Page 24 of Wolf's Reckoning
“I did. We’re making rounds at various packs. Alliances need to be made now that the Stonefang Pack has a new alpha,” I told him. Not one word was an untruth. “But we heard about the Council deciding who gets to make the call on who gets to lead a pack they know nothing about, with your daughter by their side like she’s a token in a game of politics, and that, well that, I had to see for myself.”
A breath. That pause where pain meets pride. “I didn’t want this,” Malric said softly. “But a pack is not a pack without a male to lead it.”
“Then maybe your pack needs to be reminded what leadership looks like,” I snapped before I could stop myself.
Malric didn’t bristle at my outburst. He just looked…tired. “Is that what you’ve come to do, young pup?” he asked with a weary smile. “Remind us?”
I didn’t answer.
Because even I wasn’t sure yet what I hoped to do when I was here.
I looked away from Malric before I insulted him again. Something that would dishonor what was left of him—or what he’d once tried to be. A father figure to an orphaned boy who didn’t yet know his place in the world.
Killian shifted behind me, restless, sensing my tension through the pack bond. The druid, of course, hadn’t left the room. They lingered near the door like a shadow cast by the Goddess herself, hands folded in front of them, eyes fixed on nothing and everything at once. Serene.
Malric let out a slow breath, rough and worn. “You’re still angry.”
I snorted with contempt. I’d been an angry youth, and it seemed he was keen to keep to the past. “Not angry. I’m focused.”
“Same thing, sometimes.” He didn’t say it like a compliment. We held each other’s stare for a long moment before a cough from him forced him to break the stare.
How quickly he would fall if challenged for this pack, I mused. Hell, any one of those males out there could beat him right now, and in a pack as stuck in the past as this one, would they care that their new leader was not a born alpha? As long as they had a replacement, I doubted that they would.
I clenched my jaw, sure the druid would use the moment of Malric’s weakness to expel us from the room, and I moved a few feet toward the fireplace, heat licking my skin but not doing a damn thing for the chill that had settled in my bones since I smelled her on the wind.
Behind me, I heard Killian clear his throat—a deliberate annoyed sound—and I braced myself for the impact of whatever fuel he was about to throw on the fire.
In true Killian style, he didn’t hold back as he turned to look at the druid. “You always hover like that, or is it just when pretty shifters come back from the dead?”
“I never believed Wolfe was dead, though I know that’s what he wanted us to believe.” The druid turned their head, expression unreadable as they met Killian’s look. “I watch where power stirs. It is my role to see.”
“Is your role also to decide what a wolf is worth for the sake of your pack?” Killian challenged.
“Rowen’s worth is not mine to set,” the druid said calmly. “Only to ensure it is honored in accordance with our ways.”
Killian snorted with contempt. “Yeah, I’ve seen what your ‘ways’ look like. Guess it’s easier to bind a powerful shifter than follow them.”
The air in the room changed—not colder, not warmer. Just older. The druid now had my full attention as I watched as they stepped closer to my beta. I caught a glint of something beneath their carefully crafted passive mask.
Not a threat.
Something worse.
Conviction.
“She is born of the Hollow,” they said evenly. “Alpha blood runs through her veins, but she is not a male, andallwolves must bow to the moon.” The druid looked at Killian as if he were dirt on the floor. “You’d do well to remember that.”
“Funny,” I murmured, not giving a single fuck about the slow coiling of ancient power in the room. “I always thought we howled at it.”
The druid said nothing.
“I am tired,” Malric announced. “It was good of you to come and check on my daughter.”
Check on her?
“Stay for supper,” he continued. “I won’t join you this evening. But you are…welcome. I am sure an alliance may be discussed in later days…perhaps.”
A dismissal. I inclined my head and turned to leave, catching Killian’s eye, the unspoken warning to say nothing acknowledged when Killian also bowed his head in deference to the dying alpha.
