Chapter 7: You Have No Claim
1336 Words
Kael tried to rise from the treatment table.
Elara put one hand on his chest and shoved him back down.
It should not have worked. He was an Alpha, even poisoned. She was a healer with a cut finger and a body trembling from spent power. But shock had hollowed him, and the Moonveil treatment had left his muscles weak.
"Do not move," she said.
Kael did not seem to hear her. His eyes remained locked on Rowan.
Rowan looked back.
The child had never learned to lower his gaze to power. Elara had taught him manners, caution, and the difference between courage and foolishness, but she had not taught him the old pack instinct to submit. Grayhaven children stared at kings and beggars with equal suspicion. Rowan stared now as if the strange man on the table were a puzzle he did not like.
"Mama," he said, "why is he looking at me?"
Elara's hand tightened on Kael's chest. "Because he is rude."
Rhys made a strangled sound.
Kael's gaze flicked to her. Something raw moved through it. "Elara."
"I told you my name."
"He is mine."
The words landed like a slap.
Rowan's eyebrows drew together. "I am not yours."
Kael's face changed again, pain upon pain, as if the child had found a wound no silver spear could reach.
Elara stepped back and scooped Rowan into her arms. He was getting too heavy to carry for long, but fear gave her strength.
"Irena," she said, "take him upstairs."
Rowan clung to her. "No."
"Little moon."
"No." His small arms locked around her neck. "I do not like him."
Kael flinched.
Good, Elara thought, then hated herself for the satisfaction.
Irena crossed the room and held out her hands. "Come, moonlet. Help me count the blue jars."
Rowan did not move.
"There may be honey cakes."
His grip loosened by one finger.
Elara kissed his temple. "I will come up soon."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
Only then did he allow Irena to take him. As she carried him out, Rowan looked over her shoulder at Kael and bared his tiny teeth.
The door closed.
Silence followed.
Kael broke it first. "Why did you not tell me?"
Elara laughed once.
It was not a pretty sound.
"When? During the public rejection? Before or after you called my bloodline a disgrace?"
His jaw tightened. "I did not know."
"You did not ask."
"I thought you helped murder my sister."
"And that made it easier?"
Rhys stepped forward. "Alpha, you should rest."
"Leave us."
Elara turned on him. "No."
Kael's eyes sharpened, a flash of the old command. "This is between us."
"There is no us." She pointed to the door. "Your captain stays. I prefer witnesses when powerful men decide what they own."
Rhys looked as if he would rather swallow glass than remain, but he did.
Kael pushed himself upright more carefully this time. Sweat beaded across his brow, but he managed to sit. "I have a son."
"I have a son."
"Elara."
"You rejected me, Kael." His name burned her tongue. "The bond broke. Whatever rights fate gave you, you threw them away in front of every wolf in Blackthorne."
"A child is not a mate bond."
"No. A child is a person. One you do not get to claim because his eyes are inconveniently yours."
Kael's hands curled around the table edge. "Does he know?"
"That his father is alive? Yes."
"Does he know my name?"
"No."
That hurt him. She saw it. Some exhausted, bruised part of her wanted to look away.
She did not.
"I want to speak with him."
"No."
"He is my blood."
"Blood did not sit with him through fever. Blood did not hide him when hunters came through Grayhaven asking about a woman from Blackthorne. Blood did not teach him to read, or hold him when his wolf woke too early and frightened him, or explain why other children had fathers and he had a closed door."
Kael went still. "Hunters came?"
Elara cursed herself.
Rhys swore under his breath. "When?"
"Twice in three years." Elara moved to the counter and began cleaning instruments because her hands needed something to do. "They asked questions. They left."
Kael's voice dropped. "Were they mine?"
"I do not know."
"I never sent hunters."
"Forgive me if your word does not comfort me."
He closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, the Alpha was there, buried beneath guilt but not gone. "Someone tried to kill you the night you left."
"Yes."
"Who?"
"Selene's men."
Rhys jerked as if struck. "Lady Ashford?"
Elara looked at him. "You did not know?"
"No."
That sounded honest. It made nothing easier.
Kael swung his legs over the side of the table. "We return to Blackthorne at dawn."
"You may crawl there if you like."
"You and Rowan come with me."
The room went cold.
Elara set down the blade in her hand very carefully. "Say that again."
Kael heard the warning. To his credit, he did not soften the command into a request.
"If Selene sent men after you, and if someone is still searching, Grayhaven is not safe. Rowan is not safe."
"He is safer here than in a pack that watched you reject me."
"I will protect him."
"From whom? Your council? Your chosen Luna? The wolves who would see him as a threat? Or yourself, when you decide evidence matters more than instinct again?"
Kael looked as if each question cut flesh.
"I was wrong."
Elara froze.
The words were quiet. Simple. They should not have mattered.
They did.
Kael Blackthorne had never been a man who bent easily. She remembered him at council meetings, in training yards, over the bodies of enemies. He gave orders. He did not offer weakness.
Now he sat half-dressed and pale in her treatment room, looking at her as if pride had become too heavy to hold.
"I was wrong," he repeated. "About you. About your mother. Maybe about everything."
Her throat tightened.
Anger saved her again.
"How generous of you to discover that after three years."
He accepted the blow with a small nod. "Let me make it right."
"You cannot."
"Then let me keep him alive."
Elara wanted to refuse.
She wanted it so badly her teeth hurt.
But Rowan's crescent mark had glowed in front of two Blackthorne warriors. Kael had seen. Rhys had seen. The secret was cracked. Even if they left tonight, rumors would run faster than carriages.
And if Selene had tried to kill Elara once, what would she do to the child who could take the Luna title from her future?
Elara gripped the counter.
"You do not speak to him alone," she said.
Kael's breath caught.
"You do not touch him without his permission. You do not announce him. You do not use Alpha command on him. You do not call him your heir."
"You do not bring him before your council as proof of anything. You do not let your wolves test his strength, scent his blood, or decide whether he is worthy of your name. He is not a solution to your political problems."
Kael's mouth tightened. "I would never let them harm him."
"You once let them watch you harm me."
That silenced him.
Elara hated how small the room felt around that memory. She could still hear the whispers after the rejection, feel the stone under her knees, taste blood where she had bitten her tongue to keep from begging. Rowan shifted upstairs, and the sound dragged her back to the present.
"My son will not inherit my humiliation," she said.
"Elara-"
"And if you ever try to take him from me, I will disappear so thoroughly that even the Moon Goddess will lose our trail."
Kael held her gaze.
Then, slowly, the Alpha of Blackthorne Pack lowered his head.
"Agreed."
It was not forgiveness.
It was not trust.
But it was the first bargain between them that had not been written in pain.
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