Chapter 154 – Weathering Storms
Ronan
The first report arrives shortly after dawn.
Jace slides the parchment across the table without a word. His expression is carved from stone, shoulders tense, jaw locked. I scan the ink quickly, eyes narrowing at the name that appears halfway down the page.
Silvercrest.
Our spy makes it clear nobody’s directly confirmed they’re behind everything, but the shape of it is there. Edges too sharp to be coincidence.
A missing shipment of arms from a pack in the northeast that was suddenly rerouted half-way. A skirmish near the pass with an unknown group, wearing wolf insignia no one claims. Paid mercenaries sniffing near Redmaw territory and asking too many questions about Blackthorn’s defenses and how deep Redmaw’s hatred for us runs.
The timing is too suspicious and the only other pack with the kind of power to make waves this choppy, is us.
Alaric’s reaching. Testing my defenses. The carrot didn’t work, so he’s going to try the stick next.
My wolf growls low in my chest, pacing behind my ribs. He wants out. He wants blood and a target. I try and convince him we need patience and he roars in fury.
I dismiss Jace with a nod and he leaves quietly, not meeting my gaze. He’s loyal to the marrow and I’m sure there’s advice he’d like to give me. But he knows this news claws deeper than strategy. It’s personal.
When I step out onto the overlook, the air bites frostily. Mara joins me without asking. She stands to my left, close enough to share warmth, silent long enough for me to know she’s already read the report.
“How sure are we?” I ask.
“Seventy percent if we’re talking facts alone. One hundred if I trust my instincts.”
“Not enough to move with the blessing of the damn council then.”
“Not yet.”
I exhale slowly, watching my breath curl into the cold. “But soon.”
She nods and we stand there a while, staring out across the woods that ring our territory.
“How would you strike,” I ask eventually, “If you were Alaric?”
“Clean. Precise. Something surgical and quiet. At least until it’s done. If he gets what he wants, he’ll make sure the world knows it.”
My claws break through the skin at the thought of what it is the fucker wants. “That coward’s never been clean a day in his life.”
“No,” she agrees. “But he knows politics and how to spin perception. If he wants the northern packs to turn on you, he’ll use money and gossip. Undermine your legitimacy. Sow doubt about the bond. About your right to keep Eli.”
I keep from snarling at her, but it’s a very close call. What I feel is beyond fear or rage. It’s pure instinct.
“Eli’s not the weak point,” I say.
“No,” she agrees again, but this time her voice is more careful. “He’s the prize.”
I turn toward her and she meets my eyes unflinchingly. She’s never going to sugarcoat anything for me.
“Are you saying you don’t think I can protect my mate?”
“I’m saying Alaric isn’t going to play by the rules. He has no honor. He only cares about getting what he wants.”
“He’s mine,” I say quietly.
“I know,” Mara answers.
“No, I don’t think you do.” My voice drops, low and sure. “Eli is not my soft place to fall. He’s the iron in my marrow. The air in my lungs. The one who’ll keep me fighting long after the rest of me would have given up.”
She raises a brow. “Poetic. I didn’t know you have such a way with words.”
“I’m a man of many talents.”
Mara shifts her weight, leaning against the post beside me. Her breath fogs in the air as she says, “Then you understand what it means to love like that.”
I swallow, because of course I know. It means I’ll kill anyone who tries to take him from me. But it also means I have to protect his heart. His self-respect.
“I’m not sure how to shield him,” I admit, “Without insulting him. Without making him feel like a liability.”
Mara’s voice softens. “Because he’s not.”
“No.”
“But protecting him is your job now.”
“Yes.”
“And he’ll hate you for it if he thinks you’re doing it because you think he can’t take care of himself.”
That lands because it’s true. Because Eli, for all his snark and swagger and pointed bravado, needs to feel like an equal. He doesn’t want protection. He wants partnership.
And I don’t want a porcelain bondmate I keep on a pedestal. I want the version of him that bites. But how do I balance that with keeping him alive when war comes again?
When Silvercrest doesn’t send open threats but blades in the dark?
I’m quiet for too long and finally Mara says, “We should start moving the civilians east.”
I nod and she continues. “And double the patrols on the northwest ridge. If we’re being watched, let them see what we want them to see.”
“And what’s that?”
“That we’re ready.”
I almost smile. “We’re not.”
She does smile. “No. But they don’t need to know that.”
We lapse into silence again, listening to the trees creak in the wind.
Below us, Eli emerges from the training field, laughing at something Hazel says. The sound travels and it hits me square in the chest.
My wolf growls softly, annoyed that we’re not at his side, making sure nothing comes for him.
“Does he know?” Mara asks.
“That Silvercrest is circling? Not yet.”
“No,” she says patiently. “That he’s your strength.”
I watch him for a long moment. Eli spins and throws something at Hazel, probably a training dagger, and Hazel catches it midair, deadpan. Eli mock-bows as she walks away, shaking her head at him fondly.
“Not in those words,” I say.
She hums. “You should tell him.”
“Why?”
“Because if you die first, he’ll never forgive you for keeping it to yourself.”
My throat tightens. And that, right there, is why I trust her. Because she knows. She sees the storm coming as clearly as I do, and she’s trying to make sure we all survive it.
“I’ll tell him,” I say.
“Good.”
Then she pauses. “Just… don’t expect him to like it.”
I raise a questioning brow.
“You’re telling a trauma-scorched Omega,” she says dryly, “That he’s the emotional linchpin of an Alpha who leads a pack under siege. That kind of pressure could break him. Or make him dig in harder.”
“Let him dig,” I murmur. “I want him rooted here. I want him to know there’s no version of me without him in it.”
Mara’s quiet for a moment before she says, “You were never this dramatic before he came along.”
I smirk faintly. “You were never this sentimental.”
“Touché.”
We stand there until the wind gets crueler and the sun begins to lower, staining the horizon copper and red. Then I turn from the view, step back into the lodge, and start planning for war.