Kael’s POV
Back in Nightfall territory.
“The Elders have been waiting in the council hall for two hours,” Derek said quietly.
“I know.”
I didn’t stop to change.
I crossed the main courtyard, pushed open the heavy oak doors of the council hall, and three Elders lifted their heads at once.
Maps and several case files lay spread across the table.
“Alpha.” Elias, the First Elder, rose first.
“A long road. You must be tired.”
I waved it off, circled the table to the head seat, and dropped my cloak over the chair back.
“Sit. Tell me what’s happened in the pack while I was away.”
Malcolm opened the thick ledger in front of him and worked down the list.
Last month the eastern border patrol had caught two Rogues trying to cross.
Three days of interrogation, nothing.
Still held in the dungeon.
“On supplies,” Cedric took over, “the Ashgrove Pack’s tribute for this month still hasn’t come.
It was due five days ago.”
”Send someone to press them.” I leaned back.
“Once verbally, once in writing. If it still doesn’t come, strip next month’s passage rights.”
The reports ran nearly two hours,territory income, border posture, every item examined.
I listened, asked a detail now and then, and otherwise stayed silent against the chair back.
When the last line was checked off, Elias closed the ledger and looked up.
“Alpha,how did things go with Blackwater?
Alpha Jace called you there to discuss the joint Rogue operation, I assume?”
”Half discussed.” I gave them the outline: Jace’s grandfather Alaric’s birthday was coming, the Ashgrove Pack would attend, and Jace feared trouble breaking out,he wanted me quietly holding the floor underneath.
Elias nodded and moved on to details, but I cut in.
“There is one more thing.”
All three Elders’ eyes came back to me.
“In a border tavern in Bloodthorn, I met a woman.” I paused.
“An Omega.”
”…She is my Fated Mate.”
The council hall went still.
The three of them traded a look.
Elias’s fingers tapped the table twice, slowly.
He was silent a long time before he spoke, his voice lower than before. The source of this chapter is g.com.
“You’re certain?”
”Fenrir is.”
Malcolm spoke up.
“And her? How did she respond to you?”
I hesitated.
“Afraid of me. Dodging me, start to finish.”
It was Cedric who broke the silence first, his voice gravelly.
“Alpha, what do you intend to do?”
”I’m having her background looked into,” I said.
“Until that’s done, I make no decisions.”
Elias nodded, but his face didn’t ease.
He weighed his words for a while.
“Alpha, there is something I must say.
If you truly mean to go near her,to make her your Luna,then you had better be clear about one thing,”
”I know what you’ll say.
The curse.” I said it for him.
The mood in the hall sank.
No one spoke Elena’s name, but the same image was in every head at that table.
“After Elena died, the three of us spoke privately about whether the curse could be broken,” Elias went on.
“The root of it is betrayal,a Veyron Alpha killed his own Fated Mate.
To break it, you would need its opposite.
Sincerity.
If a Veyron Alpha and his Fated Mate came to truly love each other, holding nothing back, the curse would lose its footing.
At the time, we agreed the legend meant nothing.”
”Why?” I asked.
“Because asking you to love someone again was no different from asking you to die.” Elias didn’t look away.
He said it plainly.
“We all saw what you were then.”
Malcolm picked it up, quieter than Elias but no less careful.
“But it’s different now. If you’ve found your Fated Mate, the first condition is already met. What remains is only the second,that the love be true.”
Cedric’s eyes had been on my face the whole time, reading it.
Finally he ventured, slow and rough, “Alpha. Do you feel anything for this Omega?”
In my head: her kneeling to gather the broken plates.
That whisper of fir in her scent.
The kiss in the car, brief and beyond my control.
The way she’d pitched out the door and staggered through the snow.
I couldn’t remember the last time one woman’s stray moments had left me this many details.
Maybe there had never been a last time.
I stayed silent.
Elias eased back into his chair, as if settling something in himself.
“If you mean to pursue this,” he chose the words carefully, “then approaching her as a suitor may be the soundest way.”
”Suitor.” I repeated the word.
“Not as an Alpha applying pressure,” Elias explained.
“As an ordinary man, going to her, learning her. If something grows between you on its own, then test whether the legend holds. And if in the end she feels nothing for you,then at least you’ll have tried.”
Malcolm nodded along.
“It also keeps Bloodthorn off their guard. You inspect the border, you pass a tavern, you see someone on the way. No one will think twice.”
Cedric thought a moment, then added one thing.
“Only remember,she belongs to Nathan’s Pack, for now. If you want her standing beside you of her own will, it can’t be taken by force. It has to be given.”
Given.
Willingly.
The word sat strangely in my mouth.
For years I had spoken in strength,commands, force, executions.
Those were far more familiar to me than the notion of a person walking toward me because she chose to.
Fenrir lay quiet and deep in my chest, waiting for the decision to come out of my own mouth.
I looked down.
My fingertip found the old scratch on the armrest,the one I’d carved myself, years ago, so I would not forget whose path I refused to walk.
“Understood.”
I stood, and the cloak slid from the chair back.
At the door, I stopped.
I didn’t turn around.
“Look into her. Everything there is to find. Leave nothing out.”