What The Council Decided
1081 Words
Mitchelle's POV
Three days after we buried my mother, Elder Rowan called the council into session. I wasn't invited but I went anyway.
I stood in the back of the chamber where the torchlight didn't quite reach and I listened to a man I had disliked since childhood build a case for my execution with the patient precision of someone who had been waiting years for exactly this opportunity.
"The protection wards failed," Rowan said, his voice filling the stone chamber like smoke. "Twelve of our people are dead. Our Luna is dead. And the reason, the direct, undeniable reason, is that the heir could not complete the Rite of Awakening."
Murmurs ran through the assembled elders.
"The wards weaken when the ritual fails. Every scholar of pack law knows this. Every elder in this room knows this." Rowan let the silence sit for a moment. "The question before us now is simple. The moon goddess withdrew her blessing when she looked at Ashford's heir and found her wanting. Until the source of that withdrawal is removed from this pack, we remain unprotected. We remain vulnerable. We remain exactly what we were three nights ago when twelve of our people bled out in the sacred grove."
My father sat at the head of the table, staring into his hands.
He wasn't going to fight. I could see that before Rowan finished his second sentence. Garrison Ashford was drowning in grief, in guilt, in the political pressure of a council that had always been waiting for a crack in his authority.
"Exile," Elder Rowan said. "At least. The girl should be removed from Moonridge territory immediately. If the council feels the situation warrants stronger action—"
"She is my daughter." My father's voice came out quietly. Not powerfully, just quietly, which was worse.
"She is the reason our Luna is dead," Rowan retorted, his voice dripping in sheer repugnance.
I felt something white-hot move through my chest. I steppe out of the shadows before I made a decision to do it.
"Say that again." I drew the words coldly.
Every head in the room turned. Elder Rowan looked at me with the particular expression of a man who was extremely irritated.
"You weren't invited to this session, child." he spat.
"Say it again," I repeated. My voice was very steady. I was proud of that. "My mother is dead because masked assassins with enchanted weapons and wolfsbane-coated blades attacked a protected ceremony with military precision. Say her death is my fault one more time. I want to hear you say it clearly."
Silence filled the room.
Rowan clasped his hands. "The wards..."
"Were weakened by a ritual failure that happened because I was born without a wolf. Not because I chose to be. Not because I was careless. Because I was born this way." I looked at every face in the room. "The attack was planned. Those assassins knew exactly when to strike, exactly where the wards would be thinnest, exactly how to get past our sentries. That was not a coincidence. That was intelligence. Someone gave them that information." I let that sit. "So instead of asking why the heir failed to shift, maybe the council should be asking who told our enemies when we would be most vulnerable."
The room was very quiet.
Rowan recovered first. "Interesting theory. Difficult to prove. And in the meantime the pack remains unprotected,"
"I have made an arrangement," my father cut in from the side.
His voice was different now. More controlled, prepared. He had been waiting for this moment in the conversation.
I turned to look at him and saw the folder beside his han. There I understood before he opened it that this was already decided, that whatever was inside had been written before he sat down.
"Alpha Adrian Throne of Shadowfang has been seeking a legitimate alliance and an heir. His pack's military strength is second to none in the region. In exchange for Mitchelle entering a marriage contract, Shadowfang's warriors will assist in protecting Moonridge's borders while the wards are restored."
The room erupted.
Rowan's voice cut through. "Adrian Throne? The man who killed his own brother for the throne? Whose wolf is so unstable he—"
"Those are rumors," my father argued.
"His rage have left bodies, Alpha Garrison. No pack will willingly send a daughter to that man."
"Which," my father said carefully, "is why this arrangement works for everyone."
I stood very still and listened to them discuss me like I was nonexistent. There I thought about my mother's journal, about the name written in her careful handwriting in the last pages. Golden Crest. About the twelve-year-old investigation request that Elder Rowan had signed off on denying. About the fact that no one in this room was going to find her killers because finding her killers was not in any of their interests.
If I stayed in Moonridge, I would be exiled, or executed, or quietly managed into irrelevance.
If I went over to Shadowfang, I would have access to the most powerful pack military in the region.
I needed warriors. I needed resources. I needed a name behind me that made people afraid to say no. Adrian Throne's name made everyone afraid.
"I'll go," I said.
My father looked at me. "Mitchelle—"
"I said I'll go." I walked to the table and picked up the marriage contract and looked at the signature line at the bottom. "One week. Just give me one week to prepare and I'll leave without a fight."
Rowan blinked. He had not expected that. It gave me a small, mean satisfaction.
I set the contract back down and turned and walked out of the council chamber.
In the corridor outside, I pressed my back against the cold stone wall and breathed through the part of me that was screaming. I was only eighteen years old and I had just agreed to marry a man people called a monster. I had no wolf, no allies, nothing except a dead woman's journal and a name I had memorized from its pages.
Golden Crest.
"I'm going to find them," I said quietly to the empty corridor. To my mother. To whoever was listening. "I don't have anything yet. But I'm going to find them."
I pushed off the wall and walked back toward my chamber to start packing. I had just seven days., and I intended to use every single one.
- Writer
