Claiming His Luna

The Weight of Two Packs

Telling the truth to two entire packs turned out to be harder than telling it to each other.

Kade called a joint gathering at the border stone itself — the first time in a decade both packs had assembled together on neutral ground, and the tension in the air was thick enough that several of the older wolves kept their hands loose and ready at their sides, old instinct overriding the fragile peace Kade and Garret were trying to build.

Garret spoke first, his voice steady despite what it clearly cost him. He told them everything — the den, the choice he and Kade's father had made together, the two wolves lost, the decade of silence built on a story about land that had never been true. Kade watched the crowd as the truth landed, saw disbelief curdle into anger, anger into grief, grief into something more complicated that didn't have an easy name.

"You let us hate them for ten years," a young Thornwood wolf called out, "over a lie?"

"Yes," Garret said, without flinching. "That's exactly what I did. I won't pretend otherwise, and I won't ask you to forgive it quickly. I'm only telling you now because the alternative is letting more of us die to something we created and then hid from, and I've already let that happen for far too long."

An Ashford elder, one who'd lost a brother in a border skirmish years back, stepped forward, voice shaking with old fury. "So the deaths in the skirmishes — the ones we blamed on Thornwood aggression—"

"Were never about Thornwood at all," Garret finished quietly. "They were about two packs so committed to a false story that we let real grievances fester on top of it, each side certain the other had drawn first blood over land, when the truth was neither of us could face what we'd actually done."

The gathering fractured into overlapping arguments, grief and anger tangled together too tightly to easily separate, and for a long, uncertain moment Kade thought the fragile ground beneath this whole effort might simply give way entirely.

Near the back of the Thornwood crowd, Kade caught sight of one of his council elders — Aldric, a wolf who'd served on the council even longer than Herrick — standing utterly still while everyone around him reacted. Not shocked. Not grieving. Watching, carefully, with an expression Kade couldn't quite read and didn't like the look of at all. He filed the observation away for later, uneasy without yet knowing why.

It was Elena who stepped forward into the center of it, her bandaged shoulder still stiff, her voice carrying clear over the noise. "I understand every one of you has the right to be furious. I was furious too, when I found out. But look at what that decade of silence actually built." She gestured toward the valley below. "A predator, grown strong on our secrecy, still out there right now, still capable of killing more of us tonight if we spend the next hour arguing about who deserves blame instead of doing something about it. We can be angry and united. We don't get to choose only one."

"Easy for the Beta stripped of her own patrol authority to say," someone called from the Ashford side, not unkindly, but pointed.

"You're right," Elena said, meeting the challenge head-on. "I don't have the authority to ask anything of you right now. So I'm not asking as a Beta. I'm asking as someone who almost died in that valley two nights ago, fighting something both our packs helped create and then spent a decade too proud to face together. That's not a title. That's just true, the same way the danger out there is true, whether either pack wants to admit it or not."

Kade watched her hold that crowd, watched something shift in the collected weight of both packs' attention — not resolved, not healed, but listening in a way that felt genuinely different from the hostile silence that had opened the gathering. Something in his chest ached with pride he hadn't earned any right to feel, watching her do this alone, watching her turn a room's fury into something closer to hope through sheer will and honesty.

"She's right," Kade said, stepping up beside her, close enough that his shoulder brushed hers, a small steadying contact neither of them announced but both of them felt. "About all of it. I won't pretend this is simple, or that trust rebuilds in a single conversation But I'm asking both packs for something concrete, not just forgiveness for the past — a joint patrol. Thornwood and Ashford wolves, together, hunting what's left of that den until it's dealt with. After that, we can argue about everything else that needs arguing about. But first, we handle the actual danger, together, the way we should have a decade ago."

The silence that followed wasn't agreement, not entirely. But when Marcus stepped forward first, offering his hand toward the Ashford side without waiting to be asked, and a younger Ashford wolf clasped it after only a moment's hesitation, Kade felt something in his chest loosen for the first time since Herrick had first told him about Dessa's cloak.

Aldric didn't step forward. Didn't argue, either. He simply watched the handshake, expression unreadable, and turned quietly away from the gathering before anyone else seemed to notice he'd left.

It wasn't peace. Not yet. But it was, finally, a beginning built on truth instead of ten more years of convenient silence — even if, somewhere in the crowd, not everyone seemed entirely relieved to see that silence end.

Kade found Marcus afterward, near the tree line, watching the dispersing crowd with a thoughtful frown. "You saw Aldric leave," Kade said. It wasn't a question.

"I did." Marcus's eyes stayed on the spot where the elder had vanished into the trees. "He's been quiet ever since Herrick started talking to you about the original conflict. Quieter than usual, even for him. I didn't think much of it until tonight."

"Keep an eye on him," Kade said. "Quietly. I don't want to accuse a man of anything without cause — but I want to understand what he's not saying, before it costs us something we can't take back."

Marcus nodded, already turning the thought over with the same careful instinct that had made him a good Beta long before Kade had ever needed to lean on it this heavily. "I'll ask around. Discreetly." A pause, and then, softer, "For what it's worth — what you and Elena did back there. That took more nerve than most Alphas I've known would've had."

"It wasn't nerve," Kade admitted. "It was just not having anywhere left to hide from it."

Marcus's mouth twitched, almost a smile. "Same thing, most days."