Chapter 31 Meredith's Choice (Meredith POV)
The world narrowed to a single point when Declan read my name.
Meredith Kim. Ironwood. Future heir.
I'd known it was coming… Vivian had warned me last night, prepared me, held my hand while I cried through the implications. But hearing it spoken aloud in the Eclipse Chamber, my name echoing off ancient stone walls in front of three hundred witnesses, made it real in a way that reading files alone never could.
Every head in the Ironwood section turned toward me.
My mother… not my real mother, I was learning to accept that too, but the woman who'd raised me, Catherine Reyes, Alpha of Ironwood, second most powerful wolf in the Pacific Northwest… sat frozen on her throne. Her face had gone from angry red to corpse white in the span of three seconds. Her mouth opened slightly, like she wanted to speak but had forgotten how words worked.
Beside me, Jordan's hand found mine under the bench. Squeezed hard. His palm was sweating. Or maybe mine was. Impossible to tell.
"Did you know?" someone hissed behind me. Rebecca Park, third-year, whose family had been Ironwood for six generations. "Did she know?"
"How could she not know?" That was Marcus Torres. "The future Alpha, and she's been… "
"Quiet," Vivian said, her voice sharp enough to cut. She hadn't turned around, was still facing forward toward where Declan stood with Elena's journal, but her tone carried enough authority that the muttering died.
For about five seconds.
Then it came back, louder, angrier, spreading through the Ironwood section like fire through dry grass. I caught fragments: disgrace, lied to us, tainted bloodline, how can she lead if she's not even…
My chest tightened. The familiar panic response I'd learned to manage during pack runs, during formal presentations, during every moment of my seventeen years when I'd felt like I wasn't quite good enough, quite strong enough, quite enough. My breathing went shallow. The edges of my vision started to gray.
"Breathe," Jordan whispered. "In for four. You've got this."
I tried. The air caught in my throat halfway through the count.
Declan was still talking, presenting more evidence, but his words blurred into background noise. All I could hear was my pack… my family… tearing apart the foundations of who I was supposed to be.
Meredith Kim. Ironwood heir. Except not really. Not if you've been drugged since before you could walk. Not if your wolf was locked away before you ever had a choice.
I looked at my hands. They were shaking. Had been shaking since Vivian showed me the files three days ago, since I'd stopped taking the little white pills my mother brought me every morning with breakfast, since I'd felt the first stirrings of something wild and hungry waking up inside me after seventeen years of chemical sleep.
The silver bracelet on my left wrist… traditional Ironwood marker, given to all heirs on their fourteenth birthday… caught the torchlight. I'd worn it every day for three years. Polished it. Been proud of it.
Now it just felt like another lie.
"She's crying," someone said. "Look, the heir is crying."
I wasn't. I was furious.
The anger came from somewhere deep, somewhere that had nothing to do with Catherine Reyes's careful political training or the deportment classes or the endless lessons on maintaining composure under pressure. This was rawer. Hotter. The wolf, I realized distantly. The part of me that had been caged my whole life was pissed.
I stood.
The bench scraped against stone. The sound cut through the chamber's chaos like a bell.
Jordan tried to pull me back down. "Meredith, don't… "
I pulled free. Stepped into the aisle.
Vivian turned, eyes wide. "Wait for the right moment," she hissed. "Let Declan finish establishing… "
"No." My voice came out steady. Stronger than I'd expected. "I'm not waiting."
I walked down the aisle toward the center of the chamber. Each step echoed. The gallery went quiet… that specific, breathless quiet that meant everyone was watching, everyone was judging, everyone was already writing the story they'd tell later about the moment Ironwood's future fell apart.
Let them watch.
I reached the edge of the silver circle where Rowan stood in chains. She looked at me… really looked, with those eyes that weren't quite human anymore, silver marks crawling up her neck like luminous ivy… and something passed between us. Recognition, maybe. Or solidarity. Two girls who'd had their wolves stolen before they could object.
I turned to face the three thrones.
My mother… Catherine… had found her voice again. "Meredith, sit down. This is not the time… "
"It's exactly the time." I lifted my chin. Channeled every ounce of Alpha training she'd drilled into me since I could talk. Ironic, using her own lessons to defy her. "My name appears on the Project Chimera suppression list. Declan Hale has presented documentation that I've been unknowingly drugged since infancy. The entire chamber has heard the accusation. I have the right to respond."
