REJECTED BY HER MATE, DESIRED BY THE LYCAN KING

03~Defense

Wren POV

I didn't let go of Elwen's arm until we'd put a full corridor between us and the council chamber, the noise of Freya's retreat still ringing behind us.

"You didn't have to do that," Elwen said quietly, once we'd slowed down. "Defend me like that. In front of all of them."

I glanced at her, surprised at how small her voice had gotten. "Of course I did."

"Most wolves with your title don't bother," she said. "Scribes get talked over. It's easier not to fight it most days."

"Then today's different," I told her. "You didn't deserve any of that."

She smiled at that.

"Come on. I promised to walk you through the rest of this paperwork properly, not just enough to get us both out of that room."

We ended up in a smaller side office, sunlight slanting through one narrow window, stacks of old ledgers lining the shelves. She spread the dissolution forms on the desk and started walking me through each line.

"This part's simple enough," she said, tapping a section near the bottom. "But this next clause is where people trip up. You'll want to read every line before you sign anything else tonight. Some of these elders like to bury conditions where no one thinks to look."

I appreciated her enough to actually focus, forcing myself to read every word twice, and I caught two clauses that would have quietly stripped my inheritance rights along with the mate bond if I'd signed without noticing. Elwen caught my expression and nodded.

"Good," she said. "You're sharper than most of the young ones who come through here."

For the first time since the ceremony, I let myself feel something that wasn't grief or fury.

We worked through the rest of it together, and by the time we finished, the light outside had shifted from gold to something dimmer, the office grown comfortably hushed around us. Elwen gathered the completed forms into a neat stack, satisfied.

"There," she said. "That's the worst of it."

That was when a runner burst through the door without knocking, breathless, his eyes wide.

"Elwen. You need to come. Now."

She rose fast. "What's happened?"

"It's the ledgers from tonight's ceremony," the runner said, glancing at me before looking back at her. "Someone's leaked the guest list to half the pack. And Wren's name is attached to a note about the boundary incident."

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

No!

No, no, no.

"What kind of details?" I asked, and my voice barely sounded like mine.

The runner hesitated, like he really didn't want to be the one answering. "Enough that people are already talking. About you and the boundary patrol commander."

I couldn't move. I stood frozen in the middle of this little office, every bit of the pride I'd felt only minutes ago curled into the thin air, as my heart thudded in my chest.

Someone read the statement. Someone read every word of it, and decided the whole pack needed to know.

Elwen's hand found my shoulder, steady despite the alarm on her own face. "We'll handle this."

We walked back toward the main hall together, and I could hear it before I even reached the doors, that particular hum of a crowd that had something new to talk about. The moment I stepped through, conversation didn't stop exactly, but it shifted, dozens of eyes flicking toward me and away again, quick and curious.

Near the hearth, Freya was holding court with a small cluster of wolves, her voice pitched just loud enough to carry.

"I heard she practically threw herself at him," she was saying, faking sympathy so poorly it would have been funny on any other night. "Poor thing. Rejected once and already grasping for the next available man of rank. Can't imagine the desperation."

A few of the wolves around her laughed, quickly smothered when they noticed me standing there.

I felt my face go hot, humiliation crawling up my neck the exact same way it had in the woods, in the council chamber, over and over tonight until I was sick to death of the feeling.

"That's an interesting theory," a voice said from behind me, cutting clean through the murmur, "considering the official record shows I was the one who approached her."

Every head in the hall turned at once.

The man from the night,whose name has been confirmed to be Kael,stood a few feet away, arms loosely crossed, his expression just as unreadable as always, though there was something sharper in his eyes now, and this made Freya's confident posture falter slightly.

"I wasn't aware that the boundary patrol officers gave interviews," Freya said, recovering fast, though her voice had lost some of its certainty.

"They don't," he said. "But I'm happy to clarify the record for anyone confused about who initiated the kiss, and who's currently spreading confidential statements meant for a closed council session."

The color drained straight out of Freya's face.

"That's a serious accusation," she said.

"It's a serious breach," he said. "One the council will want to trace back to its source. I imagine that won't take long."

Nobody laughed at Freya's expense outright, but I watched the small cluster around her shift, putting distance between themselves and her without really seeming to move at all.

Elwen leaned close, her voice pitched just for me. "That's the most words I've heard him string together in front of a crowd in the four years I've worked at this council."

"Four years?" I glanced at her, surprisedly.

"He doesn't attend gatherings," she said.

"Doesn't do speeches, doesn't do court politics if he can help it. Word is he's only ever cared about the border work, and whatever's kept him running north of here for the better part of a decade." She hesitated, studying my face carefully. "You should know what you're standing in the middle of, Wren. That man doesn't involve himself in anything he doesn't intend to see through."

I looked over at him again, still standing there, already turning to say something and clipped to whoever had let the leak happen in the first place.

What does that mean, exactly? What is he intending to see through?n