Chapter 171 She's Strong
ELIJAH
I had been ready to move,every cell in my body oriented towards her even from across the grounds. I was ready to do whatever the moment required.
I didn’t think she couldn’t manage it, she was more than capable but she was my wife and there was simply no version of this where I stood still and did nothing. Ezra did not agree with how long it took me to process. He’d been ready to snatch control and shift right then and there.
Except, Adriana hadn’t needed me to move. She had stood in it and held it and I had stayed exactly where I was, which was the hardest thing I had done in recent memory. After the gathering I went to find Carver.
He was on his way out of the grounds. He looked lost in thought, his brows furrowed, his mind clearly elsewhere because he hadn’t noticed me until I fell into step beside him.
“A word,” I said.
He jumped at the sound of my voice, clearly he hadn’t expected it.
“Not here,” I added. “I’ll see you in my office tomorrow morning before training.”
He looked at me, like he was deciding how much he was willing to reveal.
“Of course, Alpha,” finally, he said with a cordial nod.
He left and I went back to Adriana, who was still working the gathering with the focused warmth that was one of the things I had watched her grow into over these months. She found me after the gathering began to wind down. We were walking back to the house and she was slightly ahead of me and she reached back and found my hand without turning around, and I took it.
“Petra went to Hazel,” she said. “She told her everything. Carver approached her four days ago. He’d chosen her specifically because she has access to me and because she’s young and was genuinely frightened after the nursery incident.”
“What do you want to do about her?”
She was quiet for a moment.
“She’s twenty-three years old and she was approached by an elder of the council and told to say something to me,” she said. “She’s not calculating. She was afraid and someone used that.” She paused. “I want to keep her. And I want her to understand what she was used for, so she understands it when it’s tried again.”
I looked at the side of her face.
“She’ll stay,” I said.
In my office the following morning, Carver sat across from me with the bearing of a man who had decided on a position and intended to hold it. I let him hold it for the length of time it took for both of us to be certain the other knew what had happened yesterday and what the situation now was.
Then I told him what we knew. The full shape of what he had been building and how we had come to understand it.
He didn’t attempt to deny it. That was something — an indication of self-respect if nothing else.
“The Luna didn’t lose it,” I said. “In front of the entire pack under a trigger specifically designed to activate the most unstable aspect of her power. She held it without any visible sign of effort and then she went back to talking to her people.” I held his gaze. “Whatever case you were building about instability, the pack saw the opposite of that yesterday. They saw their Luna.”
He was quiet.
“Your position on the council is not in question,” I said. “Your value to this pack is real and I have no interest in losing it. But the avenue you chose here — the deception, the manipulation of pack members, the manufactured event — that is finished. Completely.” I paused. “I need to know that you understand that.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
“The concern was genuine,” he said. “Whatever else you think of how I handled it, the concern was genuine.”
“I know that,” I said. “And I’m telling you that the concern is being addressed. What happened yesterday is evidence of that. Come to me directly next time. That’s what I need from you.”
He was quiet for another moment.
“Very well,” he said. And then, with something that was not quite an apology but was in the direction of one: “The Luna is stronger than I assessed. I acknowledge that.”
It was more than I had expected.
“Yes,” I said. “She is.”
ADRIANA
The sisters came back three days after the gathering.
They came in the evening when the twins were settled and Leo was doing something in his room that involved what sounded like furniture being rearranged and Elijah was in his office finishing something that needed finishing before morning. I was in the sitting room with a cup of tea I had been intending to drink for twenty minutes and had not yet drunk, which was a reliable indicator of where my head was.
I had been waiting for this conversation. I had known it was coming the way you know certain conversations are coming.
They sat across from me and the elder spoke.
“We know what’s in your son,” she said. “We’ve confirmed it.”
“Tell me.”
“When the Grandmaster died, his power didn’t dissipate completely. Power of that age and that accumulated magnitude rarely does, it finds somewhere to go. Your son was present, carried inside you, during the final confrontation. And a fragment of what was released in that moment found its way to him through that proximity.”
I held my tea with both hands.
“How dangerous is it?”
“Right now, not at all. It’s dormant and the child is too young to provide any kind of channel for it to express itself through. The concern is not now. The concern is as he grows and his own power develops. If what’s in him develops alongside it without being addressed, there could be interaction between the two that becomes difficult to manage.”
“Can it be removed?”
She looked at me for a moment.
“Not removed,” she said. “Contained differently than it currently is. Anchored to something that neutralizes its capacity to grow. There’s a way to do this. It’s not complicated but it requires something from you.”
I waited.
“Your blood. A specific amount with a direct intention. Not like what happened when you summoned us. This is smaller and more controlled. It will bind what’s in him to a protective structure that means it can never fully awaken. It becomes inert. He grows up normally, comes into whatever power he carries naturally, and what the Grandmaster left behind stays exactly where it is, contained, for the rest of his life.”