Chapter 244: Mate Does Not Want Us
The room clapped once. The map lit twice. Then the whole thing went to shit faster than a sandcastle in a hurricane.
"White wolves were put down for a reason," one of Stonehowl’s emotional support pack Alphas said. "The last one destabilized three territories before they killed it. This girl shows up with the same wolf, no Alpha escort, breaks a ritual that has functioned correctly for centuries, and we’re supposed to just ACCEPT that?"
"Let the girl speak," Redmoon said, though the patience in his voice was thinning faster than hair on a stressed man.
It was pointless. They wouldn’t let her speak.
"Is she even authorized to hold that seat?" An Alpha from the far end leaned around three bodies to make eye contact. "The rite answered her blood. Fine. The LAW still requires the acting Alpha’s explicit blessing. Does she have it? In writing? Because I haven’t seen documentation."
"Documentation," Redmoon repeated. "You want paperwork for her showing up. Renwick would not have her show up here if she did not have his blessing."
"I want PROOF that Renwick Lunaris sanctioned his daughter to sit at this table. A token alone is insufficient under Article Nine. She needs a sealed writ of delegation from the reigning Alpha. Can she produce that?"
She could not produce that and every wolf in this room with half a brain cell knew it.
"Come off it," Redmoon said. "No one in this room could produce that. The table lit for her. Let her stay."
"Her wolf is an abomination," the unnamed Alpha continued, louder now, feeding off the momentum. "The map reacted to corrupted blood. The ritual was designed for Alpha bloodlines. She carries a mutation. A defect that Renwick bred into his line through that dead wife of his and hid from every pack on this continent for two decades."
Guinevere’s hand flew to her mouth. Her mother being brought into this was the line.
She looked at Nicholas.
He was staring at the table. Jaw locked. Hands flat on the wood. His eyes were fixed on the grain of the surface with the intense focus of a man who was either restraining himself or dissociating, and she couldn’t tell which.
He wouldn’t look at her.
The man who had called her his mate in front of every Alpha on this continent, who had partial-shifted to protect her, who had put Tharos on his ass with a frequency that dropped wolves to their knees, was sitting six feet away staring at a table and refusing to meet her eyes.
She waited three seconds. Then five.
He didn’t look up. That was the part that broke something. He wouldn’t look at her and her wolf started whimpering and the combination of those two things did more damage than Tharos’s blade ever could.
Something shifted inside her chest.
Her wolf spoke.
We leave here. Mate does not want us.
Oh. Now he’s our mate, Guinevere thought back to it.
That was the wrong thing to say to it. Her wolf cried. Full-on wolf crying. Something she had never heard a wolf do and it was absolutely breaking her heart. Guinevere swallowed the lump in her throat that had no business being in this council chamber.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m feeling overwhelmed and he looks overwhelmed too.
Her wolf did not respond.
The yelling continued.
She was tired and bleeding through the cloth on her neck. Her lashes burned under the bandages. Her legs ached from eight hundred miles. Her hands still carried the faint glow that every wolf in this chamber treated like a lit fuse.
This was stupid.
That was the correct word.
Every second of this was a waste of time that could be spent on the actual goddamn threat tearing through their borders. Dark Fae were killing wolves in their beds and these men were arguing about her mother’s bloodline and missing fucking paperwork.
Stupid.
But also, she was disgusted with these men. All of them, including the ones in the audience indulging in this. If this was what being an Alpha was, she wanted no part of it.
Guinevere pulled her token from the table. The map went black.
The room went silent.
She stood.
"My Keep was attacked last night by thousands of them. We won because of strategy that I guarantee no Alpha at this goddamn table has ever seen. That is why I showed up here. That’s why I have bruises on my face. That’s why my Beta is not here."
Every face in the room was locked on her.
"Whatever the hell this is, I want no part of it. Best of luck to you all."
She moved towards the door.
Behind her, six chairs emptied at the same time. Six men stood, fell into formation, and followed her towards the doors with the synchronized precision of warriors who had decided this room was done with their princess and they were done with this room.
Their boots hit stone in perfect unison. The formation was tight. The peel-off was clean. The exit was flawless.
Best fucking flock in the building. She meant it every time.
She stopped without turning or looking at any of them.
"Lunaris will vote however Shadowfell votes. Or forfeit it if that is not doable. I don’t give a flying fuck. You decide."
The council doors closed behind them with a sound that bounced off every wall in the chamber and settled into a silence so thick that forty-nine Alphas could hear their own heartbeats.
Darwin Blackmoor opened his mouth. Benjamin held up one finger without looking at him.
Darwin closed his mouth.
Nicholas Shadowfell was staring at the closed doors with the expression of a man who had just watched the most important person in his life walk away from him.
Worse than that, she was disappointed in him. The woman he was tearing himself apart to find. That’s who he just let leave the chamber after she had taken shit for the last thirty minutes. After Alphas steamrolled her.
This was not the Nicholas Shadowfell his father raised or the Alpha his pack followed. This was a man who let his pride sit in the chair where his spine should have been.
He stood.