The Alpha Who Let His Luna Die Twice

Chapter 3: What I Tell Myself

Griffin's POV

I stood at the window long after the dinner ended, still hearing myself say it.

She's studied them her whole life.

Six words. Nothing about them should have cost me any sleep. I'd said harder things to Elders twice my age without blinking.

So why did my hands still feel like they weren't mine.

I hadn't planned to say it. That was the part that sat wrong. I plan everything.

I'd walked into that dinner with three positions rehearsed on the border dispute. Not one word prepared in her defense.

The defense came out first anyway. Faster than the strategy. My mouth had made a decision before my head signed off on it.

I told myself it was strategic. An asset worth protecting looks better protected in front of the Council.

I didn't believe that. Not for the length of one full breath.

Below my window, the training yard sat empty in the dark, torches burning low along the fence line. I went down anyway. Sitting still wasn't going to fix this.

Anders was already there, working through forms alone, the way he did most nights when something was chewing at him too.

"Couldn't sleep either." He tossed me a practice blade without asking. "Good. Been wanting a real opponent all week."

"I'm not in the mood."

"You're never in the mood. Doesn't stop you."

I took the blade.

We circled twice before either of us swung. Old rhythm. We'd done this since we were boys, long before either of us had titles worth defending.

"Council seating for the wedding," he said, blocking low. "Your father's cousins want the east table. Says it's tradition."

"It's not tradition. It's proximity to the treasury."

"Didn't say I believed him."

Steel met steel twice, then a third time harder.

"Elder Voss wants a word with you before the ceremony too," he said, circling right. "Something about the northern patrol schedules."

"Voss always wants a word."

"He's not wrong to worry. Half his territory borders the Kesh line."

"Half his territory was Kesh land twenty years ago. Convenient how he forgets that part."

Anders laughed, short and real, and for a second the yard felt like it used to before either of us carried titles that mattered.

"You made a show of it tonight," he said, changing the subject with a grin I didn't return. "Defending the future Luna from old Renwick."

"Wasn't a show."

"Didn't say it was for show." He backed off a step, blade lowered. "Wasn't strategy either. Not the way you usually run it."

I didn't answer that. My silence was answer enough, and we both knew it.

"He was wrong," I said finally. "Wrong deserves correcting."

"Sure." Anders came in again, faster this time. "Since when do you correct wrong on her behalf. You've barely said ten words to the woman since the betrothal."

"I say what's necessary."

"That's not what I asked."

I caught his blade wrong on purpose and used the opening to put him on the ground, harder than I meant to.

He looked up at me from the dirt, not angry, watching.

"Didn't know it was a sore spot."

"It isn't."

"Could've fooled me."

I offered him a hand up. He took it.

"It's good politics," he said, brushing dirt off his sleeve. "Council needs to see a united front before the merger. That's all it was."

My jaw set hard enough to ache. He'd said it like a fact settled an hour ago, and it landed like an accusation instead.

"You don't know what it was."

"Then tell me."

I didn't have an answer that fit in a sentence. I had six words I hadn't meant to say and a woman across the table who spent the whole meal looking at me like she was bracing for a blow that never came.

That look had been there before tonight too. I hadn't let myself notice it until she flinched at nothing, and I flinched back, wondering what exactly she thought I was capable of.

"Forget it," I said.

"Already forgotten." Anders picked his blade back up. "Best two out of three?"

"Not tonight."

"Suit yourself." He wiped his blade down and racked it. "You know where to find me if the strategic answer decides to show up."

He didn't push past that. That was the thing about Anders. He knew when a door was closed even without knowing why.

I walked back inside alone, the torches at my back, and told myself I'd sleep on it and wake up with the strategic answer I was looking for.

I didn't sleep.

My father kept a locked cabinet in his old study, one I hadn't opened since the funeral. I couldn't tell you what sent me there that night. Some instinct with no logic behind it at all, the same restlessness that put a defense in my mouth before my mind caught up.

The study still smelled like him. Old paper and pipe smoke, though the pipe had sat cold on the shelf for two years now. I hadn't noticed that smell fade in the months since. I noticed it tonight.

The lock gave easier than it should have. Years of dust on the hinge.

Papers. Old correspondence, most of it dull, treaty language and territory disputes long since settled. A drawer beneath the first stuck halfway open, warped from age, and I had to work it free with more force than the moment deserved.

My knuckles caught the edge of the wood on the last pull. I didn't stop to check for blood.

Then a ledger, bound in dark leather, a wax seal pressed into the cover.

A seal that wasn't ours.

I turned it toward the candlelight to be sure. Told myself I was wrong. Looked again.

The Rourke seal.

I set the ledger down once, then picked it back up, like putting it down might have been the mistake instead of opening it in the first place.

I stood there holding it, my father's careful handwriting filling the first page in numbers I didn't understand yet. I had no memory of him ever dealing with that name in his life.

The candle burned lower while I stood there not turning the page.

My father never once mentioned owing anyone anything, not in all the years I sat across from him learning how this pack ran.

I turned the page anyway.