knew any data would be relayed to me succinctly and with a hundred percent accuracy. Which was important in this situation. The slightest slip-up would be viewed as weakness and used against me. I needed a sharp advisor who could make life or death decisions in a second. Calista was the best in the five boroughs. Over a century old, though she looked barely twenty-five, she had advised many past heirs, and out of the four heirs of this age she had chosen me. She came from a long line of royal advisors and I was grateful to have her in my camp now.

“The alert just said that the queen has fallen and all alpha heirs are called to the Summit. Time is of haste.”

No doubt the old farts on the queen’s council were being deliberately obtuse. They were powerful but at the constant whim of a queen who would always be stronger. They had to take their little shows of dominance where they could.

“Well then,” I said to my people, who were all standing at attention, waiting for me to enter the sleek vehicle first. “Let’s not keep them waiting.”

As we traveled the three miles to the closest magical teleportation area, the vortex, I tried to focus my thoughts. I had been trained for pretty much anything I could encounter in the Summit. Combat. Magical studies. Etiquette. I even knew which damn spoon and fork to use in a setting of fifty. If I was the victor and took the crown, it would be my duty to rule all wolf shifters and to mate with a strong alpha.

Heirs were only eligible for the crown between the ages of sixteen and thirty. If you were over thirty and the queen fell, you were exempt from the Summit and you would never rule. This order was put in place hundreds of years ago by the council as it was thought to be the prime age for breeding and best age of cognitive function. After thirty, the wolf-shifter miscarriage rate tripled. Personally I felt like it was just the council’s way of controlling the heirs, to get them young and manipulate them to their way of thinking. There were more than a few heirs in the Bronx right now who would be disappointed that they were either too young or had passed the age of thirty.

Of course, once you started to think about the Summit itself, they might actually be the lucky ones. At least they’d always be heirs, afforded plenty of rights and luxuries as their royal blood dictated. The heirs who went into the Summit ended up as queen, dead, or a failed heir.

I would not be a failed heir. Whomever became queen would have the most powerful energy at her disposal, and I wasn’t sure I trusted any of the other heirs to wield it. Breanna, Selene, Devina, they weren’t good enough. I needed to make sure the house of red ruled again.

I couldn’t believe the queen was gone. She was … a true leader.

The cars were slowing now. We passed through the private gates and stopped outside the small industrial building that housed the vortex, the teleportation grid in the heart of the mecca. My guards stood twenty-four-hour watch on the perimeter to make sure no humans accidently wandered in and found themselves in the middle of a vortex that would shred their weaker human DNA to pieces. Only shifters could use the vortex, and nowhere else in the world did vortexes like these exist. That’s why New York City was special, a city I loved dearly, and would hopefully rule very soon.

   
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