Coming Back as Enemy's Luna

19. Elder

= Mikael =

I should have been…roaming around today. See if…Amara was adjusting around. Instead, I dragged in a slow breath and felt it sink heavy in my chest as my footsteps echoed louder with every stride toward the council hall beneath the Alpha House.

The Elders were waiting.

They hadn’t asked for my presence. There had been no polite request, no warning wrapped in courtesy. They had summoned me.

All five of them.

That alone was enough to sour my mood. When the entire council called a meeting without notice, it was never about something minor. It was never about protocol or routine. It was always about power. About control. And more often than not, about a single person who seemed to exist solely to disrupt the fragile balance they clung to.

Me.

As I moved through the stone corridors, boots striking against the cold floor, the sound followed me like a countdown. Each echo tightened my jaw, each step confirming what I already knew.

“Let’s just f*****g get this over with,” I muttered under my breath, the words scraping out of me like a challenge to the walls themselves.

The council chamber doors rose before me—massive slabs of blackwood reinforced with iron, their surface carved with the sigils of past Alphas. My bloodline. My inheritance. Their eyes, frozen in wood and symbol, seemed to watch me approach, heavy with expectation and judgment.

I didn’t hesitate.

I shoved the doors open and stepped inside.

The chamber was exactly as I remembered—cold, dim, and designed to make anyone standing at its center feel exposed. The Elders sat in a half-circle, robed figures arranged with deliberate symmetry, already waiting as if they’d been counting the seconds until my arrival.

At the center sat Elder Rowan.

Age had curved his spine, but it hadn’t softened him. If anything, time had sharpened his presence, carving authority deeper into his bones. He was older than my father had been when death claimed him, older than most of the stories he liked to quote as law. His silver hair was braided down his back in the old style, a symbol of tradition he wore like armor.

His eyes—clear, piercing, and far too observant—lifted to meet mine.

Years weighed on his body, but none of them dulled his gaze.

To Rowan’s right sat Elder Maelis, her mouth drawn into its usual thin, unforgiving line. Disapproval seemed to be her natural state, etched so deeply into her features that even stillness looked like judgment. She was a woman who believed tradition was law, and law, in her mind, was mercy enough. Compassion had no place in her worldview—obedience did.

Beside her was Elder Torren, all brute presence and restrained violence. He was broad-shouldered, thick through the chest, his hands resting on his knees like they were barely resisting the urge to clench into fists. Even in silence, he was loud. His jaw stayed locked tight, teeth grinding as though he was perpetually one careless word away from starting a fight he’d been itching for.

On Rowan’s left sat Elder Caelum.

Quiet. Observant. Dangerous.

He said little and revealed even less, his gaze sharp and patient as it followed me without blinking. Caelum was the kind of man who watched the board instead of the pieces, who made his moves long before anyone else realized the game had started. The others ruled with noise or rigidity. Caelum ruled with silence.

And then, at the far end of the half-circle, sat Elder Ilyas.

The youngest of them all.

He had taken his seat only three winters ago, and it showed. His hair was still dark, untouched by silver, his posture unbroken by age or regret. There was no permanent scowl carved into his face yet, no weight of decades spent fearing change. His loyalty to the pack was unquestionable—but it hadn’t yet been corroded by tradition or poisoned by control.

Their gazes tracked me as I crossed the chamber, boots echoing against stone, until I reached the center where they wanted me—alone, exposed, exactly as planned.

I didn’t bow.

“I was told this meeting was urgent,” I said, keeping my voice even, measured, unyielding. “So speak.”

Rowan studied me for a long moment, his fingers tapping slowly against the arm of his chair—one tap at a time, deliberate, patient. A test.

“You were meant to visit that…woman today,” he said at last.

There it was.

“I rescheduled,” I replied, cool and unapologetic.

Maelis let out a sharp scoff, her lips curling. “Of course you did.”

Rowan lifted a single hand.

The gesture was subtle, almost lazy, yet it sliced clean through the air and silenced Maelis mid-breath. He leaned forward in his seat, the creak of ancient wood echoing in the chamber as his sharp gaze locked onto mine.

“Alpha Mikael,” he said at last, my title rolling off his tongue like a measure of my worth rather than a mark of respect. “Who is the woman you brought into Veyrath territory?”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop instantly, as if the walls themselves had leaned in to listen.

I held Rowan’s stare and offered nothing in return. No denial. No explanation. Not even a flicker of reaction.

Torren shifted beside him, the movement sharp and impatient. His jaw tightened, irritation flashing openly across his face.

“Answer the elder,” he growled, his voice heavy with challenge.

I didn’t turn toward him.

I didn’t look at any of them.

Silence spilled between us—thick, deliberate, weaponized. I let it stretch until it pressed against their nerves, until I could feel their discomfort harden into something sharper. Suspicion. Doubt. Fear.

Then Ilyas spoke.

“If my memory serves me correctly,” he said calmly, his voice cutting through the tension with unsettling clarity, “that woman is Amara.”

Every eye in the room snapped toward him.

“Formerly,” Ilyas continued, unshaken, “the future Luna of the Gravemire pack.”

The chamber erupted without a single voice being raised.

Maelis surged to her feet, her chair screeching violently across the stone floor. “That’s impossible,” she snapped, the word cracking with disbelief.

Caelum’s eyes narrowed, dark and calculating. Torren cursed under his breath, the sound low and vicious. Even Rowan—ever composed, ever controlled—couldn’t quite hide the brief fracture in his expression, disbelief slipping through the lines of authority he wore so carefully.

“Gravemire?” Torren repeated, his voice edged with anger. “You brought Gravemire into our lands?”