Chapter Ten
1102 Words
Seraya
Varros recovered first. “Draven—”
“Alpha Draven,” he corrected, voice like cracking ice.
Varros’s mouth snapped shut.
Draven let his gaze sweep the Council, measuring their stiff postures, the fury brimming behind their polite silence. They had come expecting to dictate. To control.
He leaned back in his throne, fingers drumming the armrests.
“You summoned me,” he said, deceptively soft. “As if I were some pup to be scolded. As if you had the right to demand answers from me.”
He looked at their faces, lingering longer on Varros.
“Let me remind you how this works.”
The air thickened, sharp and cold.
“I. Am. The. Alpha.” His voice carried like a blade, cutting the hush of the chamber. “The one who bled your enemies while you huddled behind your walls. The one you called cruel, butcher, monster. Do you think the name frightened me?”
Silence. No one dared breathe.
Seraya lifted her head from the floor at the base of his throne. Her silver eyes burned, not with fear but with fury.
Draven ignored her.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and smiled without warmth.
“Now,” he said, the word slicing the quiet. “Let us discuss my mate.”
The chamber rippled with shock.
“Mate?” Varros choked, his control snapping. “That rogue cannot be your mate. You are already betrothed to my daughter, Namira.”
Draven sighed, weary. “I did not choose the rogue. Do you think, if I could choose, I would choose her?”
Seraya laughed. A low, sharp thing that curled through the chamber like smoke.
Every eye turned to her.
“Ah,” she said, voice bright with venom. “So that’s what's happening. This isn't about law. It's not about loyalty or your sacred order. It's just an old man mourning the crown his daughter was promised. I'm so sorry I ruined the feast.”
Varros’s face darkened, the veins in his hand standing out against the staff he gripped.
Movement at the far end of the hall drew Seraya’s gaze. Corren walked in with a woman behind him. Her hair was braided with jewels, her robe a cascade of crimson silk. She was obviously royal. Seraya’s lips curved in a humorless smile. Was this the golden bride-to-be? She almost pitied the girl. Almost.
Draven’s expression never shifted.
“The Goddess bound me,” he said, every word deliberate. “And not even your bloodline, Varros, can cut that thread.”
The chamber erupted.
They had been silent, taut with Draven’s fury only a breath ago, but now the Council tore loose, voices overlapping like a storm.
“She is a rogue!” one of the lords barked, his signet ring flashing as he slammed his hand against the polished oak table. “The law is clear. Rogues have no claim and no place in a House, much less as Luna.”
“You cannot mean to crown her,” hissed another, her jeweled veil trembling with outrage. “The people will never accept it. The packs will revolt.”
They circled like wolves in their finery, snarling over her life as if she weren’t in the room at all. Seraya kept her chin high, though her wrists ached from the iron cuffs that dug into her skin. She would not bow her head. Not here. Not while they stripped her down to a problem to be solved.
“Kill her,” Varros spat. His staff slammed once on the flagstone floor. The sound cracked through the chamber. “Kill the rogue and end this farce before it takes root.”
Several councilors nodded, murmurs rising like a swarm of flies. Their robes whispered against the stone benches, their jeweled fingers tapping wood and metal.
Another voice cut in, a man with a heavy gold ring glinting on his hand. “And if you kill her, what then? You know the bond does not vanish with her breath. You know this. It snaps back on the Alpha. It will tear at him until he is a husk.”
“Then we break it,” another woman snapped, her high voice sharp as glass. “The Moon’s will can be resisted. Nothing is absolute.”
Seraya almost laughed.
“You cannot break the mate bond,” Draven said at last, voice smooth as black ice. “We all know once it is forged it remains eternally.”
The chamber buzzed with arguments, robes rustling, staves tapping stone.
Varros raised his hand, and the noise dimmed, though not entirely. He leaned heavily on his staff, the veins in his papery skin thick and swollen.
“Bonds cannot be broken,” he said, his voice like stones grinding together. “That much is true.” His eyes flicked toward her, and bitterness curled his mouth. “Yet. They cannot be broken yet.”
A ripple of unease moved through the chamber. Some nodded as if the word itself was promising enough. Others frowned, muttering. Seraya narrowed her eyes. The old man was desperate. His daughter’s crown had been snatched from her hands by fate itself, and he would claw the world bloody to get it back.
“She should die,” someone spat. “Better a clean cut now than to let her poison the bond further.”
“Yes,” another chimed. “Kill the rogue, and let Alpha Draven be free to claim a bond worthy of his rank.”
“Do you hear yourselves?” a different voice cut in, sharp with disgust. Seraya’s gaze darted to its source.
The woman who had entered with Corren stepped forward, her crimson silk swaying as she moved into the center of the hall. She did not look at Seraya. She looked only at the Council, her chin tilted, her eyes blazing.
“You want to kill Alpha Draven’s mate? You want my brother”—her voice cracked like a whip on the word—“to live the rest of his life in misery? To wake every day with half his soul torn out because you couldn’t stomach a rogue in your precious halls?”
Brother.
The word staggered Seraya, though she did not let it show. Brother. Draven had a sister? He had a sister, and she stood here draped in silk, fire in her eyes, defending him.
It reminded her of how alone she was in this world. She had lost her family that night, and it was all her fault.
- Writer
