The Rejected Omega's Sovereign Reign

Chapter 6

Alfred Makes It Worse

Alfred tried to look noble in front of the pack council, but the desperate way he kept straightening his expensive jacket made him look smaller every second. The ancient pack hall swallowed every sound, the torchlight trembling against the stone walls as if even the fire knew better than to trust him. His hair was neat, his chin lifted, his posture forced into something proud, but the thin sheen of sweat on his forehead betrayed him.

The elders sat in a heavy semicircle before him, quiet and unmoving, their eyes sharp enough to peel away every layer of his false confidence. The silence in the room was not empty. It was loaded and waiting.

“The girl was an absolute parasite on our bloodline,” Alfred declared, his voice echoing off the high stone rafters where I lay flat against the dark wooden beams, completely hidden in the shadows. “I cast Arieth out to preserve our ancient traditions, yet she has used her foul witch magic to summon rogue wolves to our borders”.

I pressed my lips together hard, swallowing the bitter laugh that almost broke free. My chest burned, not from grief anymore, but from the raw humiliation of hearing him lie so easily, so loudly, as if the room belonged to him and not the truth.

Below, Alfred kept talking, and the deeper he went, the worse it became. His smile looked practiced at first, but it kept slipping every time an elder shifted in their seat. He claimed he had protected the pack. He claimed he had acted with honor. He claimed he had sent no one into the wild.

Yet his hands would not stay still.

They shook behind his back as if they wanted to run away from him.

“If she was so weak, Alfred, why did it require three separate border patrols to push a single unshifted omega past the line?” Elder Victor Hale asked, his voice smooth like a saint and sharp like a snake.

The question landed like a blade.

Alfred blinked, and for one brief second, every polished part of him cracked. His throat bobbed. His jaw tightened. The room saw it too. The elders saw it. I saw it from the rafters, and the sight almost made me smile.

“The… the weather was severe, Elder. The wolves were merely ensuring she did not return to contaminate our sacred moon rites”.

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing out loud.

A severe storm, my mind repeated, dry as dust. Of course. A storm that only attacked one girl.

The excuse was so thin it might have torn in his own mouth.

Alfred tried to recover, but every word only dug him deeper. He stood there under the torches like a man trying to build a house while the ground collapsed beneath his feet. His arrogance was still there, but now it looked brittle, fragile, and foolish.

He had come here expecting power, respect, fear.

Instead, he was exposing himself.

The room had gone so still that even the crackle of the fire sounded loud. One elder leaned back slowly. Another narrowed his eyes. Victor Hale did not move at all, which somehow made him more dangerous than anyone else in the room.

And all the while, my anger began to shift.

It was still there, but it had changed shape. It no longer felt sharp enough to cut me open. It had turned into something colder. Sharper in a different way. Watching Alfred unravel in front of the council was almost entertaining. He had humiliated me, thrown me out like I was nothing, and now he was tripping over his own lies in front of the very people he wanted to impress.

He was doing my work for me.

The council finally broke the silence with low, disappointed murmurs. One by one, the elders rose from their seats. The meeting was over. Not with approval, not with victory, but with the heavy disappointment of men who had just watched a leader disgrace himself.

Alfred stayed where he was as they left, alone beneath the fading torches. His shoulders sagged. His neat hair fell out of place. He looked less like an alpha now and more like a frightened boy wearing borrowed authority.

I shifted quietly on the beam, careful with every movement, ready to slip back into the night before his enforcers caught my scent.

Then the heavy iron doors creaked.

My entire body tightened.

Victor Hale stepped out from the shadows near the corner, his movements silent, deliberate, and far too calm. Even from above, I could feel the danger in him. He crossed the stone floor like a man who already knew the outcome of the room.

He stopped in front of Alfred.

“You handled that poorly, Alfred,” Victor murmured, his sharp eyes reflecting the dying embers of the hearth.

Alfred stiffened at once, as if the older wolf had struck him without touching him.

“I protected the pack’s reputation, Victor!” Alfred hissed, his voice cracking with a defensive, arrogant pride.

Victor’s mouth curved into something cold, almost amused. Not kind. Never kind.

“Then let us hope the council never discovers the truth, Alfred; specifically, that you personally invited that brutal rogue attack on the border camp just to permanently destroy Arieth’s birth records”.

I froze above them.

The hall seemed to tilt.

And for the first time that night, Alfred looked truly terrified.