ELENA.
“So are we.” I look around the room.
At Damien, jaw set, eyes fierce.
At Sage, who flew in on two hours’ notice with a briefcase full of legal ammunition.
At Vivian, sitting across the table with Mira asleep in the next room, her hands flat on the documents she is prepared to testify to.
At Dominic, who has been quietly handing over every piece of financial evidence he photographed before staging his own death.
At Alexander, who has been building this case for almost a year and chose somewhere along the way, in the quiet space between duty and something else to make sure I survived to see it end.
“What does she not know?” I ask.
“What does Catherine think her exposure looks like right now?”
“She thinks Dominic is dead and you’re a fugitive,” Alexander says.
“She believes she controls the narrative.
She’s already given three interviews expressing grief about her son and deep concern about her former daughter-in-law’s deteriorating mental state.”
“She went public.”
“This morning.” He slides his phone across the table.
I watched the clip.
Luna Catherine in perfectly pressed mourning black, composed as carved marble, telling a pack news journalist that she has always adored Elena Grey and is deeply saddened by the accusations surrounding her.
I hand the phone back.
“Good,” I say.
Damien raises an eyebrow.
“Good?”
“Yes.” I look at Sage.
“She’s on record.
Publicly.
She’s committed to a story.” I turn to Alexander.
“What’s the earliest the inter-pack council can convene?”
“Twenty-four hours if we push for an emergency session.”
“Push.”
“Elena,” Damien says carefully, “an emergency session means going public with all of this.
Your name.
Dominic’s name.
Everything.
The press will…”
“I know what it means.” I hold his gaze taking the words out of his mouth, “Damien.
She killed Sebastian.
She nearly killed Vivian.
She framed Dominic to protect herself and then had him murdered when he became a liability.
She has been using my name as a financial weapon for three years.” I pause.
“I am done hiding.
Are you with me?”
My brother looks at me for a long moment.
Then, slowly, the corner of his mouth lifts.
“Little wolf,” he says quietly.
“You have no idea how long I have been waiting for you to say that.”
From across the table, Dominic says nothing.
But I see him watching me.
And I see, with absolute clarity, what his expression means.
Too late.
It means too late.
It means I see you now and I have no idea what I was looking at before.
I look away.
Some things you grieve.
Some things you simply walk out of.
Dominic Ashford is the second kind.
There is a woman who sits at the head of the Inter-Pack Council, and her name is Elder Rowena Vance.
She is eighty-one years old.
She has not smiled in the direction of the Ashford family since Catherine then twenty-five and newly mated had the extraordinary audacity to arrive seventeen minutes late to a council dinner and offer no apology.
Sixty years.
Sixty years, Elder Rowena has been waiting.
I know this because Sage told me in the car on the way to the council hall, in the particular tone she reserves for information that is going to be extremely relevant in approximately ninety seconds.
“She loved your mother,” Sage adds.
“They were close friends before the Grenadine pack disbanded.
When your parents died, Elder Rowena sent a private delegation to Damien.”
“He never told me.”
“He was twenty-two, in shock, and holding a pack together with his bare hands.
He probably couldn’t find the words.” Sage smooths her lapel.
“The point is, she has been watching your situation for three years, Elena.
Do not be surprised if she already knows everything.”
The council hall is a converted stone building on the outskirts of Portland.
Neutral territory.
Older than any pack currently operating in this region.
The crest above the doors belongs to no single pack.
It belongs to all of them.
Inside, thirty-seven Alpha representatives sit in graduated semicircles around a central floor.
At the head, behind a table of dark walnut, Elder Rowena Vance sits with the particular stillness of someone who has simply outlasted every threat that has ever been made against her.
She is tiny.
Sharp-eyed.
Silver-haired.
She does not smile when we walk in.
She does, however, look at me for exactly three seconds longer than she looks at anyone else in the room.
I take that as a good sign.
Catherine is already there.
I expected that.
I prepared for it.
I have been preparing for it since somewhere between the boat ride and Damien’s tactical table.
What I did not prepare for is the precise quality of the silence that falls when Dominic walks through the door behind me.
Thirty-seven Alphas, their betas, the council staff, every single one of them becomes completely still.
Catherine, seated at the respondent’s table with her legal team and two pack enforcers, turns.
And for one extraordinary moment, I watch the architecture of her composure so precisely constructed.
It is perhaps the most honest thing I have ever seen her do.
“Dominic,” she says.
And in that one word, three things are audible: disbelief, calculation, and fear.
Dominic looks at his mother.
“Hello, Mum,” he says.
“How….” She catches herself the moment she caught the lawyers walking in, “This is clearly a fabrication.
My son is dead!”