Chapter 90 About the Earth
Leela walked into the main living area, the physical weight of her children distributed perfectly across her frame. She carried Caspian on her left hip and Briar on her right, balancing the two toddlers with a practiced ease that made the feat look like second nature.
The news from Magda—that there was only one heart beating inside her this time, not two—had settled something deep in her chest. A single baby. A singular life to protect. In the face of Vane’s coming war, that small mercy felt like a tactical advantage. It was one less variable in a world that was spinning out of control.
She stopped a few feet from the fireplace, her gaze shifting from Fennigan to the two men standing near the hearth.
"Elder Thorpe, Elder Horne," Leela said, her voice steady but cool. She didn't bow—she couldn't, not with a child on each hip—but the nod she gave them was respectful enough to satisfy protocol. "I hope you are both doing well."
Elder Thorpe straightened his jacket, and Elder Horne leaned heavily on his cane, both men watching her with sharp, calculating eyes.
They could feel the tension radiating off her. It wasn't fear—not anymore. It was caution.
They knew full well why the girl was looking at them like a wolf eyeing a trap. They remembered the last time they had stood in this room. They remembered the paperwork they had been prepared to sign, the order to have her stripped of her freedom, all because they hadn't understood what she was.
"We are well, Elemental," Thorpe replied, his tone lacking its usual arrogance. He looked at the twins—the very children Vane wanted to steal—and then back at Leela’s fierce, guarded expression. "Better now that we see the Lineage is... secure."
Leela held his gaze, her chin lifting slightly. She knew they weren't here out of affection. They were here because they remembered the voice that had come out of her mouth that day. They remembered the Moon Goddess speaking directly through her, threatening to rip the wolf spirits right out of their bodies if they touched her Chosen.
The Elders exchanged a brief, silent glance.
They were powerful men. They controlled territories, laws, and armies. But they were not stupid.
They could see the caution in Leela’s eyes, the way she shielded her children from them even now. But they would not press her. They would not offer platitudes she wouldn't believe. And they certainly would not give her a reason to call upon that divine protection again.
To challenge Vane was politics. To challenge Leela was suicide.
"We are here to help, Leela," Horne rasped, thumping his cane once for emphasis, signaling a truce. "We have no desire to see history repeat itself. And we have absolutely no desire to incite a war with the Goddess. We know when we are outmatched."
Leela lowered Caspian and Briar onto the rug, watching them immediately toddle over to Damon, who was waiting with open arms to distract them. She straightened up, her hands resting on her hips, her eyes flashing with a mixture of confusion and anger as she turned back to the Elders and her mate.
"But how?" Leela demanded, her voice cutting through the room. "How do we get Vane out of his glass tower? How do we catch a man who has spent his entire life building walls of red tape around himself?"
She looked at Elder Thorpe, her brow furrowed.
"And more importantly," Leela pressed, "how does he still have his wolf? He is defying the Goddess directly. He is threatening a Blessed Union. He is trying to dissect children she helped save. How is he not stripped? How is he not a soulless husk by now?"
Elder Thorpe sighed, walking over to the fireplace and warming his hands. He looked old in the firelight, the weight of decades of politics settling on his shoulders.
"Because, my dear," Thorpe said softly, "the Moon Goddess grants us free will. And Vane... Vane is clever. He doesn't attack with claws. He attacks with intent. He has convinced himself—and his wolf—that he is doing this for the 'Greater Good.' He believes he is saving the species from an unpredictable anomaly. He hides his malice behind a shield of 'Public Safety.' To the Goddess, he is a misguided fool, not a traitor... yet."
"He stays hidden from the Divine Powers because he stays hidden from the Earth," Elder Horne rumbled, tapping his temple. "He lives in a city of concrete and steel. He governs from a high-rise. He never touches the soil. He never hunts. He has severed his connection to the natural world so thoroughly that the earth cannot judge him because he never steps foot on it."
Fennigan looked up, a sudden, sharp realization dawning in his golden eyes.
"He never touches the soil," Fennigan repeated slowly. "He governs by proxy. He sends enforcers. He sends drones. He sends letters."
He looked at Leela.
"That's his armor, Leela. Distance. He destroys the earth from a desk. He destroyed Whisper Wind without ever getting his boots muddy. He never gets his own hands dirty."
Elana stepped forward. "So how do we bring him down? If he won't come out of his tower?"
Elder Thorpe turned, a wicked, predatory glint in his eye that reminded everyone in the room that he was, in fact, a wolf.
"We use the oldest treaty in the book," Thorpe said, his voice dropping to a growl. "The Lex Terrae. The Law of the Land."
He looked at Horne. "Do you remember the clause? Section 4, Paragraph 1?"
Horne nodded slowly, a dark smile spreading across his craggy face. "The Right of Soil. If a Council Member is accused of 'Ecological Heresy'—of crimes against the very earth that sustains us—they cannot be tried in a courtroom."
"They must be tried," Thorpe finished, "on the land they are accused of destroying."
Leela felt a shiver run down her spine. "Whisper Wind."
"Exactly," Fennigan said, standing up, his energy radiating through the room. "We accuse him of the destruction of Whisper Wind. We don't make it about the twins. We make it about the Earth. We trigger a tribunal that forces him to leave his glass tower and stand in the middle of the wasteland he created."
"And once he is there," Leela whispered, her eyes glowing with elemental power, "he isn't hidden anymore. The earth remembers what he did. If he steps foot on that poisoned soil..."
"The land will testify," Fennigan promised. "And not even his red tape can save him from the ground beneath his feet."