Chapter 141 Battle Plan - Callista's POV

Chapter 141 Battle Plan - Callista's POV
“Stop laughing,” I hissed, scrambling off him. “This isn’t funny.”

“It’s a little funny,” he admitted under his breath, still laughing.

"It is absolutely not—"

"Luna Monroe says if you don't come down—" Raze started again from the other side of the door, adopting a remarkably accurate impression of my mother's tone.

"We heard you the first time!" I called back, my face burning with embarrassment.

There was a pause, then Raze burst into laughter. It wasn’t as contained as Riven’s at all. I listened for a few seconds before his footsteps moved away down the hall, still laughing as I pressed both hands over my face. I counted to five, wishing the redness and warmth would fade.

The bed moved as Riven sat up. I felt him looking at me.

"Don't," I said, from behind my hands.

"I didn't say anything."

"You're about to."

"I was just going to say," he said, and the amusement in his voice was entirely undisguised, "that your brother-in-law is already a problem and we haven't even had the ceremony yet."

I dropped my hands and looked at him.

He was sitting on my bed in the morning light with his hair still messy from sleep and the ghost of that real laugh still on his face. His eyes were red-gold and entirely clear, and the bond between us was the warmest it had ever been. Something in my chest did a very inconvenient thing at the sight of him.

That tug that I couldn’t stop feeling.

"Don't call him that yet," I said sharply. 

"He'll be family as soon as we have our ceremony," Riven said reasonably.

"Don't call him that yet," I repeated, pointing at him, and turned to find something appropriate to wear before my mother actually did come upstairs.

By the time we reached the kitchen, it was already full.

My mother had cooked enough for twice our number, which was something she did when she was processing difficult emotions and needed the act of feeding people to give them somewhere to go. The table was covered in plates and my father was already seated with coffee, looking more settled than he had the night before.

Raze was already at the table. He looked much better than last night. I noticed that he wasn’t nearly as pale, but there was something in his eyes that told me that the demon was still pushing, even if they were red-gold.

He had also, I noticed, already charmed my mother entirely. I wasn’t sure when it happened, but she was refilling his plate as if he was one of her own.

And he let her, smiling warmly up at her from ear to ear.

Riven stopped in the kitchen doorway beside me and took in the scene.

"Your mother is going to adopt him," he said, very quietly.

"Probably," I agreed. “She’ll probably try to find him someone in the pack.”

“But he has a mate,” he whispered.

I swallowed hard. “One we don’t know where she is.”

Sabine was at the counter with her coffee, watching the room with the sharp-eyed expression she wore when she was observing rather than participating. She glanced at us when we came in and her gaze moved over Riven, studying him.

She held her mug out toward him. He looked at it, then at her.

"There's more in the pot," she said, which was Sabine Monroe for good morning and I'm choosing not to make this difficult.

He found a mug on the counter and thanked her. I sat down beside Raze while Riven poured himself coffee and found a seat across from my father, who looked at him for a moment over the rim of his own mug.

"Sleep alright?" My father asked.

"Yes," Riven said. "Better than I have in a while."

My father nodded once, satisfied, and went back to his coffee. The conversation moved on without us addressing what our next steps were. I think after everything we just needed this moment to gather our thoughts and find some kind of peace before diving in.

Riven and I ate, but Raze ate more than both of us combined. My mother looked so pleased as we finished our plates.

It was, improbably, almost normal.

After breakfast and the plates were clear, we all sat at the table. My parents were both grim.

“I need to call my beta,” Riven said, and I remembered our conversation last night.

“Do that and we’ll talk,” I whispered.

Riven slipped away to call his beta, while I turned back to face my parents. They were staring at me with straight expressions.

"Talk," my father said simply.

It wasn’t harshly, but I was certain he was nervous, just like we were.

I looked at the table for a moment, organizing everything. 

"We have four weeks until the full moon," I said, my voice low. "The ceremony has to happen that night on my birthday." I looked at both of them. "Everything we're working toward hinges on that night going without interruption. Honestly, we should have this upcoming one, but I don’t know.”

"And what kind of interruption are we talking about," my father asked.

“Ronan has a brother, like we talked about,” I stated. “Ronan blames him for the reason that Raze and Riven are cursed. If he wasn’t after his throne, then he wouldn’t have had to make this move. Riven also might be facing a challenge by Alric Voss.”

“I’ve heard there is a challenge being issued,” my mother said quietly. “They’re not going to give up, are they?”

“No.”

She folded her hands on the table. "Then we make sure he can't. There has to be a way.”

She sounded so certain that I almost laughed. That was my mother for you. She never wasted time being afraid of things when she had already decided there was a way out of it.

“I wish it were that simple,” I breathed. “The only thing we can do is have Riven go through the fight with Voss, because that has passed to many hands and can’t be ignored. Then we’ll have our ceremony as private as possible and hope that Ronan or his brother don’t move.”

“You know it’s not going to be that simple.”

I chuckled under my breath. “It’s never been that simple.”

The room fell into a quieter kind of tension after that, the kind that didn’t need raised voices to feel heavy.

Raze leaned back in his chair, looking at the table cloth with interest. The humor that had been there earlier was gone, replaced by something distant and watchful.

Riven returned, standing in the doorway with a nod. “He’s coming now.”

“Good.”

My father exhaled slowly. “So we’re waiting for someone to make a move.”

“More or less,” I said softly.

“That’s not a plan,” my mother replied, though her voice wasn’t accusing. 

“It’s the only version of a plan we get right now,” I answered quietly. “We have to hope that the ceremony seals his demon.”

Silence settled again.

Raze finally pushed back from the table, scraping the chair back slightly. “If Ronan moves, it won’t be subtle,” he said, his voice quieter than usual. “He doesn’t do subtle. He does… spectacle.”

My stomach tightened.

Riven’s jaw ticked slightly at the name. “And Voss?”

“Calculating,” Raze said immediately. “That one waits and watches, letting you think you’re safe before he proves you weren’t.”

I swallowed. Neither option sounded survivable in any comforting sense of the word.

My mother stood abruptly, gathering plates even though the conversation wasn’t finished. “Then we don’t give them an opportunity,” she said simply. “We are preparing now.”

I blinked at her. “That’s not how—”

“It is how this house survives,” she cut in, already shaking her head.“You don’t wait for storms to decide whether to tear your roof off. You reinforce it.”

Riven gave a quiet, almost amused breath. “I like her.”

“Careful,” I murmured under my breath. “She hears everything.”

“I heard that,” my mother called without looking up.

Of course she did.

Raze let out a soft laugh again, though it was thinner now. “She scares me,” he admitted.

“She should,” my father said calmly.

That earned a brief, surprised glance from Raze before he nodded like that somehow made sense.

I watched all of them for a second—this strange, fragile alignment of people who had no business sitting at the same table and yet somehow were.

Family, I thought distantly.

Riven’s hand slid slightly until his fingers brushed mine under the table. My chest tightened in a way I couldn’t fully explain, and I didn’t try.

Because if I started thinking too hard about how much I needed that simple contact, I might not stop.