Chapter 110 The Fourth Night

Chapter 110 The Fourth Night
Sable's POV

Time stopped meaning anything the moment they locked me in the cell.

No windows down here. No sunlight, no moonlight, no way to measure the hours except by the guards bringing food. breakfast, lunch, and dinner are the three silent reminders that the world was still moving while I stayed trapped in a cage. I’d tried counting the hours at first. That hadn’t lasted long. The silence down here had a weight to it, a texture, broken only by distant footsteps and the scrape of metal doors and the low, constant hum of magic woven into the silver bars.

Eventually the silence started talking back, and everything it said was Kier.

My wolf had gone quiet after the rejection. She retreated to somewhere I couldn’t easily reach her, curled into the dark like something wounded waiting to see if it was safe to move. I didn’t push her. I understood her hurt.

What I didn’t understand yet was how to stop the ache where the bond used to be. The cell was cold, but not as cold as that.

I didn’t know how long I’d been down here. Two days. Three. Maybe four. I’d stopped trying to keep track when the counting started to feel like something I was doing just to prove I was still alive.

What pulled me back wasn’t a thought or a decision. It was hunger.

When the guard slid the tray through the slot that morning with bread, fruit, a bowl of soup, nothing worth looking at twice. I stared at it longer than usual. My stomach growled before I’d made up my mind. My wolf stirred faintly, and for the first time since they’d locked me in here, the feeling coming from her wasn’t grief.

She was hungry and still fighting.

I picked up the spoon slowly. “If we’re going to survive this,” I whispered, “we need strength.”

The first few bites were strange, my throat tight, my stomach unsure. But after a minute the hunger took over, and by the time I set the tray aside it was empty. For the first time since they’d brought me down here, something in me felt close to steady. Not hope but the thing that comes before hope. The decision to keep going long enough to find out what's coming.

Then I heard it.

Footsteps. Heavy boots moving down the corridor, the familiar clink of chains, and my stomach dropped before I’d fully processed what it meant. I stood slowly.

Four warriors appeared on the other side of the bars. Faces blank, professional, unemotional. The chains in their hands said everything their expressions didn’t.

One of them unlocked the cell. “It’s time.”

My heart hit hard against my ribs. I stepped forward before they could tell me to move. The chains went around my wrists, silver biting faintly into my skin, not enough to weaken me but enough to remind me I wasn’t in control. We walked the same corridor as before: stone walls, torchlight throwing uneven shadows, the air warming as we climbed toward the council chambers. My breathing stayed even. Underneath it, my nerves buzzed like live wire.

The doors to the council chamber opened. Light spilled across the floor.

The room was full, and the moment I stepped inside, every voice dropped to silence. The warriors led me to the glass containment cell at the center of the room, the door sealing behind me with a heavy click I felt in my back teeth.

I scanned the faces.

My mother’s eyes were red and swollen, my father standing rigid beside her, jaw tight in the way that meant he was barely holding something in. Seeing them sent a sharp twist through my chest. I wanted to go to them and couldn’t, and the glass between us was punishment.

Jaxon stood nearby, arms crossed tight over his chest, expression dark and stormy, like a man physically restraining himself from tearing the room apart. Something in me loosened slightly. At least someone who actually cared about me was here.

Then I looked around for Kier. He wasn’t there. I don't know why I felt disappointed. But not seeing him here
hit harder than anything else in the room. Harder than the chains, harder than the glass walls, harder than my mother’s red eyes. I’d known he wouldn’t come. But knowing a thing and feeling it land are two different experiences, and this one landed like a blow I hadn’t braced for.

Of course he isn’t here. I’d rejected him in front of the entire pack. What had I expected that he’d show up to watch the council decide my fate anyway, just to prove he was still thinking about me?

I forced myself to look away.

That’s when I saw Liora, standing near the council seats, perfectly composed, chin lifted, her hand resting casually over her stomach. A flash of heat moved through my chest, anger, sharp and sudden. What was she doing here? This had nothing to do with her.

My wolf stirred. Agreed.

Elder Orion stood, and the room went completely still.

“Sable Hale of Black Pine Pack,” he began, voice carrying easily through the chamber. “After careful consideration of the charges brought before this council…”

His words blurred. Something about duty. Pack law. Consequences. I heard the shape of the sentences without absorbing the meaning, my focus drifting back to wondering where Kier was, what he was doing, if he hated me, if...

A thunderous boom exploded through the chamber.

The room shook. Gasps erupted, dust rained from the stone ceiling, and a second boom followed. This one was louder, closer, the great council doors rattling in their frame as warriors rushed forward with hands going to weapons.

“What is happening?” an elder barked.

Then the doors blew inward.

The first thing through them wasn’t a sight, it was a scent. Cedar and rain and something darker underneath, the specific signature of an Alpha who had stopped asking for permission.

Kier.