Chapter 77 Ronan’s Morning
Ronan’s POV
The message came through the secondary channel at six-fourteen in the morning.
I read it twice, then set the device face-down on my desk and sat with the information for a moment before doing anything with it.
Phase Two. Confirmed active.
I’d known it was coming.
I’d been expecting it since the tribunal session, since Foss’s suspension, since the shape of things had made it clear the political track wasn’t going to close cleanly.
Politics rarely did.
The Phase Two structure wasn’t complicated.
The Verath would make a second border move—larger than the first, coordinated, designed to force a pack military response that divided Rhys’s attention. At the same time, the external coordinator would arrive within range to assess whether the governance framework could be activated.
That assessment required one thing:
Evidence that Moonstone’s Alpha authority was sufficiently fractured.
Foss had given them that before his suspension.
I was fairly certain of it.
The man had been feeding information for twenty years. He would have managed one final piece before the window closed.
The remaining obstacle was the tribunal.
Specifically, the third account.
I’d written it myself over two evenings, using language specific enough to sound credible and vague enough to survive an initial verification review.
Hardon was thorough.
I’d always respected that about him.
Which meant the third account wouldn’t survive indefinitely.
It didn’t have to.
It only needed to hold long enough for everything else to create sufficient pressure. All of this depended on one thing now: Moonstone looking unstable.
I stood and walked to the window.
The pack grounds below were already awake.
Morning patrols were rotating.
Kitchen staff crossed toward the east garden.
A group of younger wolves ran the perimeter path, just as they did every morning regardless of what was happening inside the council chambers.
I’d grown up looking at this view.
That was the honest part.
The part I’d never completely managed to think my way around.
I grew up here.
I knew the name of every wolf on that perimeter trail.
I’d trained beside most of them.
The east river came back to me without warning.
I’d been eight.
The spring floods had arrived late that year, then surged all at once.
I’d wandered beyond the boundary I wasn’t supposed to cross.
Rhys had told me to wait. He’d gone ahead to check the path.
I hadn’t waited. I’d followed him anyway and gotten too close to the riverbank.
Then I’d fallen in.
The water had been cold enough to stop thought itself.
I hadn’t called for Rhys. I hadn’t called for anyone. I’d found the bank through instinct and sheer refusal to stop moving.
I’d dragged myself out.
By the time Rhys came looking for me, I was already sitting on the opposite bank, soaked but unharmed.
He’d looked at me with that expression—Not quite relieved. Not quite angry.
“I told you to wait.”
“I know.”
I hadn’t said I’d known he would’ve come if I’d called. I hadn’t admitted I’d almost called. I hadn’t said any of the true things.
They’d always been too small and too large at exactly the same time.
Instead, I’d learned something that day. Or perhaps years later, whenever I tried to remember when I'd first stopped expecting people to come back for me, my mind always returned to the river.
You could only rely on yourself. Waiting for someone else to come was a choice. And it wasn’t always the right one.
I turned away from the window.
The third account would hold for another twenty-four hours. The Verath operation was scheduled for tonight. Logan needed to be updated before the day moved any further.
I left my room and headed down the corridor toward the guest wing.
…
Logan answered the door wearing a shirt that wasn’t completely tucked in.
He hadn’t slept well.
As far as I was concerned, that was the appropriate condition for a man in his position.
“Ronan.” Not warmly.
“Brief conversation,” I said as I stepped inside.
He watched me with the expression of someone who’d spent several days calculating every possible outcome and hadn’t found one he liked.
“The tribunal accounts,” he said without preamble. “One of them was dismissed already.”
“Two,” I corrected. “The third still stands.”
“For how long?”
“Long enough.”
He held my gaze. “That’s not a specific answer.”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”
I glanced toward the window.
“By Thursday, you’ll be the most important man in this territory.”
“That’s the straightforward answer.”
Silence.
I looked back at him. I’d expected relief. The satisfaction of a man finally receiving confirmation. The eagerness of someone preparing for what came next.
Instead…
I found something else. His face had settled into careful neutrality. The particular kind that only appeared when someone was suppressing a reaction.
His hands hung motionless at his sides.
“Thursday,” he repeated.
“Thursday.”
He didn’t say Good.
He didn’t say Finally.
For several moments, he said nothing at all.
And in that silence, I noticed something worth remembering.
The expression of a man who had finally heard the thing he’d always claimed to want…only to discover that wanting it in theory and receiving it in reality were two entirely different things.
I left without pressing the issue. Some things couldn’t be forced. You let them move at their own pace. And watched where they went.