Chapter 251 251

Chapter 251 251
Caden's POV

Jake turned the screen toward me and hit play on a video that was already circulating on a pack news feed. Lucas Steele's face filled the frame, composed and solemn, wearing a dark suit and standing behind a podium with the Steele pack crest displayed behind him. Beside him stood two people I didn't recognize and a woman with a press lanyard around her neck.
Lucas spoke directly into the camera, his voice measured and deliberate. He talked about an unprovoked accusation from a woman named Nova Ashton, former Luna of Shadowcrest, who had claimed he orchestrated a sexual assault against her. He said there was no evidence. No proof. Nothing but a scorned woman's word and an Alpha too blinded by his feelings to question it. He described how I had retaliated with threats and intimidation, damaging the Steele name and endangering their pack's standing, all without so much as an investigation.
He paused for effect, letting that land, and then his expression turned mournful. He said the Steele family had exhausted all private avenues for resolution and had been met with nothing but hostility. He said they were left with no choice but to invoke the Rite of Grievance to restore their honor.
He named Nova as the challenged party.
And he named his champion: June Steele, his third cousin and a Delta ranked warrior of the Steele pack. I knew that name. Not well, but enough. June Steele was a Council warrior, a lieutenant, and she served under Commander Helen Ashton's direct command.
Under Nova's mother.
Fuck!
The video ended. I stared at the blank screen and rage brewed heavily in the pit of my stomach, because I was starting to understand just how carefully Lucas had planned this. He hadn't just picked any Delta, oh no. He'd picked one connected to Nova's own family, one whose rank and reputation made her a credible threat, one whose position under Helen's command would make the whole thing personal and political at the same time.
"How many people have seen this?" My voice didn't sound like mine.
Jake was already scrolling. "It went up ten minutes ago. It's been shared across six major pack news accounts and it's climbing." He looked up from the phone. "This was coordinated, and I'm willing to bet he had the video ready before he even called you."
That meant Lucas never expected me to accept. It had been a ploy, something he could point to later and say he tried to handle it privately first. The real play was always the public statement, always the pressure, always the spectacle. Nova had seen it before I did. She'd tried to tell me and I'd shut her down.
"Get me everything you can find on June Steele," I said. "Training record, combat history, ranking, all of it. And find that fucking Alpha. Now."
Jake nodded and left without another word.
I didn't even get thirty seconds of silence.
My phone lit up first.
A text from Brandon: Have you seen this? Call me.
Then another from Danny, just a link to the video with a question mark. Then a third notification, a fourth, the screen filling faster than I could read.
Elder Marcus's name appeared next. I let it ring through to voicemail. I already knew what he'd say. He'd been looking for reasons to question my leadership for months and Lucas had just handed him one wrapped in a bow. Tobias would wait, feel out which way the wind was blowing before committing to a position. Catherine was the only elder I trusted to see this for what it was, but even her support had limits.
Marsha couldn't wait. My mother's name flashed across the screen and I answered before I could talk myself out of it.
"I warned you." No greeting, no preamble. Just the blade. "I told you that woman would be the end of this pack's reputation and you didn't listen. Now look where we are."
"Not now, Mother."
"Yes, now. Right now." Her voice was sharp enough to cut glass. "Lucas Steele just went on national broadcast and called your ex-wife a liar. The Rite of Grievance, Caden. When was the last time anyone invoked that? And over what? Over a woman you should have let go years ago."
My grip on the phone tightened. "Be very careful about your next words."
"Send her away." Marsha didn't hesitate. "Publicly sever all ties. Release a statement distancing yourself and the pack from her accusations. It's the only way to contain this before it spreads further."
"You're asking me to throw her to the wolves." I kept my voice level but Shadow was snarling so loud inside my skull I could barely think straight. "Literally."
"I'm asking you to protect your pack. Something you seem incapable of doing when that woman is anywhere near you." She paused, and when she spoke again her tone had shifted into something colder, more calculated. "You brought her back here against my advice. You ignored the elders, ignored me, ignored every single person who told you this would end badly. And now we have a public challenge, a scandal on every news feed, and wolves inside our own pack who think you've lost your mind. I wonder where they got that impression."
"Nova stays. That's not up for discussion. Not with you, not with the elders, not with anyone."
A long silence. When she spoke again, her voice had gone flat. Controlled. "Fine. You've made your position clear."
"I have."
"Then I hope you know what you're doing, Caden. Because I don't think you do."
She hung up. I set the phone face down on the desk and stared at the wall.
The thing about my mother was that she never conceded that easily. When Marsha backed down without a fight, it meant she'd already decided on a different approach. One that didn't require my cooperation.
I shoved that thought aside. I had bigger problems.
Lucas had timed this perfectly. The internal fractures, the public scandals, the wolves who already believed the version of events that painted Nova as the villain. All he'd done was pour gasoline on a fire that was already smoldering and hand out matches. The fifteen wolves who'd followed Zayn's lead, the grumbling from the traditionalists, the whispers that I'd gone soft. This video was going to feel like vindication to every single one of them.
And Nova had seen it by now. She had to have. If my phone was blowing up, hers was too, and she was sharper than I was about these things. She'd already be three steps ahead, already calculating the political fallout, already furious that I'd dismissed her when she tried to warn me.
I pushed back from the desk and grabbed my jacket.
The walk back to the house felt longer than it should have. I was thinking about what I was going to say to her when I walked through that door. How I was going to tell her that the champion Lucas had named served under her own mother's command. That Marcus was probably already drafting a formal objection to her presence in the pack.
I was thinking about the fact that she was going to want to fight. And that I was running out of reasons to tell her no.