“Is it?” Rowen interrupted sharply. “The rogue’s attacks across multiple territories? The pattern pointing directly to you? The witnesses? The timing? The poisoning you believed we wouldn’t identify?”
Deryn’s mouth opened and closed.
Diesel took a step forward, eyes blazing. “And Axel,” he said softly, almost gleefully. “Shall we bring him out too?”
Some of the Pack Council wolves stiffened, their faces saying everything. They knew. They knew Axel was a traitor. They knew he’d been sent as a tool, and they knew this entire war had been orchestrated.
I let the silence stretch before I let every shifter in this fight watch them unravel.
When I finally spoke, I didn’t raise my voice. “You wanted a hearing,” I said. “So here it is.” I motioned to thepack—still strong, bruised, bloodied, unbroken. I turned to those who had fought us, making sure they could hear me. “You stand before every wolf you’ve harmed. Every territory you’ve manipulated. Every pack you expected to fall in line. Tonight, you don’t answer to me.” I met each of their stares. “You answer tous.”
“We are not on trial,” Deryn snapped.
My alpha power surged, and my eyes gleamed silver. “Oh, but you are,” I said as I stepped onto my pack’s land. One foot—that’s all it took for the Hollow to sense me, and the Hollow responded.
Not to me. Not to Rowen. Not even to the pack. It answeredthem.
A sound like a deep exhale rolled across the clearing—so low, most wolves would have dismissed it as the wind. But anyone standing on my packlands felt it. Every single one of them froze. The ground beneath their boots shifted—just a subtle tilt at first. Enough to make them widen their stance. Enough to make their wolves bristle.
Deryn faltered, staring down at the ground and then up at me. “What?—”
The soil trembled again. Not cracking. Not rising. Not attacking. Justshiftingits weight.
Awayfrom them and wrapping itself around me.
I felt her touch then, light, graceful as she gave me a gift and a curse in one. The Goddess Luna showed me and every shifter standing on Hollow land the truth.
They were in their home as they always were. Grandfather sat in his chair, half-asleep, as the click-clacking of Grandmother’s knitting needles lulled him deeper into slumber.
The break in the seal jerked him upright. Grandmother’s knittingstopped. They both reached for the ground, searching for the source of the power that had broken a Goddess’s gift. They found no sign of danger.
“Strange that,” Grandfather murmured. “Woke me up.”
“You’ve been sleeping for years,” Grandmother grumbled softly, a small smile on her face. She reached for the Stone beneath her again, feeling for the pack, with no signs of distress. All was well.
He opened the door, filling it like he always did. Big, brawny, but boyish in looks.
Grandmother’s needles paused once more. “Axel?” Wariness tinged her voice. “You left. How did you?—”
He’d always been quick—faster than even Killian at times. He moved across the room so fast that Grandmother barely had time to jump back. But he didn’t lunge at her. His hands were on Grandfather’s neck, claws already extended, tearing through his throat and dropping his body to the floor like trash.
His grin was not the one she knew. His eyes were not the ones she recognized.
“What have you done to him?” she asked, clutching her needles. “Where’s my Axel?”
“I’m right here,Grannie.”
She felt a pang of sadness as he used the nickname, and she shook her head. “No. No, you’re not my boy.” She jabbed her needle outward. “What have you done?”
“I’ve played thelongest fuckinggame in the history of double crosses,” Axel told her. “I’ve burrowed so deep into this backward fucking pack, you don’t even recognize what is right in front of you, you old hag.” He sneered and spat on Grandfather’s body. “I’m going to kill you, slowly. I always hated you the most.” His smile had no warmth. “Then my friends are going to enter this barren fucking rock, and we’re going to kill everyone here.” His eyes were flat and dead. “Might take aturn on a few of the bitches here first,” he added with a wink. “With you and the old timer gone, the land will break.”
“Wolfe will?—”
“Wolfe will do nothing,” Axel cut her off. “Because he is an idiot. He is a blind, incompetent fool. He looked for conspiracy theories when there were none. He’s so caught up in that redheaded slut’s pussy, he can no longer see straight. He thought elders,eldersof that hokey piss-lazy pack, tricked him and controlled rogues?” Axel laughed loudly. “Icontrol the rogues.Ifed the Pack Council the information they needed on how to take that land. It is allme. Wolfe’s incompetent, Grannie. His head will be mine before the winter solstice. The Pack Council wants him and his slut dead and Blueridge Hollow theirs. And I will be the one who hands it to them.”
Grandmother watched him. “You are no alpha, Axel.” She looked him over from head to toe. “You’re not even a beta. What did they tell you you’d get in return?”
“You’re as stupid as Wolfe. I mean, he doesn’t even realize he’s truly your blood, that’s how clueless he is. The Pack Council doesn’t need more alphas. Pack leaders are the future.”
