Claiming His Luna

What It Cost

Thornwood's healer, a sharp-eyed older woman named Ines, took one look at Elena's shoulder and didn't ask a single question about whose pack she belonged to — just set to work, hands quick and sure, while Kade paced a groove into the floorboards outside the door.

By the time Ines let him back in, Elena was bandaged, pale, and glaring at him with the particular exhaustion of someone who'd rather be anywhere else than owing Thornwood a debt.

"You carried me across the border," she said. "In front of your whole pack."

"Yes."

"Kade, do you understand what that means? To them, to mine—"

"I understand it means I chose you over convenience." He sat heavily on the stool beside the bed, his own ribs still aching under a rough field dressing he hadn't let Ines fuss over long. "I'm not sorry. I'd do it again in the next five minutes if I had to."

Elena's glare softened, just slightly, into something more tired than angry. "My father's going to lose his mind."

"My council already has an opinion, believe me." He managed a rough laugh. "Marcus found out before I'd even gotten you settled. Word travels fast when the Alpha walks in carrying an Ashford wolf covered in blood." As if summoned by the mention, a sharp knock sounded at the door, and Marcus entered without waiting for permission — a breach of etiquette that told Kade exactly how serious this had become before his Beta said a word.

"The council's convening," Marcus said, eyes flicking to Elena and back. "Now. They want to know why you crossed the border, why you're harboring an Ashford wolf inside our walls, and whether you've lost the plot entirely."

"Tell them I'll explain everything. All of it — the valley, the creature, what Herrick told me about the original conflict." Kade stood, wincing as his ribs protested. "And tell them Elena stays. That's not up for debate."

Marcus studied him for a long moment, something unreadable passing behind his eyes. "You know what this looks like, right? Not just to the council. To every wolf in this pack who's spent ten years being told Ashford cost us everything."

"I know exactly what it looks like." Kade held his Beta's gaze, steady. "It looks like the truth, finally, instead of the story we've all been comfortable repeating. I'd rather be unpopular and honest than liked and complicit in whatever got buried in that valley a decade ago." Marcus left without further argument, though the set of his shoulders said the conversation was far from finished.

Elena watched the exchange with something like grim understanding. "You're spending real capital on me. Political capital you might not get back."

"I'm aware."

"Why?"

He turned to look at her fully, and something in his chest — the thing that had been building since that first scent of wildflowers and woodsmoke, the thing he'd been calling mate-pull and pretending was purely biological — finally settled into words he was ready to say out loud. "Because somewhere in the last month, you stopped being an Ashford wolf I was investigating a mystery with, and became the person I can't imagine facing any of this without. That's not politics, Elena. That's just true."

Her breath caught, and for a moment neither of them said anything at all, the weight of it settling between them.

The council meeting, when it came, was exactly as difficult as Kade expected. Herrick spoke in his defense, cautiously, admitting what he'd shared about the original conflict — a confession that shocked half the room and confirmed suspicions in the other half. Marcus, to his credit, didn't argue against Kade so much as press hard questions, forcing him to defend the decision on its merits rather than accepting it on authority alone. By the end, the council hadn't fully sided with him, but they hadn't moved against him either — a fragile, uneasy standstill that felt, Kade thought, like the beginning of an actual conversation instead of a decade-old assumption left unexamined.

Fifteen miles east, Garret received the news of his daughter crossing into Thornwood territory — carried there, no less, by their Alpha himself — with a silence far more frightening than any shouting would have been.

He arrived at Thornwood's border stone at dawn, flanked by two senior Ashford wolves, and demanded Elena's return with a formality that told Kade this had become, officially, a matter between packs rather than just between two people.

"She's healing," Kade said, meeting him at the boundary. "Your healers are welcome to examine her themselves and confirm she's fit to travel whenever you'd like. But I won't have her moved before Ines says it's safe."

"You had no right—"

"I had every right." Kade didn't raise his voice, but something in it carried anyway, cutting through Garret's building fury. "Your daughter nearly died fighting a threat that's been feeding in that valley since before either of us led our packs — a threat, from what Herrick's told me, that might be connected to whatever really happened between you and my father a decade ago. I think it's time we stopped pretending that silence protected anyone."

Garret went very still. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Then tell me. Both of us. Right now, at this border stone, since apparently that's the only ground either of our packs still agrees belongs to nobody." Kade held his gaze, unflinching. "Or keep the silence, and watch it cost more lives while you protect whatever you're protecting. Your choice, Garret. But I'm done making it easy for anyone to look away."

For a long moment, nobody at that border stone moved. Then Garret's shoulders dropped, just slightly, the fight going out of him in a way that looked less like defeat and more like exhaustion finally catching up to a decade of carrying something alone.

"Not here," he said quietly. "Not like this. But — yes. It's time."