Matteo
The Council Chamber was a relic of a time when the world was ruled by claws and blood-oaths, a circular stone amphitheater carved into the mountain's core. The air here was perpetually thin, cold, and heavy with the scent of ancient incense and the underlying musk of a dozen Alphas. It was a place designed to make a man feel small.
I didn't feel small. I felt like a bomb with a hair-trigger.
I stood in the center of the pit, the floorstones worn smooth by centuries of accused shifters. Above me, seated in a semi-circle on high marble daises, were the twelve Elders of the High Council. To their right sat the observers—the Alphas of the neighboring territories.
And among them, leaning back with a look of bored arrogance that made my knuckles itch to find his jaw, was Damien Stroud
