Chapter 10 The Council’s Summon
Levi:
The sky is pale when I finally move from the window. The city below is half asleep, half alive, caught between night and morning. I have not closed my eyes once. Every time I do, I see her.
Aurora Anderson
Four years of silence shattered the moment I saw her again, and nothing inside me has been still since. The wolf will not rest. The mark burns like a wound I cannot heal.
I told myself last night was only to keep her safe, that watching from a distance meant control. I lied. I stayed until the sun bled through the clouds.
The phone vibrates on the desk. One word on the encrypted channel: Summons.
I know what it means before I even open it. The Council has called.
Koda paces inside me, uneasy. He already knows what this is about. The air around me tightens. They would not summon an Alpha for paperwork or politics. This is blood business.
When I arrive at the estate, the guards bow without meeting my eyes. The hall smells of iron, candle wax, and old secrets. I walk down the corridor until the stone gives way to glass, the light from above filtered through ancient symbols carved into the ceiling.
The chamber waits.
Five Alphas sit at the circular table, each one old enough to have forgotten mercy. Their power hums through the air, heavy as smoke. At the head sits Magnus Hale, the Northern Alpha. His smile is the kind that hides teeth.
“Kingston,” he says smoothly. “You took your time.”
“I was summoned, not invited.”
He laughs softly. “Always so direct. Sit.”
I take the empty seat. Alaric Voss, the oldest among them, folds his hands together. “A problem has come to our attention. A journalist is tracing pack funds through human channels. Kingston Industries appears on nearly every line she follows. She is human, but persistent.”
I say nothing.
Magnus tilts his head. “Tell me, Levi. Should we believe this is coincidence?”
“She is an investigative reporter,” I answer. “Humans chase corruption for attention. She will find nothing of consequence.”
“And if she does?”
“Then she will publish a story no one will believe.”
A low chuckle ripples around the table. “Perhaps,” Alaric says, “but exposure is exposure. The laws are clear. No human may come close to our world.”
His words are old doctrine, written in blood long before I was born.
Magnus leans back, studying me. “You seem unusually calm about a threat to your own name.”
“I control my company,” I reply. “Not gossip.”
“But not your journalist, it seems.”
The room stills. My jaw tightens. He sees the flicker, the smallest crack, and smiles like a man who has found the wound he wants to press.
“She writes too well for a coincidence,” Magnus says softly. “We have read her file. Aurora Anderson. Curious choice of subject. Is she familiar to you, Kingston?”
Koda growls low inside me, barely contained.
I meet Magnus’s gaze, unflinching. “She is a human reporter. Nothing more.”
The lie feels like a blade in my throat. Every wolf in the chamber can smell it.
Magnus’s grin widens. “Then you will not hesitate to silence her if she gets too close.”
The others murmur their agreement. The weight of centuries of law presses against me.
“She is under my watch,” I say evenly. “No one touches her.”
Magnus’s voice turns sharp. “You are forgetting your place.”
I rise slowly, letting power roll off me in a quiet, deliberate wave. “No,” I say, “I am remembering it.”
For a moment, no one speaks. The air hums. Then Magnus chuckles, the sound low and dark. “Very well, Kingston. Handle your human. But if she exposes even a whisper of our world, the blood on the floor will be yours to clean.”
“I understand.”
He dismisses me with a nod, the conversation already forgotten to him. To me, it will not leave my mind.
Lucas waits outside, leaning against the wall, expression tight. “They know,” he says.
“They suspect.”
“Which means they are already watching. What did they demand?”
“That I deal with it.”
Lucas frowns. “You cannot protect her forever. Once the Council decides she is a liability, they will send the Trackers.”
“I will handle it before it gets that far.”
He shakes his head. “You are playing both sides of a war. You rejected her to save her, remember? Now you are risking both lives again.”
“I am aware.”
“Then at least be honest about why.”
I look at him. “Because I will not let them kill her.”
He exhales, long and quiet. “I will keep the company clean. No trails. No paper.”
“Good.”
He hesitates before turning away. “You should tell her the truth.”
“She would not believe it.”
“She believed you once.”
I do not answer. He leaves me in silence.
That night, I return to the penthouse. The air smells of whiskey and rain. I pour a drink, but it sits untouched on the table. My reflection stares back from the glass, same face, different man.
Koda pushes forward again. She is ours. Bring her home.
“She belongs to no one,” I whisper.
The wolf retreats but does not vanish. The bond is alive again, louder every hour. I can feel her through it, faint and uncertain. The rhythm of her heartbeat when she sleeps, the tremor when she dreams.
I told myself she was human, fragile, untouchable. But I have seen humans break easier than she ever did. Aurora Anderson was never fragile. She was fire pretending to be light.
Now that fire is drawing the Council’s gaze.
I look down at the files on my desk. Her name glows on every screen. If she keeps digging, she will uncover more than corruption. She will find the edges of a world she cannot survive.
There is only one way to protect her now.
To erase the trail she is following.
Or to bring her inside it.
Neither choice feels like salvation.
The phone buzzes again, Lucas. “We wiped the surface accounts,” he says. “But if she keeps chasing numbers, she will reach something real. The next move is yours."
“Then she stops chasing.”
“How?”
“By believing the story is dead.”
Lucas hesitates. “Or by being dead herself.”
The silence that follows is long enough to say everything.
“She lives,” I answer. “That is not negotiable.”
“Then you will have to tell her the truth before someone else does.”
When the call ends, I stand there for a long time, staring out at the skyline. The night hides the stars, but I can feel them anyway, distant, cold, watching.
I finish the whiskey and whisper to the empty room.
“You were never supposed to be part of this world, Aurora. But now it is coming for you.”
The mark burns through the fabric of my shirt, answering with a single heartbeat that is not my own.
And for the first time in years, I am afraid.