Three days
1765 Words
*Chapter 7: Three Days*
Three days. Seventy-two hours to prove I was better than a King.
Darius left, but he didn’t really leave. His warriors took rooms at every inn facing our shop. I saw them when I opened the shutters. Black cloaks. Blue Moon Pack pins. Watching.
We were prisoners. Polite prisoners, but prisoners.
Lia noticed. “Mama, why are the scary men outside?”
“They’re... your Papa’s friends,” I said. Lying felt like swallowing glass. “They’re making sure we’re safe.”
She frowned. “I don’t like them. They stare.”
I didn’t like them either. But I plastered on a smile and made her porridge.
Elise locked the door after breakfast and unrolled the map again. “Option one,” she said, tapping the Blue Moon border. “We run. I have contacts in the Southern Isles. No pack law there. No Kings.”
“Option one gets us killed,” I said. “He has warriors. He has trackers. And the Council would call it kidnapping. I’d lose her forever.”
Elise nodded. She knew. She was testing me. “Option two. We fight. In Council Hall. With words.”
“What words beat ‘she’ll be a Princess’?”
“These words.” She shoved a book at me. _Pack Law and Neutral Treaty, 5th Edition_. It was older than she was. “You’re not wolfless, Aria. You’re Luna. Rejected, but not stripped. That means you still have rights.”
I flipped through it. My eyes caught on a paragraph. _Article 9: A Luna, even rejected, retains maternal authority over heirs until said heir reaches majority, unless proven unfit or dangerous._
Unfit. Dangerous.
“He’ll try to prove I’m unfit,” I said. “He’ll say I’m poor. Uneducated. Living in a shop. Raising his heir like a human.”
“Then we prove you’re not,” Elise said. “What are you, Wren?”
I opened my mouth. _Nothing_ was the answer five years ago. Now?
“I’m a healer,” I said slowly. “Certified by the Greyvale Guild. I train apprentices. I helped stop the Red Fever last winter. Thirty families would be dead without me.”
“Go on.”
“I’m a citizen. I pay tax. I own this shop. Half, anyway. You gave me the deed last year.”
“And?”
I looked at Lia’s drawings on the wall. Stick figures of her, me, and Elise. We were all smiling.
“I’m her mother,” I said. “And I didn’t leave her. Not once. Not for five years.”
Elise smiled. “Now you’re thinking like a Luna.”
---
Day One we spent gathering paper.
Witness statements. I hated asking, but people came.
Garran the gate guard: _Wren saved my son’s leg. She worked three days no sleep. Didn’t ask for gold._
The baker: _Her girl is polite. Smart. Shares her cakes with the street kids._
The Council witch, Lady Morrow, even sent a note: _Wren of Greyvale is a registered healer in good standing. Her taxes are paid. No complaints filed._
We built a stack. Proof I was a person. A good one.
Darius spent Day One doing the same thing, but louder.
He bought the entire inn. Paid for the city’s winter grain stores. Funded the orphanage. By sundown, Greyvale was calling him “Lord Protector” in the streets.
He was buying the city. And it was working.
---
Day Two, Lyra woke up.
Really woke up.
I was in the back room, sorting willow bark, when it hit. Not the dead bond ache. This was heat. Strength. Fur under my skin.
_Little sister,_ a voice said inside my head. It had been five years. I’d forgotten how she sounded. Like me, but wilder. _You let him come back._
I dropped the bark. “Lyra?”
_He smells like pine and regret. And you smell like fear. Why aren’t we fighting?_
“For Lia,” I whispered. “We can’t fight. Not yet.”
_Then we plan._ She stretched inside me, and I felt my eyes flash gold. _Show me the map._
I showed her. In my head, like we used to. The pack lands. The village where my mother was. The pack house.
_He took everything,_ Lyra growled. _Our name. Our rank. Our mother. Now he wants our pup._
_He’s her father._
_He’s a male who throws away what he can’t control. We are not things._
She wasn’t wrong. But she wasn’t helping either.
“Elise!” I yelled.
She ran in, saw my eyes, and swore. “Down. Now. Breathe.”
She shoved a bitter herb under my tongue. Wolfsbane, diluted. It tasted like death and calmed Lyra down instantly.
“Your wolf’s back,” Elise said. Not a question.
“Five years and she picks _now_ to show up,” I gasped.
“Not now. When the Alpha came back. When the bond went live.” Elise checked my pulse. “Mating bonds don’t die, Aria. They go dormant. He’s close. Your wolf thinks he’s challenging you.”
