The Moon Owns My Heart

CHAPTER FIVEWhat He Knows

Kael came to find me that evening.He knocked — which I was starting to understand was not standard practice in Blood Moon, where most wolves simply announced themselves by pushing doors open with purpose — and when I said come in, he entered and left the door open behind him, which I had also noticed he always did. An Alpha who left doors open rather than closing them into private space. I was still working out what that meant about him.He had a folder in his hand. He set it on the table in front of me without preamble."You should see this," he said.I opened it. Inside were photographs, documents, two hand-drawn maps. I went through them slowly, letting myself understand before I reacted, which was a habit I had spent the last eight days deliberately reinforcing.The photographs showed meetings. Men I did not recognise, in locations I could not immediately place. The documents were financial records — transactions, pack resource transfers, figures that were large enough to mean something.One name appeared three times. Elder Garrick. Silver Fang's eldest council member, in charge of pack resource allocation, the man who had overseen Omega rank classifications since before I was born."What is this?" I asked."Silver Fang has been selling access to Blood Moon's northern border routes," Kael said. "To independent traders — some legal, some not. Garrick has been running it personally, off-book, for three years. The pack leadership doesn't officially know." A pause. "Which means either Blackwood genuinely doesn't know, or he does know and he's been choosing not to."I looked up at him. "Why are you showing me this?""Because it's connected to your rejection," he said.I went still.He pulled out a chair and sat down across from me, which was another thing I had noticed — he sat with people rather than standing over them, even when the standing would have been more imposing. "Garrick has been managing the rank classification system for Silver Fang for fifteen years. Including the system that assigned you Omega status at birth." He paused. "Mira has now examined you properly. Your wolf's natural rank is not Omega."The word sat in the air between us."What is it?" I asked. My voice came out very even, which meant all the things it was covering up were very large."It's consistent with what we call blood-rank in Blood Moon," he said. "A classification we don't have a clean equivalent for in Silver Fang's system. It's rare. It means your wolf carries bloodline markers from the original wolf packs — the ones before the modern hierarchy. Strength, endurance, an instinctive understanding of pack dynamics that most ranked wolves train for years to develop." He watched me carefully. "Garrick's classification system has been suppressing wolves like you for fifteen years. Keeping them in low ranks. Keeping them manageable.""He falsified my rank," I said slowly."He suppressed it. There's a difference, technically. But the effect is the same." Kael leaned forward slightly. "You were never going to be permitted to rise in Silver Fang, Lyra. Not because you weren't capable. Because someone decided capable wolves from the wrong bloodlines were a threat to the existing order, and he had the system to do something about it."I looked at the documents in front of me. My whole life rearranging itself around new information, the way furniture rearranges itself in a room when you take out one central piece — everything suddenly in different relationship to everything else."Damon didn't know about this," I said. It came out flat, not defensive. Just the truth as I currently understood it."No," Kael said. "I don't believe he did. Blackwood is arrogant and he let himself be pressured into a decision he should have refused to make, and he handled the rejection badly enough to make a lot of enemies inside his own pack. But he's not corrupt. Garrick is the corrupt one.""Then Damon rejected me partly because Garrick made sure he believed I was less than I am," I said."Yes."I breathed out slowly. This was the part where I was supposed to feel better, I thought — the part where it turned out the thing that had broken me was based on a lie, where the villain was unmasked and the wound had an explanation. I waited to feel better.I didn't, particularly."It doesn't change what he did," I said."No," Kael said. "It doesn't.""He still stood on that platform and said those words in front of everyone. Even if Garrick fed him false information for years, Damon still made that choice." I looked up. "Understanding why a thing happened doesn't mean it happened differently."Kael was quiet for a moment. He was looking at me with that reading expression — the one I was learning to read back, the one that meant he was recalibrating something."No," he said finally. "It doesn't. You're right about that.""So what do you want to do with this?" I gestured at the folder."That depends on you," he said. "Garrick's operation is a threat to Blood Moon's trade routes, which gives me standing to move against it independently of Silver Fang politics. But the information about what was done to you — your rank suppression — that's yours. What you do with it is your decision."I looked at him across the table and thought about the kind of Alpha who sat down rather than stood over, and who left doors open, and who said what you do with it is your decision about something he clearly could have acted on without my input at all."What's your read on the situation?" I asked. "Honestly."He considered that for a moment. "Honestly? Silver Fang is destabilising. Blackwood has wolves questioning his rejection decision, Garrick's network is going to surface eventually — either I surface it or someone else does — and Selene is in a position she didn't ask for, trying to hold together a role that was handed to her under false circumstances." He paused. "Blackwood made several serious mistakes in one night. He's going to be living with the consequences of those mistakes for a long time.""Good," I said.A silence. Then: "Can I ask you something?" he said."You can ask.""When I offered you a place here — in the trees, that night — you asked me if you would be a pawn." He held my gaze. "You're not. I want to say that again clearly. What I feel about this situation, about you being here — it is not about Silver Fang. It is not about Blackwood." A pause. "I want to make sure you know that."I held his gaze for a long moment.There was something in his face that was not the careful strategic calm he carried everywhere, that was something quieter and less armoured, and I did not know what to do with it yet, and I thought the honest thing was to say so."I believe you," I said. "I don't entirely understand you yet. But I believe you."He nodded. He stood up. He moved toward the door, and then he stopped with his back to me and said, without turning: "For what it's worth — I think Mira is right. I think you have been waiting a long time. I think you're almost done waiting."Then he walked out and left the door open behind him, and I sat with the folder in my hands and the night coming through the window, and my wolf stirred inside me again — not just lifting her head this time.Standing up. I had walked into the Silver Fang ceremony a background wolf in a grey dress, hoping someone would finally see me.Ten days later, sitting in a rival pack's east wing with evidence of fifteen years of lies on the table in front of me, I was beginning to understand something that no one in Silver Fang had ever wanted me to know.I did not need anyone to see me.I needed to see myself.And I was, finally, starting to look.