Chapter Six

Chapter Six

The aftermath of defiance
Ryan’s POV

The crystal decanter shattered against the marble wall of my study, amber liquid streaming down the expensive wallpaper like tears. Although I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking as I stared at the wreckage, it was the same way I’d stared at Freya being claimed by another Alpha in front of hundreds of witnesses.

“Ryan, you need to calm down,” Daniel said from the doorway, although he kept his distance. Smart man. My wolf was barely contained beneath my skin, pacing and snarling with the need to tear something, someone, apart.

“Calm down?” I whirled on him, feeling my eyes flash gold. “Did you see what just happened in there? That bastard took what’s mine, and you want me to calm down?”

“She threw herself at his feet, Freya made her choice, and it wasn’t you.” His words may have been the truth, but they landed with the impact of a physical blow. I refused to accept it.

“She belongs with me, not with that monster.”

“The same monster whose daughter is upstairs crying her eyes out because her mate chose another woman over her,” Daniel countered. “Have you forgotten about Shirley? Your responsibilities to her?”

Somewhere in the grip of those burning eyes watching freya move in Godric’s arm like she’d never moved with me. The grace, the fire, the defiance- when had my gentle Luna become this fierce creature who could command a room with a single look. “She never danced with me like that, ” I admitted, and hated how broken I sounded. “In all our time together, she never looked at me the way she looked at him tonight.”

Daniel drew through his expression. “Maybe because you never gave her reason to. You kept her in the shadows, Ryan. Made her play second to duty and tradition. Tonight was the first time I’ve ever seen Freya Khan truly free.”

“Free?” I snarled, and another glass exploded against the wall beneath the window. “She’s bound herself to the most dangerous Alpha in the territories. How is that freedom?”

“Because she chose it,” came Shirley’s voice from the doorway, small and broken. She still wore the silver dress she’d fallen asleep in, but her mascara had streaked down her cheeks, and she looked nothing like the radiant mate I’d brought home months ago. “She chose him the way you never chose me.”

It was one of the last things I’d ever expected my mate to say to me. I stared at her, her aura a mix of my father’s golden light and her mother’s confident power. The mask of sweet innocence had cracked, revealing glimpses of something harder underneath.

“Shirley, you’re my mate. Of course, I chose you.” She shook her head as she stepped into the room, hurling fresh accusation.

“No. You accepted me because the Council ordered you to. Because tradition demanded it. But you never wanted me the way you wanted her.”

The words were like damning fire, and I found I couldn’t deny them. Even now, my mate came before me in tears, but the defiant jade gaze that faded from my memory daily never quite left. Shirley followed my eye line to her, and something in her stared.

“I saw the way you watched them dance, Ryan. The way you looked at her like she was the only woman in the room. Do you know how that felt? Watching my own father claim the woman my mate loves more than me?”

“I don’t—“ I said, but she laughed bitterly and cut me off. “Don’t lie to me, Ryan. You’ve never gotten over her. Every time you touch me, you’re thinking of her. Every time you hold me, you wish I was someone else,” her voice cracked on the last word, and I made a face as though I’d been struck.

Daniel shifted in the corner, looking uncomfortable and like he would rather be anywhere else. I couldn’t focus my attention on him when Shirley’s words were cutting too close to truths I’d never accepted.

“That’s not true,” I said, and the words tasted bad in my mouth.

“Isn't it?" She fumbled at her eyes, streaking still more makeup. “Honest question – If the Council hadn't made you, would you have refused me to stay with her?”

It just kind of hovered there, that poison dart of a question, and I didn’t need to answer it. Shirley’s face collapsed, and for the first time since I’d taken her home, I could see beyond the sweet, happy face to the grasping, ambitious woman below.

“I threw away everything for you,” she murmured. “My father told me that to claim you was to bring me nothing but heartache but, I did. I wanted to overly prove that I could make you love me more than her.”

"Shirley—"

"No!" She unfolded, and I felt steel slip into her spine. “I won’t beg for your scraps of attention any longer. If you really want her, fight for her. Issue a challenge. Show that you’re alpha enough to get the woman you really want.”

Daniel stepped up, and there was no mistaking the alarm in his voice. "Shirley, you can't be serious. Challenging Godric Nathaniel is suicide. He is the strongest of all of the Alpha within the territories.”

“And then Ryan dies trying to get the thing back that he should have protected in the first place,” she said coldly, transformed. The kind and pure mate was gone, something about her demeanor strikingly familiar to her father instead. “Or he shows he’s the Alpha I assumed I was hooking up with.”

The implication put ice in my veins, but underneath it I felt something else. My wolf bayed in support at the thought of fighting for what was ours to begin with, of establishing our worth by the blade. It was primal, older than old, totally insane.

“An official challenge,” I said somberly, the words like copper in my mouth.

"Ryan, he will not," Daniel said, yanking my arm. "This is madness. Godric will tear you apart. He is forty years of age and never yet was beaten. You’re signing your death warrant.”

But I was walking towards my desk already, leaning down and pulling out the official stationary we used for pack business. The cream-coloured paper was heavy in my hands.It had to be; I had to empty it each word like a hot iron into my soul.

"To Alpha Godric Nathaniel of the Obsidian Pack," I repeated as I wrote. "I, Alpha Ryan of the SilverFang Pack, challenge you for the rights of the female Freya Khan, pre-bounded, first to breed sort of..."

“This is insane,” Daniel mumbled, but he didn’t make a bid to stop me. Maybe he sensed that I was too far gone to listen to reason.

I used my own signet to close the letter, pressing the SilverFang crest into the hot red wax, and something settled inside my chest. For the first time since I saw Freya walk into some other man’s arms, I felt like I had a reason to be alive.

“See that that is circulated through formal channels,” I ordered, offering the letter to Daniel. "Full ceremony and witnesses required."

Daniel's hands trembled as he took the letter, and his face paled. "Ryan, please reconsider. Think about what you're doing. Think about the pack."

But all I could think about was Freya and the way she’d stared at Godric Nathaniel like he’d hung the moon and stars for her alone.

“The pack will know,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely sure that I believed it myself. “There are things worth dying for.”

Shirley stood in the doorway as Daniel walked off with the letter of challenge in his hand, face inscrutable. The tears had gone, but there was blurred makeup and icy violet eyes that happened to look too much like her father.

"You'll lose," she said simply.

"Maybe," I admitted. “At least I will die fighting for something that I should have been protecting all along.”