The Alpha Queen's Mate (Book 5 of The Regal Eclipse Pack Series)

Chapter 11

"Does she know who you are?" Nick asked after a few minutes.

"Yes." Noelle smiled. "Blake and I had a confrontation at school a few weeks ago. He didn't know who I was at the time. He apologized when we were here last time for it. Hailey was with him then. She knows who I am."

"Yeah, he mentioned it to me when we left you and Hailey alone. I think he was concerned that you might try to get even with him by commanding Hailey," Nick told her, leaning back in his seat.

Noelle's mouth dropped open, as she leaned forward. "What?"

He raised his eyebrows at her.

"I would never do that, Nick. Never," she said vehemently, her eyes flashing.

"I'm well aware of that, Noelle. I told him you wouldn't ever do something like that," he reassured her. He could tell just by her reaction that she was appalled.

"I'll admit I was mad when it happened, but I got even," she smirked.

Nick laughed. "Did you put him in his place?"

She smiled mischievously. "Maybe."

He almost felt bad for Blake. Almost. But if Blake had confronted her, she wouldn't tolerate it, and she needed to put him in his place. "I heard you beat the crap out of Liam too."

Noelle laughed. "Yeah. Astrid wasn't very happy about that." She grew serious again. "You said you think you know what's going on at Salt Flats?"

Nick sighed, growing serious. He was pretty certain he did, but he hoped he was wrong. "You remember The Great Werewolf War?"

"I'm not that old," she poked. "But yes, I've read about it. We'll be learning about it in class, but it's not something Astrid has covered yet."

"Did you know Cora's grandfather was the Southern Alpha?" Cora was his brother's mate, and the Royal Gamma Female. Her parents had adopted her, and she hadn't known her own family history for a long time.

Her grandfather had taken over many packs, trying to keep pace with the Northern Alpha who had started taking over packs first. The Northern Alpha had hoped to control all of the packs in America and eventually overthrow the Alpha King. Another Alpha with his head so far up his own ass, he couldn't see the light of day. Both of them had ended up dead along with a lot of other werewolves. It had been a huge mess that had taken Regal Eclipse months to clean up.

Noelle's eyes widened. "No I had no idea."

"During that time, a lot of werewolves died. There were battles popping up everywhere. Sometimes I don't know how the werewolf community managed to stay undetected during that time. If something like that were to happen now, given the internet, the entire world would know in a matter of hours about us.

Anyway, the werewolf population was decimated. We had a lot of work to do afterwards, getting packs resettled, establishing new leadership and so on. But some of the packs developed breeding programs." That in itself had been devastating, and probably affected more people than the war had. It had ruined so many bonds, so many relationships.

"What?" Noelle stared at him with a frown, wracking her brain to see if she remembered reading about this.

"Yeah. They had all of the women who were fertile put into these programs, and they were forced to produce pups, one right after the other, trying to raise the population of their packs. It wasn't all packs of course or we might have caught on to it quicker than we did and put a stop to it," Nick said quietly. A lot of damage had been done during that time. Lives lost needlessly and then others destroyed because of things forced on them for the good of the pack. He hated that phrase.

"I can imagine how Dad reacted to that," she said, shuddering a bit. She knew how how father was about injustice against innocents. Daniel didn't tolerate it at all and Nick fully supported him.

"Yeah, he wasn't happy at all. None of us were. We were so busy at that time." Nick sighed and rubbed at his eyes. He could still remember the haunted looks of some of those women.

"So you think that's what Salt Flats is doing?" Noelle asked him.

"Possibly. Something is going on with the women in that pack and from certain things Hailey said, it was the first thing that came to my mind." He really hoped he was wrong, but unfortunately, he didn't think he was. The signs were there, and the more he thought about it, the more Salt Flats fit the description.

Noelle nodded slowly. "But we don't have proof."

"No we don't. And given that there are laws put in place against it, Salt Flats isn't about to let anyone know," Nick said, opening their file again on his computer. "What I don't understand is why. They're a decent sized pack. Before Mason took over, their population was growing steadily. They don't have a good reason for it that I can see." All the packs were required to give a census of their pack numbers yearly, another rule implemented to keep something like that from happening.

"That's what I was just looking at," Noelle said, eyeing her own screen. "I don't want to but I think we need to wait a bit and then make a surprise visit."

Nick looked up at her. "I agree. We need to discuss this with our own pack, and get some more opinions on all of it. I want to know if the others think the same thing as I'm thinking. "

She nodded and shut her laptop. That was typical for when a problem crept up. Usually a meeting was called and the issue discussed with the leadership. It was a good strategy. Sometimes having so many different people looking at a situation, one would see something the others missed.

Noelle sat back and stretched before pulling out her phone. "Wanna go to the mall?" She looked back up at him, plastering a smile on her face.

He watched her look him over. It wasn't the first time she'd done that since they'd been on this trip. He'd seen her more than once doing it. Was she checking him out? Or was that just something she did with everyone? He'd never noticed it before, but then he'd never spent so much time alone with her either. "This little Podunk town has a mall?"

She smiled. "Yes."

He shrugged. "Why not." It would be a good way to kill some time. He hadn't gone to a mall in quite awhile. Hopefully Noelle didn't drag him into every single store there though. Not that they had anything better to do.

The mall was ten minutes away but it was a good time killer and they both shopped for quite a while, checking out most of the stores. Nick found that he really enjoyed Noelle's company. She was fun to shop with. He wouldn't mind just hanging out with her.

He watched her model clothes and gave her his opinion on everything she tried on. She'd had fun with it and he had too. The day had turned out much better than he'd thought it would and it was the most fun he'd had in a while.

They'd gone into a dress shop and he'd followed her around as she looked. She did it quickly, deciding if she wanted to try on anything or move on. She stopped, pulling out a green dress and looking it over.

"You going to try it on?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. You're probably tired of watching me try on clothes."

"Not at all. If you want to, go for it. I think it would look good on you," he said. "Do you already have a dress for the ball?"

"Yes. It's wine colored." She grabbed it off the rack and headed for the dressing room.

Nick followed along behind her and stopped, waiting for her to change.

A blond woman suddenly appeared out of nowhere and walked up to him. "Do you need any help with anything, Sugar?"

"No, thank you," he answered, giving her a smile. He watched her gaze move slowly over him and sighed inwardly.

"Are you sure about that? Because I can help you with anything you desire, handsome," she cooed, stepping closer.

Just what he needed, an overly aggressive woman. She was looking him over like she wanted to eat him up.