Seduced By My God-Father

Chapter six

THE RIVAL THREAT

Word arrived by messenger at dawn.

Not a wolf, a human man, which made it unusual and therefore alarming. It brought every senior pack member into the main house study within fifteen minutes. I came with Mia and stayed near the back, watching Roger read the message with a face so still it told me more than any reaction could have.

When he finished, he set the paper down.

“Ashvale has formally claimed disputed territory east of the creek line,” he said. “They’ve put it in writing to the Northern Council.”

The room shifted,not loudly, but I felt it move through them like pressure before a storm.

The east creek line.

Even after four years away, I knew what that meant. That wasn’t disputed land. That was Silverwood territory. It had been for three generations.

“On what grounds?” Soren asked.

“Historical claim,” Roger said evenly. “They’re arguing the original boundary treaty was illegally drawn.”

“That’s nonsense,” Della said.

“Yes. But it gives them a formal position, which means it goes to council adjudication before we can respond with anything more significant than words.”

I studied him. There was something beneath the calm,not fear. Roger didn’t operate in fear. It was sharper. Controlled anger, maybe. And beneath it, something older. Something expected.

“You anticipated this,” I said from the back.

Several heads turned.

Roger looked at me.

“Not in these exact terms,” he said. “But the direction of it, yes.”

“For how long?”

The room went quiet.

“Several months,” he said.

“Since the autumn equinox,” I added.

Something passed between us, quick and electric.

“Yes,” he said.

I held his gaze, then stepped back. This wasn’t the place for the rest of it.

The meeting lasted two hours. Assignments were given, responses drafted, strategies outlined. It was efficient,too efficient for something new.

Roger had known.

He had planned.

And he had brought me back into it.

When it ended, I went looking for him. I found him on the back steps, alone, hands wrapped around a coffee cup, staring at the tree line.

I sat beside him.

“Tell me what Ashvale wants,” I said.

He was quiet.

“Not the territory,” I added. “What they actually want.”

He glanced at me, and that same unfinished tension surfaced between us.

“There’s a bloodline,” he said carefully, “that some of the older packs believe carries a specific kind of power. Anchoring power. The kind that stabilizes territory, strengthens bonds, turns weak claims into strong ones.”

“Whose bloodline?”

He looked back at the trees.

“Roger,” I said quietly. “Whose bloodline?”

He set the cup down.

“Your mother’s family,” he said.

The world didn’t shatter. The morning stayed the same.

But something shifted.

“That’s why they killed her,” I said.

He looked at me fully.

“I believe so. Yes.”

I stared at my hands.

“And my father?”

“He wouldn’t have let them reach her while he was alive.”

I took a breath.

“And me?”

“You are your mother’s daughter,” he said softly. “Every drop of it.”

The rest fell into place.

I was the target.

I was why Ashvale was moving. Why Roger had kept me at a distance for four years. Why I had been watched without knowing. Why he had brought me back now.

Not because he wanted me close.

Because distance had become more dangerous than proximity.

I stood.

“You should have told me,” I said.

“Yes,” he answered.

No excuse. Just truth.

“Don’t protect me from information again,” I said. “Whatever you’re still holding back,I need to know.”

He looked up at me.

“There’s more,” I said. “I know it.”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“When I’m certain it won’t break something we need intact.”

I studied him,the control, the exhaustion, the quiet intensity.

And something else beneath it.

Something neither of us was naming.

“Okay,” I said.

Then I turned and went back inside, carrying the weight of what I knew and what I didn’t.