#Chapter 449 – Grasping at Straws
Ella
Sinclair walks Cora and I swiftly back to our suite of rooms, Rafe still bundled safely in Cora’s arms. When we get there, Sinclair gives me a swift kiss on my head, already looking down the hall.
“I’m going to catch up with Roger,” he murmurs. “We’ll send dad to you whenever we find him -”
“Why,” I say, grabbing his hand, worried. “Why don’t you all just come here?”
Sinclair shakes his head as he looks down at me. “We need eyes on Xander we have to talk to the staff, see if anyone knows where he went. I promise – we’ll both come to you as soon as we have more information. All right?”
I bite my lip but I nod, not liking it but trusting him. With his own nod of assurance, Sinclair strides away.
“Come on, bride,” I say, pushing the door open to my room and allowing Cora to sweep through with my baby and her long train. “Let’s get you changed into something more comfortable.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Cora sighs. “I mean, this dress is fantastic, but it’s heavy.”
“Oh, you poor thing, in fifty pounds of silk and satin,” I murmur sarcastically, kicking off my heels and leading all of us into the closet. Before I do anything, though, I take my sweet baby from my sister and lower him down into the wheeled bassinet that’s waiting there for him. I’ll transfer him to his real crib later, but he’s perfectly happy taking a little nap here before I change him.
“He’s such an easy baby,” Cora says with a sigh as I move behind her and start to un-do all of the buttons that run down her back. “How did you get so lucky?”
“He’s just an angel,” I say, my voice overly doting, making us laugh. “But seriously,” I say, “I think wolf babies are just different. A lot less crying, a lot more understanding between parents and child even when they’re that young. It’s incredibly convenient.”
“I hope that’s true,” Cora says, her hand absently going to her own stomach. “I don’t have as much patience as you, so if this kid isn’t as easy as Rafey here? We’re going to have trouble.”
“You’ll be great,” I say, grinning at her as I finish with the buttons and she starts to shimmy out of the dress. As she does I move to lift the soft white sweatsuit I had made for her off the shelf. Cora gasps when she sees it. “Ella!” she says, hands on her hips. “You didn’t!”
“It says Mrs. Sinclair on the back,” I say, grinning and handing it to her.
“It’s too much,” she says, sighing and waving her hand. “Honestly, Ella, you keep it – you’re Mrs. Sinclair too! And you’ve given us too much already with all of this -”
“Oh stop,” I say, rolling my eyes and grinning, pressing it into her hands. “If you don’t think I had my own made just like it, you’re crazy.”
She laughs at that, taking the outfit and starting to pull it on. “Well, it’s very soft.”
“I know,” I say, unzipping my own dress and reaching for some soft clothes myself. “Plus, we get to have the same name now, officially. Isn’t that cool?”
“Oh,” she says, going a bit still, realizing it. “Oh wow, for the first time in our lives,” she says, laughing.” Sisters in name in addition to genetics and friendship.”
I grin at her, glad she thinks it’s as cool as I do, and we both laugh with the pleasure of it.
When we’re both changed, I change Rafe into his own pajamas – he fusses a little, wanting to be left in peace, and I murmur my apology before tucking him in again and wheeling the little bassinet into the bedroom with us so that we can wait for Roger and Sinclair to come back.
“What do you think Xander’s planning?” I ask, sitting down next to my sister on the new little loveseat that Sinclair and I put at the end of the bed. Considering that we use this room more than we thought we would to entertain our siblings, we needed more places to sit.
“I don’t know,” Cora says thoughtfully, curling up on her side of the little couch and facing me. ” Nothing good, obviously but…” she turns her head to the side, considering. “Well, if you were Xander, what would you do?”
“Go for Rafe?” I posit, glancing down at my peacefully sleeping baby.
“Nah,” she says, shaking her head, clearly lost in thought. “I mean, yesterday Sinclair made a very definite move in marking Rafe as his heir. It kind of makes that option null to Xander.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, frowning.
“Well,” she says, looking at me evenly, “even if he were to…take out Sinclair,” she says slowly, and I my eyes go wide even at the hypothetical thought. She moves on quickly. “Either way,” Cora continues, “Rafe is already Sinclair’s heir to his throne. There’s no way for Xander to really claim Rafe as his own now as part of Xavier’s line. Rafe’s thoroughly a Sinclair, just like us. If Rafe inherits, the people who would be his obvious guardians would be you, and Henry, and Roger.”
“And you,” I say, reaching out a foot to nudge her on the knee, insisting she include herself.
She waves a hand at me, dismissing the idea, but I grin and nudge her again, letting her know that she’s in this whether she likes it or not.
But still, I take her point. “So,” I say softly, “you think he’s doing something else?”
“I do,” she says softly, her eyes un- focusing a little as she accesses the strategic part of her mind. “I think that while Xander hasn’t made it easy, the Sinclairs have successfully countered every move that he’s made. We’ve got him on the run, and now he’s embarrassed himself in front of everyone at a public event.”
I nod, understanding that Xander really has been worked into a corner. He’s got very few resources left, and if he’s realizing as we perhaps have that the Atalaxians have brought him here less as an important player and more as a pawn that they can use to spark a war?
Xander may be realizing that his time and power is running short.
So, he’s scrambling.
“So, what would he do?” I wonder aloud, considering it.
“I think he’d…grasp at whatever straws are left to him,” Cora says softly, clearly thinking it through as she speaks. “He’d grab at whatever he thought was rightfully his, whatever he can hoard to make himself stronger.”
“But he’s lost his home here, and his rights – we’d have him arrested, if the Atalaxians weren’t claiming him.”
“So, what does he have left…” Cora says on a sigh, looking up at the ceiling as she racks her brain.
And I think hard as well, considering all the things that Xander has lost. I mean, he was once in Roger’s position the Duke, the brother to a powerful King. And he lost all of that. He made an bold play to get it back – planning to get me pregnant and steal the child, using Rafe to retake the throne but…
Cora’s right. We turned away his plan there. And then he lost his connection to the Dark Lord’s priests when Sinclair and Roger killed them all, and his home when we made him run from it, and his servants when…
But suddenly, I go quite, quite pale.
“Cora…” I breathe, my eyes going wide as I look up at her.
“What,” she says, her breath starting to come quick as she realizes that I’ve figured something out. I shake my head. “Jessica, and Sarah,” I say, starting to panic myself.
I mean, we haven’t seen them for days as soon as I found out that Xander was here I told them and Sarah let me know, politely, that they wouldn’t be attending any of the events to which they were of course invited, but instead sticking to their little suite of rooms to avoid seeing him.
But me – of course, idiot me – threw it in Xander’s face that I knew them, that I helped them
And – and it probably wouldn’t take much at all for him to have done a little searching, a little casual chatter with the staff to lean that a young woman and her sister, refugees, were staying here in the palace
“We have to tell Roger and Sinclair,” Cora says, jumping to her feet immediately, striding for the closet so she can get her phone and call her mate-
But before she can get there, a scream splits the air outside.
My head whips towards the window, my mouth falling open.
Because that was high pitched, shrill –
The sort of sound that would come from an eight-year-old girl.
