Claiming His Luna

Reinstated

Elena's reinstatement hearing was scheduled for noon, and she'd been awake since well before dawn, not from nerves exactly, but from the particular restlessness of waiting to be judged by people who'd already decided what they thought of her.

She found Kade waiting at the border stone anyway, an hour before he had any real reason to be there.

"You don't need to come," she said, though something in her chest eased at the sight of him regardless.

"I know." He fell into step beside her without being asked. "I'm coming anyway."

"My father won't like it."

"Your father doesn't like most of what's happened in the last month. I've stopped organizing my choices around what pleases Garret." A faint, tired smile. "Besides. If they're going to judge you for crossing the border for me, they should have to look at the reason standing right in front of them."

Elena didn't answer, but she noticed — the way she'd been noticing more and more lately — the particular warmth that spread through her chest whenever Kade did something like this: showing up without needing to be asked, standing beside her instead of simply supporting her from a safe distance. It wasn't a grand gesture. It was smaller than that, and somehow it mattered more.

The Ashford great hall was packed by the time they arrived, wolves crowded along the walls, murmuring quieting to a heavy silence as Elena walked to the center of the room with Kade a half-step behind her — present, visible, deliberately not hiding.

Garret sat at the council table, flanked by three senior wolves, his expression carefully unreadable in the way Elena recognized from a lifetime of trying to read it anyway. "Elena. You stand accused of unauthorized contact with a rival pack's Alpha, repeated border violations, and endangering yourself and this pack's standing through secrecy."

"I stand accused of trying to save lives while the people meant to protect this pack were too proud to look at what was actually happening in our own valley," Elena said, voice steady despite the pounding in her chest. "I won't apologize for that. I'll apologize for the secrecy, if it helps — I should have found a way to bring this to you sooner, honestly, instead of hiding it. But I won't apologize for crossing that border, or for what it uncovered."

A ripple of murmurs moved through the gathered pack. One of the senior wolves, an older woman named Petra who Elena had trained under years ago, leaned forward. "You nearly died in that valley. Is that truly a cost you'd ask this pack to accept, for an alliance with wolves who hated us a month ago?"

"I'd ask this pack to accept the truth," Elena said. "Which is worse than any cost I paid personally. We buried a decade of danger under a story about land rights because it was easier than admitting what our own leadership did wrong. I'm not asking anyone to forget that anger. I'm asking you to let it exist alongside the fact that unity is the only thing that's actually kept more of us from dying since."

Petra studied her a long moment, something shifting behind her eyes — not quite approval, but the beginning of it. "You were always stubborn, even as a pup training under me. I used to think it would get you killed one day." A faint, dry note entered her voice. "I suppose I should be relieved it's only nearly gotten you killed, and not actually succeeded."

A few quiet, surprised laughs rippled through the hall, breaking some of the tension, and Elena felt herself exhale for what seemed like the first time since walking in.

Garret's jaw tightened, something complicated passing behind his eyes — not quite pride, not quite worry, some tangled combination of both that Elena had rarely seen directed at her. "And if I reinstate you, and this alliance falls apart the moment either pack's patience runs out? What then?"

"Then I'll have tried," Elena said simply. "Which is more than either you or Kade's father did, apparently, for ten years."

The silence that followed was different from the hostile quiet at the hearing's start — heavier, more thoughtful, several senior wolves exchanging glances that suggested genuine reconsideration rather than performative outrage.

It was Wren, standing near the back beside Marcus (who'd come, Elena noted, entirely uninvited, mirroring Kade's own quiet insistence on being present), who spoke up next. "For what it's worth — I've patrolled with Thornwood wolves for two weeks now. They're not what any of us were raised to believe. Neither, apparently, are we, if half of what Elena found is true." She glanced sideways at Marcus, something sharp and teasing in her expression despite the gravity of the room. "Some of them are even tolerable company. Occasionally."

"High praise," Marcus muttered, just loud enough for Elena to catch, and despite everything, she felt a small, unexpected laugh threaten at the corner of her mouth.

Garret was quiet for a long moment, studying his daughter with an expression Elena couldn't fully name. "Reinstated," he said finally, the word landing heavier than its brevity suggested. "Full patrol authority restored. But Elena — I want it understood, by you and by this pack, that this doesn't erase what needs answering about ten years of silence. We'll speak of that separately. Properly."

"I know." Something in Elena's chest loosened, relief tangled with the knowledge that the harder conversation — the one about what exactly her father was still protecting — hadn't actually gone away. It had only been postponed.

Outside afterward, the crowd dispersing slowly around them, Kade found her at the edge of the hall, close enough that she caught the low, steady thrum of his heartbeat over the noise.

"You didn't need me in there," he said. "You held that room yourself."

"I know that too." She looked up at him, something warm and unguarded in her expression that she didn't bother hiding, not anymore, not after everything. "Doesn't mean I didn't want you there anyway."

His hand found hers, unhurried, and for a moment neither of them said anything else, just stood together in the thinning crowd, the weight of the morning settling into something that felt, for the first time in weeks, almost like peace.