Chapter 163 The Elders
ELIJAH
The council chamber felt smaller than usual.
That was the thing about rooms full of people who had already decided something before they sat down. They had a way of contracting the available air and making the walls feel closer than they were.
I had been in this chamber for difficult conversations before. I had delivered news in this room that changed things permanently. I had sat at the head of this table and made decisions that I knew would cost me something and made them anyway.
This was different because the subject was Adriana.
I had left her with the sisters and with Hazel and I told her I would be back and she had told me to go, that the pack had a right to be concerned, and I had walked down the corridor to this room carrying the image of her sitting in the debris of the nursery with her hands shaking and her eyes full of a fear I had never seen in her before.
Not fear of the Cult. Not fear of Hannah or Lisa or any of the things that had come for her with teeth and intention. This was the fear of herself. Of what she might do without meaning to. What she had almost done to our sons.
I sat down and looked at the faces arranged around the table and kept my own face still.
Elder Carver was directly across from me, which was his customary position and which I had never found particularly significant until today, when the placement felt like a statement.
He was a large man, broad through the shoulders, with the kind of face that had been authoritative for so long it had forgotten how to be anything else. He had been on the council since before I became Alpha. He had been on the council when my father was Alpha. He knew this pack’s history in a way that was genuinely useful and he knew it in a way that sometimes made him believe his version of things was the only version worth considering.
The other council members ranged from openly troubled to carefully neutral.
“Thank you for coming,” Carver said. He said it to me, which was interesting given that I had not been invited so much as summoned, but I let it pass.
“Of course,” I said. “I understand there are concerns to address.”
“The pack felt the house shake,” said Elder Maren, who sat two seats to Carver’s left and who was one of the ones I had classified as carefully neutral. Her voice was factual rather than hostile, which I appreciated. “Several members witnessed the lights going out across the entire east wing simultaneously. There are reports of cracks in the walls of the adjoining corridor.”
“Those are accurate reports,” I said.
“And the Luna?” Carver asked.
“Is being attended to by the sisters. She is physically unharmed.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I looked at him directly. “Then ask what you mean to ask, Elder Carver. We’ll get through this faster.”
He folded his hands on the table. The gesture was practiced. A silent way of communicating power.
“There is significant concern among the council and among the pack membership about the stability of our Luna. What occurred this morning was not a small incident. This was a power surge of considerable magnitude inside the packhouse, in the wing where the Alpha’s children sleep, while those children were present.” He paused to let that land. “We are not questioning her character. We are questioning whether the situation is manageable.”
“The situation is being managed,” I said. “The sisters are already working with her. This is a known phenomenon of power evolution following childbirth in a special wolf. It is temporary and it is addressable.”
“With respect, Alpha, how confident are you in that assessment?”
“Completely.”
“We have a Luna whose powers are unstable to a degree that caused structural damage to the packhouse. Whose powers silenced her wolf entirely, which is a significant indicator. Whose powers could not be controlled even with her full effort to do so.” He met my eyes. “These are not small concerns.”
“No,” I said. “They’re not. And I’m not going to sit here and tell you they are. What I will tell you is that my wife has faced things that would have broken most people entirely and she has not broken once. She is not going to break now. She is going to work through this the way she works through everything. Thoroughly and without asking anyone to do it for her.”
“That’s a great deal of faith in one person.”
“It is. She’s earned it.”
The room was quiet for a moment.
Elder Maren leaned forward slightly. “What does the training with the sisters involve? What’s the timeline?”
“I don’t have a precise timeline yet. The sisters are assessing. We’ll have more clarity in the coming days.”
“And in the interim? What measures are being taken to ensure the safety of the pack and of the children?”
“The children are with my mother. Hazel is coordinating additional support. We’re approaching this carefully and with the resources available to us.” I looked around the table. “If anyone has a constructive suggestion to add, I’m listening.”
Carver said nothing for a moment. “The council may need to revisit the question of the Luna’s active duties during this period.”
“The council can raise that question,” I said. “I’ll give it the consideration it deserves.”
Which was not an agreement and everyone in the room understood that.
The meeting ended without resolution, which was the best outcome available. Carver had not gotten what he came for, which was a formal concession from me that Adriana was a problem requiring the council’s intervention. Instead, he had gotten acknowledgment that the situation was real, which was unavoidable given that the situation was in fact real, but he had not gotten the opening he wanted.
I walked out of the chamber and stood in the corridor. My mother was waiting near the end of it.
I had not asked her to wait. She had decided to, which was something I was still adjusting to. Her presence in the house, her quiet attentiveness, the way she seemed to know where she was needed without being told. I did not yet know whether that was one she had always had or one she had developed in the years away, and I had not found the right moment to ask.
“How did it go?” she asked.
“As expected. Carver is building something. He didn’t get what he wanted today but he’s not done.”
She nodded. She looked as though she had something to say that she was deciding how to approach, which was a quality I recognized because I shared it.
“Come on,” she said.
We went through the side door into the garden, which was empty at this hour. The afternoon light was the low kind, everything edged in gold and slightly elongated, and the sounds of the pack were distant and ordinary.
“I need to tell you something about what I felt when I met the twins,” she said.