UNBOUND: THE ALPHA'S SECOND VOW

CHAPTER SIX

Damian's POV

I have led Blackthorn Pack for six years, and I have never once, in all that time, walked into a room as unprepared as I am for the fitness hearing Reeve just forced onto the tribunal calendar.

Not unprepared for the arguments.

I know every hole in Reeve's petition better than he does. I've been outmaneuvering that old wolf since I was twenty-three years old and he first tried to install his nephew as my second.

What I'm unprepared for is the way my hands won't stop shaking under the table, because for the first time in two years, I let myself think about the thing I've buried since the night I rejected the only woman I've ever loved in front of three hundred witnesses.

I remember it every single day.

That's the part nobody in this room knows, the part I've let them all believe was simple pack politics a necessary rejection, a merger too important to risk on feeling.

They don't know what the elders told me an hour before that ceremony, in a room with the door locked, in words I still hear in my sleep.

They don't know that I didn't reject Ivy Calloway because I stopped loving her.

I rejected her because Reeve's faction had already decided that if I didn't, they would kill her.

I've carried that alone for three years, because the alternative telling her, telling anyone, would have handed Reeve exactly the leverage he's spent six years hunting for.

0roof that I bent to a threat instead of standing as Alpha.

Proof I was weak.

And weak Alphas get replaced, and replaced Alphas don't get to protect anyone at all.

So I let her believe I chose duty over her.

I let her carry that wound alone for two years rather than tell her the truth and put her back in the crosshairs Reeve's faction had aimed at her once already.

I was wrong.

I have known I was wrong for three years, every single night, and I still don't know if telling her now would save her or simply hand Reeve the second weapon he needs.

"Alpha Voss."

My second, Callum, leans close as we take our seats at counsel's table, the Alpha's chair bolted to the floor, older than the treaty itself, replaced only once in Blackthorn history, after a fitness challenge two centuries ago ended in bloodshed on this exact spot.

Every Alpha since has been made to sit in it during a challenge, on purpose, as a reminder.

"Reeve's brought in outside counsel. Human-world legal muscle. That's not normal for a pack fitness hearing."

I follow his gaze across the room, and there she is, Ivy, seated at the Halloway coalition's table, pale as I've ever seen her, something wrecked and furious behind her eyes that wasn't there yesterday.

She won't look at me.

She's looking at Reeve like she wants to tear his throat out with her bare hands, and I have no idea what happened between the water fountain conversation Selene told me about and right now, but every instinct I have is screaming that something is badly, dangerously wrong.

The magistrate calls the session to order.

Reeve stands, smooth and confident in the way men get when they believe they've already won.

"This council," he begins, "will hear evidence today that Alpha Damian Voss is unfit to continue leading Blackthorn Pack not merely due to concealment of offspring, and not merely due to the destabilization of a critical merger negotiation, but due to a far graver breach of Alpha duty. One committed the very night of his rejection ceremony, three years ago."

The blood drops out of my face.

He knows.

Reeve turns, slow and theatrical, and looks directly at me across the room with the expression of a wolf who's finally found the throat he's been hunting for six years.

"I would like to call my first witness."

"Councilwoman Eleanor Voss. The Alpha's own mother."

Something in my chest drops out and doesn't come back.

Because my mother was in that locked room three years ago.

My mother is the only other living person who knows exactly what Reeve's faction threatened, and exactly what I agreed to, and exactly what it cost me to say those eleven words to Ivy in front of three hundred witnesses while my heart was tearing itself apart in my chest.

And if my mother takes that stand today, Ivy Calloway is about to learn, in a room full of strangers, that the man who broke her heart in public did it to keep her alive and never once let her see the cost.