Chapter 136 MEETING ALPHA CLAEB
Chapter 136 MEETING ALPHA CLAEB
CHAPTER 136
MEETING ALPHA CALEB
DORIAN
The drive to Moonfall territory took forty minutes.
Zade rode beside me, both of us on bikes. The morning air still held that early coolness, the kind that sat on your skin before the sun fully woke.
The road stretched empty and quiet, lined with thick green trees that barely moved.
I kept my eyes forward and told myself this was pack business, the same as any other. The lie sat in my chest the entire way.
Ryler stayed silent. He’d been doing that a lot lately.
Moonfall’s pack house sat at the end of a long private road lined with old oak trees. It was bigger than I’d expected—not the compound style of Ironveil, but something closer to an estate.
Three stories of dark stone, well kept, the kind of place that looked like it had been standing longer than most packs.
Two warriors at the entrance gate straightened the moment they saw us coming.
I killed the engine and swung off the bike. One of the warriors stepped forward, shoulders square.
“Alpha Dorian.” He dipped his head. “Alpha Caleb is expecting you.”
Zade fell into step beside me as we followed him through the gate.
The gravel under our boots was the only sound for a few moments.
Caleb met us in a wide receiving room that smelled of cedar wood and old books.
He was shorter than I’d pictured: stocky, mid-fifties, grey at the temples. He carried the easy confidence of a man who’d been Alpha long enough that he no longer needed to perform it. He crossed the room with his hand out. I took it.
“Dorian.” His grip was firm, steady. “It’s good to finally do this in person.”
“Alpha Caleb.” I nodded once. “Thank you for making the time.”
He gestured us toward the seats near the window. A woman appeared with a tray... coffee, water, small plates of food, and set it down without a word, and left.
Caleb sat across from us, leaned back comfortably, and looked at me with the measuring look of someone deciding how direct he was going to be.
“Zade mentioned the proposal,” he started carefully.
“He did.” I kept my voice even. “I wanted to come myself rather than handle this through letters.”
Caleb nodded slowly. “I appreciate that.” He studied me a moment longer, eyes steady. “Before we talk about formal terms, I want to ask you one question directly. And I’d like a direct answer.”
I felt the shift in the air before the words even landed. “Ask it.”
“Dorothy is my only daughter.” His voice stayed calm, but something underneath it wasn’t negotiable. “She isn’t a political arrangement to me. I will make this alliance work. Because I’ve wanted it for two years. But not if it means she’s placed somewhere she’ll be treated like a convenience.”
He held my gaze without blinking. “So I want to know what she’d actually be walking into.”
The room went quiet. Even the faint tick of a clock somewhere in the hall seemed louder.
Zade didn’t move beside me.
I looked at Caleb and the memory of the night before rose uninvited. I thought of the plan I’d laid out for her. This marriage was going to be temporary and structural.
I'll have a month of training, then I'll end the arrangement and claim my true mate. It sounded clean in the privacy of my room. Sitting across from a father asking me to be honest about what his daughter was walking into, it felt a lot less clean.
I drew a slow breath.
“She would be Luna of Ironveil,” I said carefully. “She’d have the full respect and authority of that title in the pack. My pack would treat her accordingly.”
Caleb’s eyes didn’t leave mine. “And you?”
The question sat between us, heavier than the first. I held his gaze and gave him the only truth I could stand behind.
“I will treat her with respect.”
It was the most honest answer I could give him. We both knew it wasn’t the full one.
He held the silence a moment longer, then nodded once and reached for his coffee.
“Alright,” he said, voice quieter now. “Let’s talk terms.”
The terms took an hour: There will be territory access along the shared eastern border...Moonfall extending patrol coverage that Ironveil currently lacked, in exchange for Ironveil’s support in the ongoing boundary dispute with a smaller pack to the north. Trade of medical compounds between Elder Cass’s stores and Moonfall’s healers. A formal alliance document lodged with the Council.
And lastly Dorothy would be formally presented to the Ironveil pack within the month.
Caleb walked us out to the gate himself. He shook my hand again and held it a beat longer than before, eyes searching my face one last time.
“She’ll want to meet you first,” he said. “Before anything is formalized. I'd like one meeting between the both of you.”
I nodded. “Of course.”
He looked at me once more with that same measuring expression, then let go of my hand and stepped back.
The gate closed behind us with a soft metallic sound.
We rode in silence for the first ten minutes.
The wind is cooler now. Zade was the one who finally broke it.
He pulled alongside me on a long stretch of empty road and raised his voice over the engines.
“That went well.”
I kept my eyes on the road. “It went.”
He was quiet for a moment, the sound of both bikes filling the space between us. Then, lower, “Dorian. Are you actually going to tell Dorothy the full situation before the ceremony? Give her the choice?”
I didn’t look at him. The honest answer sat in my throat and refused to come out clean.
The plan in my head had a clear beginning and a clear end. The middle—Dorothy, the ceremony, the weeks in between—had existed in my thinking as something to be managed, not something that involved another person with her own expectations and her own life.
“I’ll handle it,” I said.
Zade said nothing else. But I felt his eyes on the side of my face for another mile before he dropped back behind me. The silence after that felt heavier than before.
We came through the Ironveil gate just after noon.
Charlotte was in the compound with Mia near the training ground entrance, both of them sitting on the low wall in the sun. She looked up the moment she heard the bikes.
Our eyes met across the open ground.
She looked at my face. I looked back at her.
She read something in it, because she was Charlotte and she always did.
Her expression shifted only slightly—just a small tightening around the eyes that meant she’d understood something she wasn’t going to say out loud with Mia sitting right beside her.
I parked the bike. The engine ticked as it cooled.
Zade came up beside me, voice low. “She deserves to know how it went.”
“I know,” I said.
I walked toward the pack house. Behind me I heard Mia say something soft, then Charlotte’s reply—short and clipped—before her footsteps followed mine at a careful distance.
She caught up to me in the corridor. The air inside felt cooler after the sun.
“How did it go?” she asked.
I looked at her. The bond pulled once, quiet and tight.
“It’s arranged,” I answered truthfully. “She comes to meet me first. Then the formal presentation to the pack.”
Charlotte held my gaze for a long moment. She nodded once, small and controlled.
“Okay,” she nodded.
She turned and walked to her room. The door closed with a soft click that somehow sounded louder than it should have.
I stood in the corridor and felt the bond pull tight in my chest, like something being wound one turn too many.
I told myself one month wasn’t long. I told myself she understood the plan. I told myself this was the right order of things.
Ryler’s voice came low and steady inside my head.
She said okay.
I know.
That is not the same as fine.