Lyra's Summoning

Lyra's Summoning
Chapter 18

Lyra's Summoning

Preparations for the Alpha Dinner were in their last phase, and tension surrounded the estate like a mist one couldn't perceive. All of the corridors buzzed with motion — the scent of scorched candles, roasting meat, and buffed silverware lingering in the air. Servants moved quickly but quietly, lest they attract the wrong kind of notice. Every step, every word, every noise had significance.

This was no normal meeting. This was the most powerful night of the year — the gathering of Alphas from all lands. A night of diplomacy and thinly disguised threats in the form of smiles. A night when a single misdirected glance would lead to war.

And at the center of it all was Ronan, subdued and restless, pacing by his study window. His reflection stared back at him, a mirror image of restlessness. He had been preparing for this dinner for weeks, but today's tension was different. His instincts were screaming. Something was coming.

He wasn't wrong.

He was cut off in his train of thought by a soft knock. His grandmother's aide, a woman with sharp eyes and an even sharper tongue, came in. "The elders are waiting for you in the park," she said. "They've summoned you immediately.".

Ronan did not pause for more than an instant before he trailed after her. His boots grated on the gravel as they crossed the lantern-lined path to the park — a secret garden for the family's inner circle. The air was cooler here, but in some way denser. He could already distinguish that they were standing by the fountain — his grandmother seated in her high-backed chair, attended by two members of the council's elders and several guards.

“Ronan,” she began smoothly as he approached. “We have a matter to settle before the guests arrive.”

Her tone was calm, but her eyes glinted with calculation. He didn’t like that look. It always meant she was planning something.

“What is it?” he asked carefully.

She gestured toward a servant carrying a folded list. “The staff arrangement for tonight’s dinner,” she said. “I’ve made a few adjustments.”

Ronan crossed his arms. “Adjustments?”

"Yes." Her smile never reached her eyes. "There has been talk among the packs. Whispers regarding your… guest. Some are beginning to wonder about her being here."

His gut tightened. He already knew where this was going.

"She's not a guest," he said evenly. "She's under my protection."

"Protection," his grandmother repeated, her tone almost teasing him with the word. "And you keep her secreted away like a mistress. That only makes people more suspicious. I intend to end the whispering before it begins."

"How?" he asked, his tone even, though his heart had begun to race.

She leaned her head slightly forward. "By making everyone realize that she is nothing more than what she is — a servant. She'll be waiting on the Alphas at dinner."

The words dropped like stones into a still lake. Ronan stared at her, disbelief clouding his features. "You can't be serious."

“Oh, I’m quite serious,” she replied calmly. “It’s the perfect way to silence the rumors. Let them see her in her place — quiet, obedient, harmless.”

His jaw clenched. “You’re using her as a pawn.”

Her features hardened. "I am guarding the honor of this family. You are forgetting that all the Alphas coming tonight have memories of the wars — scars, losses, bloodlines burned to ash. Do you think they would not recognize the smell of her? The whisper of what she carries?"

He stepped closer, his voice lowering. "You don't know. If they see her—"

They must see her," she interrupted, coldly. "Or they will think worse. Better to present her now, on our terms, than to let rumor become accusation. She will do. That's final."

The silence that descended was sharp, suffocating. Ronan could hear his heart pounding in his ears.

He turned to the elders surrounding her, hoping for some spark of sanity, but their faces were stone — loyal to custom, unmoved by decency.

"This isn't protecting the family," Ronan finally said, his voice quiet but trembling with suppressed fury. "You want to humiliate her.".

His grandmother's eyes fastened on his, hard and unyielding. "Sometimes shame is the only way of holding in check what never ought to have been in the first place."

The words struck him like a blow. For one moment, his composure shattered. "She's done nothing wrong," he ground out between his teeth.

"Her blood has," she replied softly. "And blood never forgets.".

He wanted to protest, to fight, but he understood how this family operated — when the matriarch spoke, it was law. There would be no turning back without causing a scandal. And tonight, of all nights, was not the time to defy her publicly.

But still, his silence was not surrender. His fists were tight at his sides, veins pulsing under his flesh.

"Fine," he said at last, his voice low and menacing. "But if anything happens to her—"

His grandmother cut him off with a weak, dismissive smile. "Nothing will happen… unless she has something to hide."

Her words hung in the air, poison wrapped in silk.

Ronan turned away before he said something he'd regret. He could feel their eyes on his back — cold, judging, waiting.

As he walked away from the park, the night wind slashed cold against his face. Somewhere in the distance, laughter issued from the kitchen, but all he could hear was his grandmother's voice resounding in his mind: 'They must see her.'

By the time he had gotten back to the mansion, the servants were hanging the last of the banners. The gold chandeliers were being tested, the floors polished to a mirror's sheen. Everything was perfect — painfully perfect.

Beneath that glossy surface, though, was a storm waiting to break.

He was standing before the entrance, facing down the long, seemingly endless table that stretched the length of the dining hall. He could already imagine what would happen — the whispers, the looks, the questions. He could already hear someone speaking her name, someone mentioning her father.

The thought tightened his chest in a painful vice. He'd worked so hard to shield her, to conceal the past she didn't even fully understand. And now all of it — every lie, every fight — was going to unravel in front of the most dangerous people in their world.

He pressed his hand on the back of a chair, earthing himself. There must be some other way. But even as he told himself, he knew there wasn't.

The dinner would go on.
She would be called in to serve.
And the truth would seethe just beneath the surface, waiting for someone to utter its name.

The sound of one of the guards coming towards him interrupted his concentration. A sealed envelope was given to him.

"Message from the northern courier," said the man.

Ronan's frown deepened. "Now? From whom?"

But the guard only shook his head. "No insignia but this."

Ronan flipped it over — and stopped cold. The seal in the wax was one he recognized at once: a wolf's claw circled by flame. Kade's insignia.

The same symbol that hadn't been seen since the night the northern packs burned.

His breath caught. His grandmother's words from just seconds ago seemed to echo throughout the air, corrupting wickedly with what was in front of him.

Blood never forgets.

He broke the seal with shaking hands and opened the short, defiant message scrawled in bold letters across the parchment.

> "If you can't protect her… I will."

The words blurred slightly in his vision as the meaning of them fell upon him.

He looked up at the formal dining room again — at the chandeliers, the shining silver, the impeccable facade of control — and knew how fragile it all was. 

Tomorrow night, all of that would be over. 

The wolves were circling. The past was waking. 
And Lyra's secret — the one he'd fought to bury — was going to be dragged into the light.

The wind from the open window caught the parchment, causing it to flap against his palm like a living thing. 

Ronan's eyes darkened as he spoke beneath his breath, low and ominous, "Then it starts.".