He was challenging me. For Lia.
“Can I control it?”
“You have to. If you shift in Council Hall, they’ll call you feral. Unfit. You lose.”
Great. Another thing to lose.
---
Day Two night, Lia found me crying.
I was in my room, the statements spread around me. Proof I was a good mother. Proof I was a nobody.
She climbed into my lap. She was getting too big for it, but I didn’t care. “Mama, why are you sad?”
I couldn’t lie. Not to her. “The tall man. Your Papa. He wants you to live with him sometimes.”
She was quiet for a long time. Then: “In the big castle?”
“Pack house. Yes.”
“Will you come too?”
The question broke me. “I don’t know, baby. He... he might not want me.”
She thought about that. “Then I don’t want to go. We’re a team. Like you said. Team Wren.”
Team Wren. Not Team Aria. Not Team Luna. Team _us_.
“Baby, he’s your Papa. He can teach you things I can’t. Wolf things. Alpha things.”
She put her little hand on my cheek. “You teach me important things. Like how to be kind. And how to make soup. And how to not be scared of the dark.”
Kindness. Soup. Not being scared.
That was my case. That was all I had.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Team Wren.”
---
Day Three dawn. Council Hall.
The building was stone and old and smelled like dust and law. The Council sat on a high bench. Five of them. Lady Morrow in the middle.
Darius stood on the left. No armor today. Fine clothes. Blue and silver. Pack colors. He looked like a King playing at being a man. Ten warriors behind him.
I stood on the right. Wool dress. Elise beside me. No warriors. Just paper. And Lia, holding my hand.
She’d insisted on coming. “I wanna hear,” she said. Elise tried to stop her. I didn’t. If they were deciding her life, she had a right to be there.
Lady Morrow banged a gavel. “The Council hears the Petition of Paternity and Custody. Alpha King Darius of the Blue Moon Pack, versus Wren of Greyvale. Regarding the child, Lia.”
Darius went first.
He talked for an hour. Guards. Tutors. Lands. Legacy. A future. He had charts. He had lineage scrolls. He had a sworn statement from a healer that Alpha children needed Alpha training or they went mad.
He didn’t look at me. He looked at Lia. Every word was for her.
When he finished, the Council was nodding. He was winning.
Then it was my turn.
I didn’t have charts. I had a stack of paper and a five-year-old.
I walked to the center of the hall. Lia came with me. I didn’t stop her.
“Respected Council,” I said. My voice shook. Lyra was pacing, but quiet. “I’m not a King. I don’t have lands. I don’t have warriors.”
I put my statements on the table. “I have this. Thirty people who say I showed up when they needed me. I have a home. I have a job. And I have five years.”
I looked at Darius. Finally. “You asked where I was. I was here. Raising our daughter. While you ruled a pack that thought I was dead. I taught her to read. To be kind. To be brave.”
I knelt down, so I was at Lia’s height. “Lia, baby. Do you want to say anything?”
The whole Hall went silent. You didn’t let children speak at Custody Hearings. But Lady Morrow didn’t stop it.
Lia looked at the Council. Then at Darius. Then at me.
“I like it here,” she said. Her voice was small but clear. “Mama makes good soup. And Madame teaches me letters. And I have friends. The baker gives me cookies.”
She looked at Darius. “You’re my Papa. I know. I feel it here.” She touched her chest. “But I don’t know you. And Mama... Mama never left.”
She took my hand. “I want to stay with Team Wren.”
The word ‘Team’ made one of the scribes smile.
Darius’s face did something complicated. He looked at Lia’s hand in mine. At her trust. At the five years he missed.
Lady Morrow wrote for a long time. Then she looked up.
“The Council will deliberate. Judgment tomorrow at dawn.”
We were dismissed.
Walking out, Lia skipped. She didn’t understand. She thought she’d won.
Darius stopped us at the door. His warriors moved, but he held up a hand. They stopped.
He knelt down, one more time. Just to her.
“Team Wren, huh?” he said. His voice was rough.
Lia nodded. “You can be on Team Wren too. If you say sorry to Mama.”
He choked on a laugh. Or a sob. “That easy?”
“Yep. And if you bring cookies. Like the baker.”
He looked at me over her head. Five years of hate and grief and want.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he told her.
Then he walked away.
And I realized I was in trouble. Because for the first time, I didn’t want him to.
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