Chapter 29 029

Chapter 29 029
Rhen showed up at my door before six. I knew it was him from his knock.

I was already up and dressed. I opened the door and just by looking at his face, I felt something settle hard and cold inside me.

“Talk,” I said.

“Someone got to Meira this morning,” he said. “Eastern border. Two men came out of the trees while she was walking. Didn’t touch her. Handed her a message and left.”

“Where is she?” I asked.

“Kitchen. Cora’s with her. She’s rattled, but she’s okay. The twins are fine.”

I brushed past him and headed down the hall.

Meira sat at the kitchen table, both hands wrapped around a cup she hadn’t touched. Cora stood at the counter, back turned, giving Meira space like she always did. Meira looked up when I walked in.

She tried to keep her face calm—put on that armor of hers—but her eyes gave her away. I saw anger fighting through fear, that edge she gets when someone scares her and she hates them for it.

I sat down across from her. “Tell me.”

She told me. She was out early on the eastern path, before the compound was really up. A man stepped out from the trees—not threatening, just there. He handed her a folded piece of paper and walked off before she could even shout.

She slid the paper onto the table between us.

I picked it up. Nicholas’s words. I heard his voice in every line—the way he wrote so things sounded careful and civil, but he always meant something else. He told her the council investigation would drag out, that borders don’t mean walls, and hoped she was being smart about her choices and company.

No direct threat. Deniable, clever. But just scary enough to do exactly what he wanted.

I put the note down.

“He sent someone into my territory,” I said.

Meira nodded. “Yes.”

I stared at the paper, folded it, and slipped it into my pocket as I stood.

“Darius,” she said.

I stopped to look at her.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“End it,” I said.

She didn’t look away. “How?”

I thought about it. She’d asked to know everything, had stood in that council chamber and told the truth when others wouldn’t. She deserved to hear it now.

“Nicholas has been protecting himself since the hearing,” I said. “Slowing things down, using his connections. The council’s really investigating, but it moves at a crawl and he’s good at dragging things out.” I paused. “But there’s something he doesn’t know I have.”

She waited.

“Croft gave me everything,” I said. “Not just the Ironwood papers. Fifteen years of Nicholas’s private deals—bribes, agreements, stuff that’s bigger than what he did to my father. It doesn’t just end his career. It ends him.”

She stared at me. “All this time you’ve had it?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you use it at the hearing?”

“I needed him to think he still had some room,” I said. “Wanted him to make one more mistake.” I looked at her. “He just did.”

I left the kitchen and went to the study, called Rhen in.

“Get me Sera,” I said. “Council head. Direct line. Today.”

Rhen nodded, off to work.

I sat at my desk, opened the bottom drawer, and pulled out Croft’s second folder. The one I hadn’t shown the council. Thicker, heavier, everything a careful man keeps in case it ever comes to it.

Croft needed it once. Now so did I.

I looked it all over again—payment trails, deals with three council members Nicholas bought over the years, fake land transfers, a paper trail almost impressive in how thorough it was. Nicholas left no detail untouched except the big one—he trusted the wrong man to keep his secrets.

Sera called back within the hour.

I laid out enough. Her silence told me she understood.

“Send it through the secure channel,” she said. “Tonight. I’ll schedule an emergency session in forty-eight hours.”

“I need something, too,” I said.

“Name it.”

“Fast,” I said. “Not forty days. I want this done in two weeks. Full findings, full consequences, all public.”

She hesitated. “That’s aggressive.”

“He sent men into my territory this morning,” I said. “My pregnant mate was confronted on my land. I want it finished in two weeks.”

A longer pause.

“Send the documents tonight,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

I hung up and leaned back.

Rhen stood in the doorway. “Well?”

“Emergency session in forty-eight hours,” I said. “Copy the documents and get them through the secure channel before midnight.” I looked at him. “And double the east border. If anyone crosses again, they don’t leave.”

Rhen nodded. “And Nicholas?”

I looked at the folder—fifteen years of rot laid out in one fat stack. All his crimes, all his bribes, every broken law waiting for someone to finally do something.

“Nicholas is finished,” I said. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”

Rhen left. I sat alone in the quiet study for a minute.

I thought about my father. About the letter he wrote, the fear he had of his son turning cold. Becoming a man with nothing left but anger and revenge.

I’d been that guy for a long time.

I picked up the folder, turned it in my hands.

This wasn’t just about me anymore. Somewhere along the way it changed. It was still for my father, for Ironwood, for everything they took from him. But now it was also for the woman at my kitchen table, hands clenched around a cup she wasn’t drinking from, carrying my children—her, who walked into that council room and spoke the truth when nobody else would.

It was for her, too.

I got up and went back to the kitchen.

She sat there, alone now. The house was quiet.

I sat down across from her and met her eyes.

“It’s happening,” I said. “Two weeks and it’s over.”

Her eyes searched mine. “All of it?”

“All of it,” I said. “He sent someone here. That was the last mistake I needed. It’s over, Meira.”

She just looked at me, something moving in her face—slow, complicated. The way you see someone working through something big, letting it settle.

She reached out and put her hand over mine.

“Good,” she said, soft.

I turned my hand to hold hers.

Outside, the compound was waking up—wolves in the yard, the guards shifting at the border, the world going on. The documents would go out at midnight. Nicholas, in forty-eight hours, would walk into the council’s emergency session with no idea what would hit him.

Two weeks, and it would all be over.

I sat with Meira, her hand in mine, sunlight coming through the window. I thought about my father’s words:

Just a life. That’s what I wanted for you.

I looked at her across the table.

I think I’m almost there, I told him. I think I’m finally getting there.