"They are! I don't even know what's going on in the pack. I haven't talked to anyone for five years. I come back and there's all of this political scandal happening, and now my best friends are accusing me of being a spy or something." This is too much. I rise from my stool. "You know what, I'm gonna pass on dinner. Thanks, though. You have a lovely home."
"Don't be like that," Hannah huffs.
Ryan holds up a plate. "But it just got done."
I stop at the kitchen door. "Why do you even want me in your house if I'm so suspicious?"
"Because you're our friend, dummy." Ryan puts the plate on the island. "But you've been gone for five years. You're out of practice."
"Out of practice?"
"The pack is a different now. If we don't know who to trust, you don't, either. And one stray word…" Hannah's expression falls. "I'm not afraid you're going to run out and betray us. I'm afraid that until you've been here longer than a week, you might get yourself—or someone else—in trouble without even knowing you're doing it."
"You're right. I have no idea what's going on." I move toward the island, dropping my purse from my shoulder. "Fine. All you really needed to do was say, 'don't tell anybody.' You know I can keep a secret."
"Yeah, but you also give away a lot of stuff by mistake," Ryan says.
And that's fair.
"Can you bring me up to speed on anything?" If they can't, I won't take it personally. I guess I really don't understand what's happening in the pack, if my very best friends are afraid to talk to me.
"Where should we start?" Hannah asks, with a huff that makes it clear the question is rhetorical.
"How about we start with the new king." I feel like a kid with a pathetic crush, but that's not why I'm asking about him. "Specifically, how he ended up becoming king in the first place."
"That's what a lot of people asked, when it happened." Ryan slides a plate toward me. I sheepishly take it; after the temper tantrum I just threw, I feel bad eating. But Ryan doesn't seem bothered. "You know about King Victor's new wife, the one who was dealing with the Manhattan pack, right?" I nod, and he goes on. "It looked like her plan was to wait out Victor—"
"Or kill him," Hannah interjects.
Ryan shakes his head, like they've argued over that take before. "Then, she would marry a member of the Manhattan pack and hand over Toronto."
"And be queen of both," Hannah adds. "She would have been queen of two of the largest packs in North America."
"She's got her eye on King Nathaniel, too," Ryan warns. "Her family needs to be exiled."
"Yeah, why hasn't she been, at least?" I ask.
"That's a part of the mystery," Hannah says with a sigh. "I personally think she owns someone on the council. They're the ones who voted against kicking her out."
"She's going to make a play for the king, that's for sure." Ryan brings over plates for Hannah and himself. "But she's not the reason he's here. That was another council decision."
"That was also bought?" I ask.
Hannah shakes her head and swallows a bite of risotto. "No, he's legitimately in the line of succession. He's Victor's father's second cousin. Something like that."
"If there was bribery involved," Ryan says, talking while chewing, just like when he was a disgusting teenage boy, "it probably wasn't much. Victor cut his sons out of the line of succession, so obviously there are some who think they deserve the throne more. And that's fair; Greater London has made a play for the Toronto pack before. But there's still a lot of suspicion about the whole family."
Hannah raises her beer as if in a toast. "Aren't you glad you came home in time for all this?"
"Oh, yeah. Definitely." I rub my forehead. "And it's great that apparently one dance with the guy puts me at odds with half the pack."
"I wouldn't say half," Ryan reassures me.
Hannah nods in agreement. "More like sixty-five percent."
We laugh, but dread settles like a rock in my stomach. Which isn't fair to the food, frankly; Ryan is an excellent cook.
"This is great," I say, wiping my mouth with my napkin. "Who would have thought the guy who ate nothing but tater tots all through high school would actually grow up to know his way around a kitchen?"
And though we laugh again, I want things to be the way they were before I left. I want to know that my friends have my back completely.
Instead, I feel more alone than ever.
Since we didn't get a chance to talk much at the ball, Tara and Clare suggest we get together for lunch.
At a human restaurant.
I sat through salads and a main course and now I'm sipping my drink and trying not to ask my own sisters if their husbands know where they are.