“Yeah.”
“I want eyes on all three. Every meeting Conrad holds, every Alpha George talks to, every damn route Lorraine takes around the perimeter.”
“Already on it.” A pause. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to talk to the elders. Not at the council table. At their houses, on their ground. If Conrad is working them from one side, I need to work them from the other before this thing has legs.”
“Finn. One more thing. If this goes to a challenge, it’s George who steps up. He’s young but he’s been training hard. Don’t underestimate him.”
“I won’t.”
“And Andrea and the baby. If it comes to it.”
My chest tightened. The thought of them in danger made my wolf push against my ribs so hard I had to breathe through it. “If it comes to a challenge, they’re your first priority. Not me. Them.”
“Understood.”
I hung up. Stood in the hallway outside my bedroom door, listening to Andrea shift in her sleep, and felt the fury settle into my bones like concrete.
Fuck Conrad and his private meetings. Fuck George and his recruiting trips. Fuck Lorraine and her refusal to accept that I was never hers. Eight goddamn years I’d given this pack and now a family that coasted on my father’s name was trying to take it because I fell in love with a human.
I got dressed and drove to Brennan’s house. No security, no Luca. Just me, showing up at the most senior elder’s door before eight in the morning.
He opened it and stared at me for a full five seconds before stepping aside.
“You’re at my house,” he said.
“I need to talk to you. Not at the council table. Here.”
“You could have summoned me.”
“I’m not summoning. I’m asking.”
He poured me coffee in a mug with a chipped rim. We sat at his kitchen table, a scarred oak thing older than I was.
“There’s a challenge coming,” I said. “The Ashtors are organizing. I need to know where this council stands when it happens. Not the polite answer. The real one.”
Brennan drank his coffee. “You’re worried.”
“I’m prepared. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
I held his gaze. “The fated bond is the foundation our laws are built on. If the Ashtors use tradition as a weapon against a fated pairing, they’re attacking the very thing they claim to defend. I need to know you see that.”
He was quiet. Thinking. Brennan had served three Kings. He understood that tradition wasn’t a wall. It was a river, and rivers changed course.
“Your father would have handled this differently,” he said.
“My father never had a fated mate.”
“No. He didn’t. That matters more than most people realize.” He set his mug down. “You have my support. Not because you asked. Because the bond is real and I’m not fool enough to stand against it.”
I left with his word.
The second elder was harder. Traditional, skeptical, been on the council longer than anyone except Brennan. She asked pointed questions about pack security, whether a human Luna could participate in the bonding rituals, what happened when the pack needed a Luna who could shift.
“She can’t shift,” I said. “She can’t fight in wolf form. But she walked into a council chamber full of Alphas and didn’t flinch. Andrea doesn’t need to shift to be strong.”
