JAXON
Probation.
I turned the word over in my mind the way you turn something sharp; testing the edges, finding out exactly how much it could cut.
Six months. No vote. No voice. No seat at the table in any meaningful sense.
I would attend sessions and sign documents and smile at Pack leaders who’d watched me get stripped down in front of the full council, and I would do all of it knowing that every wolf in that room had seen the Apex lift me off the ground by my throat like I was nothing.
Like I was seventh.
Like I was less than seventh.
I sat in the dark of my study.
Evelyn had taken herself to a diplomatic function I declined to attend, because the thought of standing in a room full of people who knew what had happened made something in me go very, very cold.
Instead, I stare
