FATED TO THE ENEMY ALPHA

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER TEN

ELOWYNNE

Everyone at the table turned. The young guard who had entered was breathing hard, a look of unease on his face.

"I apologize for the interruption, Luna." He addressed me directly. "There is a woman at the gate. She refuses to give her name but she says she has a message."

"A message from whom?" I asked.

He hesitated for some seconds

"From the goddess, she says."

Silence.

Then Elder Caius exhaled slowly through his nose. "Send her away," he said. "We have no time for—"

"Bring her in," I said countering his order.

Caius stopped.

I did not look at him. I kept my eyes on the guard. "Bring her in now, and do not touch her."

He was gone in an instant.

I was aware of the looks being traded around the table, but I didn’t care.

We still didn’t know who attacked us. I was willing to give a listening ear to whoever claimed they had an answer.

I knew I didn’t make the wrong decision when she stepped into the room.

A certain energy flowed into the room with her as she stepped in. It felt like calm water, but one that could quickly turn into a storm if provoked.

The woman was old. Older, perhaps, than Elder Caius, and he was old enough to remember the original signing of the Frostvale treaty.

Her hair was white and loose over her shoulders. Her eyes, when they moved around the room, were a deep shade of blue. She wore no pack markings or insignia of any kind. Instead, there was a crescent branding in the center of her forehead.

The marking of the goddess.

She did not bow or apologize for her presence. She simply walked to a position near the center of the room, folded her hands, and looked at me.

"Luna Elowynne," she said, and her voice was unexpectedly mild. "I am glad you are not as impulsive as the men in this room were about to be."

Elder Caius made a sound in his throat but said nothing.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"My name would mean nothing to you. What matters is what I carry." She paused. "I am a shaman. I serve no pack and answer to no alpha. I go where the goddess sends me, and I carry what she gives me to carry."

"And what has she given you to carry today?" I asked.

She looked at me for a moment before she answered.

"A warning," she said. "And a condition."

She moved to the table, and no one stopped her.

"The attack on your southern border last night was not carried out by the Frostvale pack. It was carried out by an organized group of rogues.”

Murmurs and whispers rose, yet she continued, her voice remaining steady beneath the noise. "They are led by someone with resources and a particular kind of patience. They have been watching both packs for some time."

"Both packs?”

She looked at me. "The Frostvale pack was attacked too. Fourteen were confirmed dead."

The silence that came this time was different.

"I was shown a vision," she continued. "I will not describe everything I saw, but the shape of it was clear. Both packs, Moonveil and Frostvale, had dead bodies scattered across the lands. The ground soaked in blood. No man standing.” She paused. "The rogues are counting on your hatred of each other. You will be so focused on fighting yourselves that you won’t notice when they swoop in. It is their greatest weapon against you.”

Her words settled in my chest.

"You made mention of a condition."

"Yes." She held my eyes. "The only path through this that the goddess showed me required both packs to be on the same side of it." She let the words settle in the room before she spoke again. "You must work together to defeat the enemy, or neither of you survives what is coming."

The eruption was immediate.

"Absolutely not—"

"This is absurd—"

"We have never—"

"The treaty between our packs is a peace of distance, not of cooperation—"

"The Frostvales would burn our lands themselves rather than stand beside us—"

I let them speak. I sat and watched as they argued and revolted. I understood their anger. I was not immune to it myself. I had my own reasons for not wanting to stand in the same room with any Frostvale, a reason that had nothing to do with pack history.

When the noise rose to an unbearable level, I spoke.

"She is a shaman," I said.

The room quieted.

"She works according to directions from the goddess," I continued, "which means she has no gain to come all the way here to pass this message to us." I looked around the table. "And if the vision was real, then we have our answer. We have an idea who the attackers are.”

Caius was looking at me, his lips pressed together.

"I do not like it," he said finally.

"I know," I said.

"The Frostvales are—"

"I know what they are," I said. "I also know what lifeless bodies look like, and I have no interest in adding to that number because we refused to accept help from an inconvenient direction."

The silence stretched.

Then, one by one, the men at my table settled back into their chairs. Grudgingly, the acceptance settled on their features.

I turned to the shaman.

"We will need to arrange a meeting," I said.

"Yes," she agreed. “It should be in a neutral location, one that is neither in your territory nor theirs.” She glanced across the room. “There is a clearing to the southwest of both packs. It is an appropriate space."

I kept my face still.

The clearing.

Of course it was the clearing.

I breathed through the sensation that moved through my chest at the thought of going back to that place, and I set the feeling aside.

I couldn’t afford to think about it.

Not here. Not now.

"Fine," I said. "We will set a date."

***

Two days later, we arrived first at the clearing.

We waited for a full twenty minutes before the Frostvale delegation emerged in a group.

Their elders walked out into the clearing, and I took in their faces and noted their postures and their positions relative to each other.

I waited for their alpha.

The elders arranged themselves across the clearing, and no one else emerged from the trees.

Their Alpha didn't come.

The insult landed before I could fully register it, Alpha Laurence Fang had sent his elders to meet with me but had not come himself. The message was not subtle. He did not consider this meeting, or perhaps meeting with me, worth his personal presence.

I felt the shift behind me as my own elders registered the same thing and drew the same conclusions. I did not look back at the but I kept my face arranged in the practiced neutrality I had spent three years perfecting.

I would not give him the satisfaction of my reaction.

I was about to speak when the treeline moved again.

Someone else was coming through.

My breath stopped somewhere between my chest and my throat.

He was taller than I remembered. Three years had changed him in the way that made my heart stutter. His hair was still dark, but instead of the unruly curls, it was pulled back and tied into a bun at the nape of his neck.

His eyes swept the space coldly. Then they landed on me.

And stopped.

Those silver-grey eyes that I had locked away for three years looked at me from across the clearing with an expression I could not read from this distance.

I could feel my wolf beneath my skin, stirring for the first time in a very long time. She pressed against my ribs in recognition.

I pressed back.

I was not the girl who had stumbled into this clearing with stolen weapons and a secret she could not tell anyone.

I was the Luna of Moonveil Pack.

And Xyron Fang was no match against me.