Chapter Fifty-Six: Carol's POV
Thornton was still speaking: "If this operation has already failed, it's the perfect opportunity to revoke her provisional status and send her back to—"
"She saved them." Derek interrupted him. "Saved all three. While you sat here arguing about whether she deserves to be in this pack, she was out there taking bullets and claws to bring our family home alive. If we're talking about failure, maybe first ask yourself what you've actually done for this family?"
Everyone turned their heads at once, the arguments ceasing.
They looked at me, covered in blood and dirt, standing in the doorway.
Derek stood behind me, his stance making it clear he was ready to act if anyone said the wrong thing.
The room immediately filled with whispers—some shocked, some displeased.
I reached out and grabbed Derek's arm. Even though my own arm was still bleeding, I pulled him back before he could escalate things.
"That's enough," I said calmly, though my grip on his arm was tighter than intended. My vision was darkening—I really needed to sit down. "We're leaving."
Thornton slowly stood, his face unreadable.
I thought he would challenge me, but he only nodded slightly.
Maybe acknowledgment, maybe dismissal. Either way, he didn't speak, which was enough.
Vasquez was also watching me, approval in her eyes. She nodded. She understood what this mission had cost, that I'd just crossed a threshold most people never faced in their lives.
Derek was still glaring at the Council members, his whole body tense, ready to charge again at any moment. I held him back and headed for the door.
"You need someone to look at that." Once in the corridor, Derek's tone changed—no longer confrontational, sounding genuinely concerned. "It's still bleeding."
"It'll heal." I said, though I wasn't sure, the wound feeling wrong in ways I couldn't articulate. "I've survived worse."
He didn't argue, just walked beside me through the corridors until we reached the medical wing.
I was grateful for his presence, even if I couldn't find the right words to say so.
Whatever I'd thought about Derek before, in that moment he'd stood up for me, and that mattered more than anything.
The next few days passed quietly in healing and debriefing.
My arm was healing at the same unsettling speed as when Isabella's silver bullet hit me, fast enough to be concerning.
Clara checked on me regularly, maintaining a professional manner that hid what I suspected was growing concern about my abnormal recovery rate.
She just made sure I followed her treatment protocol.
I thought I'd earned a moment to breathe, to let my guard down slightly while my body recovered and the pack absorbed news of the successful rescue.
But I should have known better than to expect peace in a place built on political maneuvering and blood feuds.
Jack's message came on the third day after the rescue, just a few lines: Belinda discovered I was watching Edmund. Word has spread that you had outside help finding the hostages. The Blackwood family is being named as the source.
I stared at my phone screen, realizing what a huge problem this was.
I'd told Jack to watch Edmund, to see who he met, but I hadn't expected the news to spread this quickly.
Belinda noticed Jack's surveillance, put the pieces together, then fabricated a story that sounded plausible but wasn't the truth.
The accusation was brilliantly crafted. They said I found the hostages too quickly, too efficiently，I must have gotten advance intelligence from someone outside the pack.
Who was the best candidate? The Blackwood family.
They'd been getting closer to us for months. If they could influence Valodin through me, it would benefit them greatly.
As for how I actually found those people，by capturing a rogue sentinel and forcing him to talk，nobody cared about that.
The entire rescue operation was completed through pack intelligence and my own abilities. Nobody cared about that either.
What mattered was which story people were willing to believe.
And now in that story, I'd become a traitor who'd rather work with outsiders than trust her own people.
I looked down at the healing wound on my arm.
What should have taken weeks to heal was now just a faint pink line.
The morning breeze came through the window, but what chilled my chest wasn't the wind. This wasn't over. Far from it.
Someone wanted me gone. They'd orchestrated attacks, spread rumors, created division within the pack.
Until I found out who was behind it, every victory I achieved would be twisted into more proof that I didn't belong here.
Minutes later, Vasquez appeared at my door, holding a sealed envelope, the Council's wax seal pressed into cream paper like a bloodstain not yet dry.
"They're calling an emergency meeting," she said, not meeting my eyes as she handed it over. "About the Blackwood family matter. Someone's pushed this to a formal investigation level."
I broke the seal without ceremony, scanning the contents I already knew would demand my presence, my explanation, my defense.
The summons used that particular bureaucratic language the Council employed when they wanted something to sound official and inevitable, as if the decision was already made and they were merely following procedure by allowing me to attend my own condemnation.
"How bad is it?" I asked, though Vasquez's tight jaw had already answered.
"The evidence they're presenting looks damaging," she said quietly, stepping into my room and carefully closing the door. "There are letters—supposedly from you—promising the Blackwood family trade route access in exchange for hostage location intelligence. The letters bear your scent mark, dated two days before the rescue operation."
My hand involuntarily clenched the paper, the edges crumpling in my grip.
This setup was too meticulous. Those people had gone to great lengths to forge it—not just words on paper, but the scent mark that should have been impossible to fake, realistic enough that even Vasquez, one of the few in the Council who'd consistently stood by me, was standing here with a hint of hesitation in her voice.
"That's impossible," I tried to stay calm, fury rising from my chest. "I've never contacted the Blackwood family, never promised them anything. I found those hostages because I captured one of their sentinels and forced him to tell me the location."
"I believe you." Vasquez said, "But when Thornton puts that letter on the Council table and asks you to explain why your scent appears on a document selling out Valodin territory to outsiders, my belief alone won't be enough."
They didn't care about the truth—they just wanted to eliminate me.
They wanted to completely erase the position I'd worked so hard to gain, to turn Simon's protection of me into a joke, into evidence of his poor judgment.
"Who else has seen this letter?" I asked, my mind already thinking about how this news would spread, how it would ferment before I could defend myself.
"So far only senior Council members. But Belinda's already talking everywhere." Vasquez suppressed her anger. "She's saying she suspected you all along, that she kept warning people not to bring in someone with no pack bond. Now she's painting herself as an unheeded prophet."
Those words cut like a knife into my chest.
I finally saw clearly how carefully this trap had been set.
The pieces were placed weeks ago, while I'd been led by the immediate threats.
From the patrol attack to the hostage incident to my suspicions about Edmund—all preparation for today.
They wanted to turn every success into evidence of outside help, every victory into proof of betrayal.
"I need to see Marcus and Leon." I made the decision immediately. "If they want to question how I found those hostages, then I need witnesses who were actually there, who saw me interrogate the sentinel without any help from the Blackwood family."