“Say it again.” My voice came out low. “Say her name and the wordeliminatein the same sentence. I need you to say it one more time and see who gets eliminated first.”
Draven’s jaw worked. The blood from the claw’s puncture traced a line down his throat and soaked into his collar.
“You’re already compromised.” He said it to the room watching their king hold a councilor by the throat with claws drawn. “All of this. For a human.”
I held him there. Let the silence stretch until every person in that chamber understood what lived beneath the composure I’d worn for two hundred years. The wolf pressed against the back of my skull, gold bleeding into my vision.
“Mira Maxwell ismymate.Ours.” Each word landed with a verdict. “She isnota bargaining chip, and she isnota threat to be neutralized.”
“Any member of this council who suggests otherwise will deal with me personally. Not as your king.” My claw pressed a fraction deeper. Draven’s breath stalled. “As her alpha.”
I released him. He dropped, caught himself against the wall, and pressed his hand to his neck where the puncture wept red.
Solomon hadn’t moved. His claws retracted slowly and the councilor beside him exhaled for what seemed the first time in a full minute.
I straightened my jacket. My gaze moved from Iver to the rest of the council, letting each face register what had just happened.
“Session adjourned.”
Nobody argued.
The chamber doors closed behind us. Solomon fell into step at my left, and we walked the corridor in silence. The guards stationed every thirty feet didn’t look at us.
“Draven will use that against you,” Solomon said.
“Let him.”
I reached my empty quarters and closed the door. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I let my hands rest on my knees and watched the tremors return.
It had only been days in Veyndral since the rejection.
But time moved differently across the portal, stretched and warped, and every day I spent in this palace could be a week she spent believing we’d abandoned her.
The two highest-ranked lycans in the kingdom couldn’t vanish without consequence. The council would seize control and authorize killing her. And as much as the crown is a burden to me, Solomon’s duty a chain to him, we have lives of our pack on our shoulders.
Every council session, intelligence review, and border correspondence was just for one purpose: to keep the machinery of Veyndral pointed away from her.
The wolf inside me had stopped howling. Now it just paced. Restless, wordless, a caged animal inside me.
We made our choice.
I couldn’t undo what we’d done. But I could make sure they would not touch her.
Even if I hoped in hell we could make the same choice as Percival.
I’d been there when he packed. His quarters were sparse to begin with, a soldier’s room with a soldier’s belongings, so the packing took minutes. He didn’t ask for permission. Just shoved his things into a bag.
“I’m going back for her.”
“I see that.”
“You could order me to stay.”
“I could.”
He’d looked at me then. Perhaps expecting me to command him.
But one of us needed to go back. One of us needed to be close enough that the bond didn’t kill her slowly from the inside, and Percival had always been the one to move first and think second.
