My stomach dropped. I looked at him. His jaw was locked, his eyes straight ahead, his voice carrying the same authority asevery word before it. But I was close enough to see his hand, the one at his side, clenched into a fist so tight the tendons were standing out.
“For conspiring against the crown, for aiding the Ashtor challenge, and for breaching the terms of her previous removal from pack grounds, Margaret Kingsley is formally banished from the Ironridge Pack. Effective immediately.”
The crowd went completely silent. He’d just exiled his own mother. In front of the entire pack. With a voice that didn’t waver once.
Margaret didn’t go quietly.
“You ungrateful child.” Her voice cut across the clearing, sharp, shaking with fury. “I gave you everything. I raised you. I held this pack together after your father died while you were too busy chasing a human to do your duty.”
Finneas didn’t respond. Didn’t look at her.
“You’re throwing away your bloodline for a girl who can’t even shift.” She was walking toward him now, pushing past the guards, her composure completely gone, her face twisted. “Your father would be ashamed of you. He would be disgusted. You are not the son I raised.”
My chest tightened. I could see the words landing on Finneas, each one a hit he absorbed without flinching, his jaw getting tighter, the muscle jumping. He still didn’t look at her. The not-looking was costing him more than anything she was saying.
“You’ll come crawling back,” Margaret spat. “When this falls apart, when your human wife can’t give the pack what it needs, you’ll come crawling back to me and I won’t be there.”
Security caught up to her. Two guards, one on each arm, pulling her back. She fought them, actually fought, wrenching her shoulders, trying to shake them off. For a woman in her fifties she put up a hell of a struggle.
“Get your hands off me. I am the former Luna of this pack. I walked these grounds before any of you were born.” She was screaming now, the polished voice gone, replaced by something raw and ugly. “This isn’t over, Finneas. Do you hear me? This is not over.”
They dragged her toward the treeline. She fought them the whole way, heels digging into the dirt, still screaming. I watched her go, this woman who faked a terminal illness, who manipulated her own son, who backed a challenger over her own child, being hauled out of the clearing like a stranger. And I felt my heart crack for Finneas, standing beside me, not looking, absorbing every word she hurled at his back.
Whatever Margaret had done, she was still his mother. Not the warm kind, not the kind who tucked you in or made you breakfast, but the only one he had. The woman who signed his birthday cards, who straightened his collar before pack events, who sat on his bed once after a nightmare. Small things. The scraps he’d told me about in the dark, quietly, like admitting they mattered cost him something. And she just called him a disgrace in front of his entire pack.
Then Lorraine.
She didn’t scream from somewhere hidden in the crowd. She pushed her way to the front, shoving past wolves twice her size, her red hair wild, her face streaked with tears and fury.
“You promised me.” She was looking straight at Finneas, pointing at him. “You were supposed to be mine. We were supposed to be together. Our mothers planned it, our fathers planned it, everyone knew. And you threw it away for her.” She swung toward me, her eyes so full of hate it made my skin crawl. “For a human. A nobody. A glorified secretary who got knocked up.”
I didn’t flinch. I wanted to. Every word was aimed at the softest parts of me, the insecurities I’d carried since the first day Lorraine looked at me like I was nothing. But I’d just stood in the center of this clearing and told hundreds of wolves who I was. I wasn’t flinching now.
“You ruined everything,” Lorraine screamed at Finneas. “My family is gone because of you. My brother is humiliated because of you. My mother is devastated because of you. I hope you and your human whore are happy because you destroyed us.”
Two guards grabbed her. She fought harder than Margaret did, kicking, clawing, screaming obscenities that echoed off the trees. One of the guards took a heel to the shin and swore under his breath.
“You’ll regret this,” she screamed as they pulled her toward the trees. “Both of you. I’ll make sure of it. This pack deserves better than a King who chose his cock over his crown.”
The words faded as they hauled her into the treeline. The clearing went quiet. Ugly quiet. The whole pack processing what they’d just witnessed.
Finneas hadn’t moved. Hadn’t responded to a single word from either of them. His face was stone, his eyes forward. The King, absorbing it, letting his pack see that neither his mother’s fury nor Lorraine’s hysteria could shake him.
But his fist at his side was trembling.
I watched the faces in the crowd. Some grim, some satisfied, some uncomfortable. This was the cost of challenging a King and losing. Two families erased from the only community they’d ever known. One of them his own.
Conrad pulled George to his feet. He was the only Ashtor who didn’t scream. He looked at Finneas across the clearing with a face I couldn’t read, put his arm around his son, and walked toward the trees. Regina followed. Quiet, contained, the last shred of dignity the Ashtor name had left.
Finneas stood in the center with me beside him. His hand found mine, fingers locking through. I squeezed. He squeezed back. His grip was too tight but I didn’t say anything.
We walked back to the estate. The pack parted for us and I kept my eyes forward, my hand in his, feeling people bow their heads as we passed. Not all of them. But enough. Wolves and humans stepping aside, dipping their chins. I was walking through it in a grass-stained blue dress with my belly huge, my eyes still wet. I’d just watched two wolves fight for a crown, the crowd was bowing, and I was a Luna.
I still didn’t fully know what that meant. I was figuring it out.
Luca fell into step behind us. A quiet presence at our backs.
I leaned in close enough that only Finneas could hear. “If you ever scare me like that again, I will kill you myself. And I don’t need claws to do it.”
