Chapter 169

SAINT.

I left Meryk's house without the solution I went for. Instead, I left with even more complexity than I thought.

I had barely cleared the treeline back toward the main territory when I got the mind-link.

It was a summon from the elders.

I didn't need a ceremony to tell me what was going on. Someone had obviously said something about me, Eve, and Kyrie.

But, who the fuck was it?

They were already seated when I arrived, all six of them arranged along the far side of the long table.

I crossed the hall to my chair at the head of the table, paying almost no attention to the frowns and questions on their faces.

I pulled the chair out, sat down, leaned back with one arm resting along the chair's edge, and looked at them.

Nobody spoke for a moment.

Elder Cassian finally broke the silence.

"Alpha," he said. "We appreciate your prompt response to the summons."

I said nothing. I held his gaze without blinking, and I waited, because I was not going to perform appreciation for being summoned in my own pack.

Cassian read that correctly and moved on.

"There are reports," he said carefully, "regarding the matter of your mate bond. Specifically — " he paused, "— the suggestion that a second mate bond exists. That our Alpha shares a fated mate with his Beta." He looked at me. "We need to understand if there is truth to this."

The hall was very quiet.

Every neutral expression on their faces only did well to hide whatever opinions and decisions they thought they had made, and were waiting for the formality of confirmation before they acted on it. The question was only theatre. And I had no interest in theater.

"It's true," I said.

The neutrality cracked across several faces simultaneously.

Elder Cassian maintained his expression. "Alpha," He lowered his tone, "you understand what this means under the founding covenant of this pack. One woman cannot hold two mate bonds. The law does not allow for interpretation on this point. It was written without exception because the exceptions are what destroy packs from the inside." He folded his hands more tightly on the table. "The bond must be severed. One claim must be formally rejected. Yours."

I looked at him.

"Why should it be mine?" I asked.

"The Beta marked her first," Elder Pratt said, and there was something in his voice that was not quite satisfaction but lived in the same neighborhood. "Under Pack law, the first mark establishes the primary claim. Beta Kyrie acted. The Alpha did not." He paused. "In a very real sense, Alpha, Beta Kyrie made this decision for you. The law simply confirms what the bond already reflects."

I turned my eyes to Pratt, and I held them there, and I watched him remember who he was talking to, which took approximately four seconds.

He stopped speaking.

"So what you're telling me," I said slowly, and my voice had dropped to the register I use when I need every syllable to carry its full weight, "is that a man who marked my mate without her consent, while she begged him to stop, while she was barely conscious from the effects of a breaking bond, who committed what any honest reading of wolf law would call a forced claiming — that man is being rewarded for his speed." I let that sit. "And I am being asked to step aside because I was not fast enough to violate someone first."

The hall went very quiet in a different way than before.

Cassian's jaw tightened. "The law does not — "

"I will not reject my mate," I said flatly, delivering my message without heat because heat would have suggested I was still negotiating with myself about it, and I was not.

"Alpha, the consequences of refusing — "

"I know the consequences," I said. "You're going to tell me about banishment. About the curse on the bloodline. About the founding covenant and the regime that wrote it and the authority under which you intend to enforce it." I tilted my head slightly. "I know all of it."

They all looked at me.

Elder Zach spoke, "Then you understand that we have no choice but to — "

"That law," I said, cutting through him, "was written under my grandfather's regime." I unfolded myself from the chair and stood, because I had been sitting long enough, and standing changed the geometry of the room in ways that made people who were too adamant understand you better. "This is my regime."

I looked at each of them in turn, one at a time, because I wanted each of them to understand individually that I was speaking to them individually and not to the abstraction of their collective authority.

"I am going to change that law," I said. "And when I change it, I will do so with the full authority of the Alpha of the AshBlood pack, and it will stand for every regime that comes after mine, and no one sitting at this table will have a single word to say about it."

Pratt opened his mouth to argue, but one look from me made him think otherwise.

"Anyone who decides that my authority on this matter requires challenging," I said, and my voice hadn't risen by a single degree — it never does, because rising means something has gotten past the wall, and nothing was getting past the wall in this room today, "will not live long enough to present that challenge to anyone who might act on it."

I straightened my jacket.

"We're done here," I said and walked out of the hall without looking back, because men like Saint Rollins do not look back to check whether they have been believed.

They are always believed.