Page 19 of Season's Greetings
Daniel
A few weeks had passed since the spectacle at his office, and nothing else had happened.
No more summons from the Council. No demands from Claudia. Nothing.
It was unnerving.
Daniel was on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He wasn’t naïve enough to think the alpha-vixen had given up her claim on his mate and their son.
Toby had been a little ray of sunshine—well, when he wasn’t causing chaos. Daniel had given up trying to tidy away all the craft supplies, and he was pretty sure the green paint stain on the cream rug was permanent.
Even with his life turned upside down, he wouldn’t change a single thing.
Although life with an overexcited dog slobbering on his clothes he could do without. Still, Barney was harmless—or mostly harmless—just as long as you weren’t a newspaper or the mailman.
Daniel was just finishing his cup of coffee, preparing to head to the office, when the summons arrived.
Not a clerk this time—oh no.
This time it was the court’s bailiff.
They escorted him from his house like a criminal, driving him straight to the Pack Council chambers. He’d barely had time tograb his jacket, let alone his phone, before he was standing in front of a line of Elders seated atop a curved dais.
Claudia sat beside her legal advisor, looking regal—head held high, dressed head to toe in designer clothes, not a hair out of place.
Clearly, she’d been given more notice than he had.
It was a low tactic. Summoning him like a rogue. As if his bond was some back-alley ritual scraped from the bottom of an archaic text.
Claudia’s voice lanced through the chamber—slick, venomous. A self-supercilious smirk curled her lips while her legal team lobbied the Elders. The weasel-faced lawyer’s beady eyes darted around the room as he struggled to recite his argument, before pulling a slip of paper from his jacket pocket and reading aloud:
“He invoked the Hollow Moon Rite without Council witness or formal registry. That bond is spiritually invalid. I move to nullify it under Clause 4, Subsection B of the Eldritch Obsolescence Statute!”
Whispers rippled through the chamber. Elders leaned in. One shuffled parchment. Another rolled their eyes like age had worn their patience thin.
Daniel understood how that felt.
But this—this was what he was best at.
He was certain that the law favored him. He just needed to prove it.
Stepping forward, prepared to plead his case, his boots echoed louder than Claudia’s fury. Matthew sat in the back, hands folded, face unreadable, with Grady next to him.
“With respect,” Daniel said, “Subsection B doesn’t nullify rites. It reclassifies them.”
Claudia twisted toward him, a look of hate etched on her face.
“Reclassified as ceremonial only. Not legally binding,” her legal advisor pressed.
“Incorrect.”
Daniel lifted the scroll Keiran had left with him, bound in storm-thread and truth.
“Clause 4, Subsection B states that any ritual performed under lunar protocol and ancestral conditions—even if obsolete—remains binding if not repealed by Council decree.”
He stepped closer, voice colder than the biting wind outside.
“And no decree was issued. The bond stands.”