David Kimura leaned forward. "The witness is correct. She may speak."
"David… " Catherine started.
"She may speak," he repeated, firmer this time.
My mother's jaw clenched so hard I heard her teeth grind from fifteen feet away.
I took a breath. Four counts in. Four counts hold. Six counts out. The breathing exercise Vivian had taught me.
"It's true," I said. Loud enough to reach the back rows. "I'm one of them. One of the suppressed children. I've been drugged my entire life."
The murmuring started again. I spoke over it.
"I don't remember my early childhood. Nothing before age five. Not my first words. Not learning to walk. Nothing. I've been told I had 'health problems' as a baby. Complications from birth. I accepted that explanation because why wouldn't I? Children trust the adults who raise them."
I looked at Catherine. She'd gone very still.
"I've taken daily medication since before I can remember," I continued. "Every morning. Little white pills. My mother… " the word tasted bitter now, " …told me they were for allergies. Severe environmental allergies that would make me sick if I didn't take them. So I took them. Every single day for seventeen years. Never questioned it."
Someone in the Silvercrest section gasped. Probably recognizing the same pattern in their own pack members.
"I've struggled with shifting my whole life," I said. My voice started to shake. I forced it steady again. "While my younger siblings completed their first shifts at thirteen, at fourteen, I barely managed a partial transformation at fifteen. It took me until sixteen to achieve a full shift, and even then it was hard. Painful. Wrong. Like pushing through mud. Like my body didn't want to obey."
I could see pack members nodding. They'd witnessed my struggles. Whispered about them. Some had been kind. Most hadn't.
"I thought I was weak," I said quietly. "Defective. A disappointment to my family and my pack. I worked twice as hard as everyone else and achieved half the results. Do you know what that does to a person? Spending your entire life feeling like you're failing at something that should be instinctive?"
Jordan's face was wet. He wasn't bothering to hide the tears.
"But I'm not weak." The anger came back, heating my voice. "I'm not defective. I'm suppressed. Someone… " I turned to look at all three Alphas, " …multiple someones decided before I was old enough to have an opinion that I shouldn't be a full wolf. That I should be controllable. Useful. A weapon instead of a person."
"Meredith," Catherine said. Her voice cracked on my name. "You don't understand the full context… "
"Then explain it to me!" I shouted. The chamber went dead silent. Heirs didn't shout at Alphas. Ever. "Explain why you thought it was acceptable to drug your own daughter! To lie to her for seventeen years! To let her think she was broken when you were the ones who broke her!"
Catherine flinched like I'd struck her.
"I deserve an explanation," I said. "They all do." I gestured to the list Declan still held. "Every name on that paper. Hannah Kimura… where is she now? Gabriel Cross? Jennifer Reyes?" I looked at my mother. "Your own niece, Catherine. Did you even try to stop it? Or did you just sign the forms and tell yourself it was for the good of the pack?"
"It was for the good of the pack." Catherine stood. Descended from her throne. Crossed the chamber floor until we stood face to face. "You were the heir, Meredith. Do you understand what that means? The responsibilities? The dangers? We needed to make sure… "
"Make sure of what?" I demanded. "That I'd be obedient? That I wouldn't question authority? That I'd be too weak to challenge the pack structure if I disagreed with it?"
"That you'd be safe," Catherine said. Her eyes were wet now too. "That you wouldn't become a threat to yourself or others during your first shift. That you'd have time to develop mentally and emotionally before the wolf complicated everything."
"That's not your choice to make," I said. "It's mine. My wolf. My body. My life."
I reached into the pocket of my robes. Pulled out the orange pill bottle I'd been carrying since I stopped taking them five days ago. Held it up.
"This is what you've been giving me," I said. "Suppressants. Chemical chains. Seventeen years' worth."
I threw the bottle. It hit the stone floor and bounced, pills scattering across the chamber like tiny white lies.
"I stopped taking them," I said.
"Someone took away my choice," I said. "Someone stole my childhood. Stole my wolf. Stole my right to grow up knowing who and what I was supposed to be."
I looked at each Alpha in turn. Garrett Hale, rigid as the stone he sat on. David Kimura, watching with something that might have been respect. Catherine Reyes, my mother who wasn't my mother, who'd lied to me every day for seventeen years while claiming it was love.
"I want to know who," I said. "
Silence.