CLAIMED BY MY SWORN ENEMY ALPHA

Chapter 8: The Hearing

The hearing hall had never felt small to me before that afternoon.

I had presided over dozens of these gatherings since taking the title, trade disputes and boundary complaints and the small, grinding business of holding a pack together, and I had never once needed to think about where I sat or how I entered a room. That afternoon I thought about both, carefully, because Aria was walking in beside me and every eye in the hall had already found her before we reached the dais.

The murmur started before we sat down. I had expected it. I had not expected how much it would grate against something protective and raw under my skin, an instinct that wanted to silence every whisper in the room by force rather than reason.

"Let them look," Aria said quietly, before I could say anything at all. "I have survived worse than stares."

"This is not a comfort, given what I know about your training regimen."

That almost got a real laugh out of her, quickly suppressed, and something in my chest eased slightly at the sound of it, even half swallowed.

Voss opened the proceedings with the trade dispute I had actually called the hearing for, two merchant families arguing over a shipment of iron that had arrived light, and I forced myself to focus on it properly instead of the way Aria sat perfectly straight beside me, spine like a blade, giving the assembled pack nothing to read in her expression except calm.

Selene arrived halfway through, late in a way that felt deliberate, and took her seat at the front of the gathered court with a composure so complete it had to be costing her something underneath. Her eyes found Aria first, then me, then Aria again, and whatever she was thinking, she kept it entirely off her face.

"Alpha." Voss's voice, drawing my attention back. "The families await your judgment."

I gave it, some fair split neither side would love, and both could live with, and moved the hearing along toward the smaller matters that made up the bulk of these afternoons. Through all of it I was aware of Aria beside me with an intensity that made the actual business of governing difficult to focus on properly, some low, steady thread of awareness that had not faded since the valley and showed no sign of fading now.

An elder near the back, a woman named Petra who had served three alphas before me, rose during a pause and did not bother softening her question.

"Alpha, forgive an old woman's bluntness. The pack wishes to know how a Silverwood wolf comes to sit beside you in this hall."

The room went very still.

"She is my mate," I said plainly, because there was no version of this answer that would satisfy the room without the truth in it somewhere. "The bond formed during the border skirmish three days ago. I did not choose it, and neither did she, but it is done, and I intend to treat her as my mate deserves regardless of what pack she was born into."

"Silverwood raised her to hate us."

"Silverwood raised me to know exactly what my family believes about yours," Aria said, before I could answer for her, her voice carrying clean and steady across the hall. "I have not decided yet what I believe. I would ask the same courtesy from this room, since none of us chose this any more than I did."

Petra's expression did not soften, but something in the room's tension shifted slightly, a fraction of an inch, the difference between hostility and grudging attention. I felt something like pride move through me, sharp and unexpected, at the sight of her holding her ground in a room built to make her feel small.

The hearing ended without further incident, though incident was perhaps too strong a word for the current running beneath every polite exchange in that hall. Selene approached us as the court dispersed, composed as ever, though I had known her long enough to see the effort it cost her.

"Alpha. Lady Aria." Her voice was perfectly level. "A word, if you have a moment."

"Of course," I said, though every instinct I had was telling me this conversation would not be an easy one for anyone involved.

Selene's eyes moved between us once more, calculating something I could not fully read, before settling on a smile that did not reach anywhere near her eyes.

"I only wanted to offer my congratulations," she said. "On the mating. It is, I understand, not something either of you had any say in."

"Selene."

"I am simply being gracious, Damian. Isn't that what the pack expects of me now?" She turned that same brittle smile on Aria. "You must forgive us if adjustment takes time. Some of us had rather different plans for this pack's future."

She left before either of us could answer, spine straight, steps measured, every inch the composed daughter of a Beta who had just watched her own future rearranged without her consent. I watched her go with a familiar, uncomfortable weight settling in my chest, guilt tangled up with relief tangled up with something else I did not examine too closely, and beside me, Aria let out a breath that sounded almost sympathetic.

"That woman is going to be a problem," she said.

"Yes," I agreed. "I imagine she is."

I did not know yet how right she was.