Coming Back as Enemy's Luna

20. Compare

= Mikael =

“That pack is our enemy,” Maelis snapped, his voice cutting through the chamber like a blade drawn too fast. “I hope you are not forgetting that, Alpha Mikael.”

His words landed hard, meant to provoke. Meant to remind everyone in the room that alliances were written in blood, not excuses.

“She should never have crossed our borders,” Rowan added, his tone slow and deliberate, each word measured as if he were laying stones for a grave. “Much less been welcomed into the very heart of Veyrath.”

The air shifted.

Voices rose all at once, overlapping, colliding, feeding off one another until the chamber felt smaller, tighter—charged with a fear none of them wanted to admit to wearing.

“What if she was sent to spy on us?”

“What if she carries their scent on purpose, just to unsettle us?”

“What if this is a provocation—an insult dressed up as coincidence?”

Every question sharpened into an accusation, flung across the room like arrows aimed at a single target. Fear had always been their favorite weapon. Fear, dressed up as caution.

Then Torren slammed his fist against the arm of his chair, the c***k of impact echoing through the stone hall.

“There is only one solution,” he growled. “Kill her. Instantly. Before she can report back to her pack.”

And that—

That was when I laughed.

The sound tore out of me before I could stop it, raw and unrestrained, ricocheting off the walls like something feral finally breaking free. It wasn’t humor. There was no amusement in it. No joy.

It was disbelief.

The room went dead quiet.

Every gaze snapped toward me, the sudden silence heavy enough to crush bone. Torren’s face darkened, his jaw tightening as his eyes narrowed into something sharp and dangerous.

“You mock us?” he demanded.

I dragged a hand over my mouth, still shaking my head, the laugh fading into something far colder. When I spoke, my voice dropped low, steady—but threaded with warning.

“No,” I said. “I’m laughing because if I don’t… I might do something far worse.”

Maelis’s hand shot up, a single finger pointing straight at me, trembling—not with fear, but with barely contained outrage.

“How dare you show such disrespect to the elders,” she snapped, her voice sharp enough to cut through the chamber.

Before I could respond, Rowan’s staff struck the stone floor with a dull, commanding thud. “You demanded an answer,” he said, his tone ironclad. “And you will give one.”

I drew myself up to my full height, spine straightening as the last threads of my patience began to fray. The shift in the air was subtle but unmistakable—power pressing outward, instinct rising to the surface.

“You truly believe Gravemire would send her here as a spy?” I asked, my voice dangerously calm. “That they’d risk one of their most valuable assets wandering unguarded into enemy territory?”

Caelum spoke next, his voice low, measured, as if choosing each word with care. “She was meant to be their future Luna,” he said. “That alone makes her a threat.”

“No,” I snapped, the restraint finally snapping with it. “That makes her expendable—to them.”

A brief flash of surprise crossed Ilyas’s face, gone almost as quickly as it appeared.

Rowan’s brows drew together. “Explain.”

I opened my mouth—but Maelis cut in first, letting out a sharp scoff. “This never would have happened under your father.”

The words landed like a blade driven straight into my chest.

And she didn’t stop there.

“If it were your father ruling now,” she pressed on, emboldened by the silence that followed, “that woman wouldn’t have made it within ten miles of our borders. He would have ordered her execution before the sun ever set.”

Something inside me went still.

Cold.

Not the burning kind of anger I knew well—but something far more dangerous. A hollow, frozen calm spread through my veins, sealing off whatever mercy I might have had left.

The edges of the chamber wavered, blurring as heat surged through my veins, sharp and unforgiving. Anger rose fast—too fast—raw and volatile, the kind that demanded blood or submission. I forced it down, even as my pulse thundered in my ears.

My father’s name was not a shield for their fear.

It was not a blade they were allowed to turn against me.

I took a step forward.

“Do not compare me to my father,” I said.

My voice was calm—too calm. The kind of quiet that came before destruction.

Maelis faltered. Just barely. But I caught it—the brief hesitation, the flicker of doubt she failed to mask in time.

“My father ruled through fear,” I went on, each word deliberate. “And fear breeds enemies far faster than it ever earns loyalty.”

Rowan’s mouth tightened, the lines on his face carving deeper. “He kept Veyrath safe.”

“He kept it stagnant,” I shot back without hesitation. “Safe, yes—but blind. Afraid to grow. Afraid to change.”

Silence crashed down on the chamber, heavier than before, pressing against every breath. No one interrupted me this time.

“I brought her here because she will be useful to us,” I said at last, breaking the quiet.

Torren pushed back his chair and rose abruptly, the scrape loud in the stillness. “And how certain are you,” he demanded, “that she will truly serve the pack?”

I didn’t hesitate.

“I have a plan,” I said. “But I’m not laying it bare for everyone in this room—even if you are the most respected Elders Veyrath has.”

A slow smirk curved my mouth.

They didn’t need to know everything.

They couldn’t.

Because the moment they suspected there was even a chance—a single fragile possibility—that Amara was Luneborne, they would interfere. They would demand control. They would twist her existence into prophecy and leverage.

And that would ruin everything.

Rowan studied me for a long moment, his sharp eyes stripping away pretense, searching for weakness he wouldn’t find. “You are walking a dangerous path, Alpha.”

I held his gaze, unblinking. Unyielding.

“Then walk carefully behind me,” I replied. “Or step aside.”

No one spoke.

But I felt it—something subtle and irreversible shifting beneath the surface. A fracture forming. Trust thinning. Power realigning.

And somewhere in that silence, a storm began to gather.