THE MATE THE ROGUE ALPHA WAS MEANT TO KILL

Chapter 24—Alpha Duties

Ravin's POV

I found out on a Wednesday morning and had Cord in front of me before the hour was out.

He was standing in the centre of the main hall with his jaw set and his eyes forward and the particular stillness of someone who knew exactly what was coming and had decided to face it standing up, which I respected even as I looked at him and felt the specific irritation of a man who had genuinely believed his beta had more sense than this.

"Tell me it is not true," I said.

Cord held my gaze. "I cannot tell you that, Alpha."

The hall was quiet. Sable and two of the senior warriors were positioned near the far wall, present because protocol demanded witnesses for something of this weight, and none of them were looking at Cord directly, which was its own kind of verdict.

"Alpha Ethan's intended Luna," I said, and my voice was level because losing my composure in this room would cost me more than it cost Cord. "You were sleeping with Alpha Ethan's intended Luna."

"It was not something that started with intention," Cord said carefully.

"That is not a denial."

"No," Cord said. "It is not."

I looked at him for a long moment, and he held the look without flinching, which was either courage or the acknowledgement that there was nothing left to protect, and I turned away from him and walked to the window that faced the tree line and stood there with my hands behind my back and thought about the thirty seven ways this could go badly.

Alpha Ethan of the Stoneback Pack was not a man who forgave easily and was not a man with a reputation for measured responses.

He was also not a man with the numbers or the strength to start a war with Darkhowl and survive it, which meant that whatever he was planning was either reckless or calculated, and neither option was comfortable.

I turned back.

"Where is she now?"

"Back with her pack," Cord said. "She returned of her own will two days ago. She told me she needed to go back."

"And Ethan knows."

"Ethan has known since yesterday morning." Cord's jaw tightened slightly. "He sent a message this morning, it arrived an hour ago."

"I know," I said. "I read it before I came to find you."

The message had been direct and unpleasant and had contained a very specific demand that I hand Cord over to Stoneback's justice or face the consequences, which was the kind of language men used when they were furious and wanted to sound authoritative and had not yet thought clearly about whether they could back it up.

Sable stepped forward slightly. "Alpha, Ethan has no right to demand a Darkhowl warrior. The woman was not yet formally bonded to him, the ceremony had not taken place, which means legally under pack law she was still an individual with the right to her own choices."

"That is technically true," I said. "Ethan will not care about technically."

"What are you going to do?" Cord asked, and for the first time his voice had something in it that was not composure, something quieter underneath it.

I looked at him. "I am going to fix this, that is what I do." I moved toward the door. "And when I am done fixing it you and I are going to have a very different conversation about the exercise of judgment, because I expect better from my beta and you know that."

Cord said nothing and I did not wait for him to.

The meeting with Ethan was set for that afternoon at a neutral point between the two territories, a stretch of open ground near the river that had been used for exactly this kind of thing before, and I arrived with Sable and two warriors and found Ethan already there with four of his own, his arms crossed and his expression carrying the particular tightness of a man who had been publicly embarrassed and was wearing it like an injury.

He was young for an Alpha, mid twenties, broad through the shoulders with the kind of build that said he had earned his position through challenge rather than inheritance, and he looked at me across the open ground with eyes that were angry and calculating in equal measure.

"Blackthorn," he said.

"Ethan," I said, and stopped a few feet away and did not offer my hand because this was not that kind of meeting.

"Your beta dishonoured my pack," he said. "I want him."

"You are not getting him," I said.

His jaw tightened. "Then this conversation is over before it started."

"No," I said, keeping my voice even. "It has not started yet. When it starts you are going to listen to what I am offering and you are going to consider it carefully, because the alternative is a decision you cannot take back and that will cost your pack considerably more than it costs mine."

He stared at me for a long moment. One of his warriors shifted slightly behind him. He held up a hand without looking back and they went still again, which told me something useful about his control.

"Talk," he said.

"The woman made her own choices, i am not defending what my beta did and I am not dismissing the insult to your pack, it was a real insult and it deserved better.

But she was not yet bonded to you, which means the weight of this sits differently than it would if she had been.

What I am offering is a formal acknowledgement from Darkhowl of the disrespect shown to Stoneback, compensation in resources that your pack will find substantial, and my personal word that Cord will be disciplined within Darkhowl according to our own laws." I held his gaze. "What you will not get is a Darkhowl warrior handed to another pack's justice, that is not something I offer anyone."

The silence between us stretched.

Ethan looked at me, then past me at Sable, then back at me with an expression that was doing the difficult work of separating what he wanted from what was available.

"The compensation," he said finally. "I want to hear the specifics."

I told him. He listened. The negotiation that followed was not comfortable but it was functional, and when we left the neutral ground an hour later there was no war coming for Darkhowl, which was the only thing that had ever actually mattered.

On the way back through the trees with Sable walking beside me in silence I caught myself thinking about the fact that I had not been to the academy in three days, and wondering without being able to stop it whether Elara had noticed, and what she had thought when she did.

I already knew she had noticed.

I wondered what her face had looked like when she looked at my empty seat, and found that i was in school.

I wanted to know badly enough that it was the first thing I was going to find out when this was finished.