THE LYCAN KINGS SILENT MATE

Chapter 7

The Council chamber was carved from the same dark stone as the rest of the fortress, but here the walls had been polished smooth, lined with the crests of every founding Lycan house, lit by torches that threw long shadows across a horseshoe table of twelve. Eva counted the faces as Alistair led her in old, cold, unreadable faces, every single one of them watching her like she was already a verdict waiting to be handed down.

"Your Majesty." The man at the table's center rose first silver-haired, broad-shouldered, a scar bisecting one eyebrow. "You return from the human city with blood on your collar and a stranger on your arm. The Council would appreciate an explanation before the rumors finish writing one for you."

"Lord Ansgar." Alistair's voice was perfectly level, perfectly cold, nothing like the man who'd held Eva's hand in the car twenty minutes ago. "This is Evangeline Cross. My fated mate."

The word landed in the room like a dropped blade. Eva watched a dozen expressions shift at once surprise, calculation, in one case something close to open hostility from a woman seated near the end of the table, silver rings on every finger, eyes narrowed like she was already pricing Eva for parts.

"Confirmed how?" the woman asked.

"Scent. Bond-silence. I don't answer to you for the particulars, Lady Voss."

"You'll answer to this Council for anything that threatens the kingdom you were sworn to protect," Ansgar said, not unkindly, but with the weight of a man who had said this exact sentence to this exact king many times before. "And Prince Damon's forces breached the North Gate three hours ago over a woman most of us have never heard of. That is, by any definition, a threat."

"She's not the threat. She's the target." Alistair stepped forward, and Eva felt the room's attention shift with him, twelve pairs of ancient eyes tracking his every movement like he was something dangerous they'd forgotten to respect. "Damon wants her because her gift goes silent around anyone strong enough to be dangerous. That includes me. That includes every one of you. Do you understand what that means? A weapon that can walk through this room and none of us would feel it coming."

"Which is precisely why," Lady Voss said, "some of us are wondering whether it wouldn't be simpler to hand her over before Damon decides burning our gate down was merely a warning shot."

"No," Alistair said.

"I wasn't finished."

"You were, actually." His voice hadn't risen, but something underneath it had the same low, dangerous register Eva had heard right before he tore through three Lycan scouts without slowing down. "Say the rest of that sentence, Voss, and we'll find out together how many members this Council can lose in a single meeting."

Silence, thick and immediate. Even Ansgar looked briefly, genuinely alarmed.

Eva's heart was pounding, but something in her the same stubborn, reckless something that had made her swing a torch into a werewolf's ribs an hour ago pushed her forward before she could think better of it.

"I'd like to say something," she said, "if that's allowed."

Every eye in the room swung to her. Alistair's jaw tightened, but he didn't stop her, and Eva took that as permission enough.

"You're all talking about me like I'm a problem to be solved. Hand me over, keep me hidden, decide my life is worth trading for a few weeks of peace. I get it. I'm new. I'm human mostly and I walked in here covered in someone else's blood, so I understand why I look like a liability." She made herself hold Lady Voss's gaze, even though every instinct screamed to look away. "But six years ago, my gift showed me exactly how my own mother was going to die. I watched it happen behind my eyes in perfect detail and I couldn't do a single thing to stop it. I know better than anyone in this room what it costs to watch someone you love die and be powerless to change it. So don't sit there and tell me handing me to Damon is the easy answer. It's just the answer where none of you have to be the one who fails."

The room stayed silent for a long moment.

"She has her King's temper," someone murmured near the back, and there was the faintest ripple of something that might, in a room this cold, have passed for approval.

Ansgar studied her for a long moment, scar-bisected brow drawn tight. "And if we don't hand you over? If Damon makes good on his threat and the North Gate falls for real next time?"

"Then you fight," Eva said. "Because that's apparently what everyone in this fortress does instead of running, and I'd rather die fighting next to people who chose it than get handed over like a peace offering that doesn't even guarantee peace." She glanced at Alistair, who was watching her with an expression she didn't have a name for yet something between fury and awe. "Damon's letter didn't say he'd stop after he had me. It said he'd stop hurting people who weren't sworn to die for their King. I'm guessing that's every civilian in that city below the wall. You really think he keeps that promise once he's already broken every other one?"

"She's not wrong," Reyna said quietly from the doorway, arms crossed, silver eyes hard. "Damon doesn't negotiate. He collects."

Lady Voss's mouth thinned, but she said nothing further. Ansgar looked between Eva and Alistair for a long moment, weighing something Eva couldn't read, before finally inclining his head, slow and deliberate.

"The Council will not vote to surrender the King's mate," he said, "provided the King understands that her presence here is now this fortress's single greatest liability, and he will be expected to manage it accordingly."

"Understood," Alistair said.

"There is a second matter." Ansgar's expression shifted, grim in a new direction. "Word from the eastern border, while you were occupied in the human city. Three more scouting parties, spotted moving in formation. Damon isn't simply hunting your mate anymore, Your Majesty. He's positioning for war on multiple fronts, and he's doing it faster than any of us anticipated."

"How much faster?"

"Fast enough," Ansgar said, "that some of us believe the seven days in his letter to Ms. Cross were never meant to be taken literally."

Eva felt the floor tilt slightly under her feet. "You think he's going to move before then."

"I think," Ansgar said, "that Prince Damon does not send handwritten letters and armed scouting parties to a rival king's front gate out of patience. I think he already has everything in motion, and the letter was simply his courtesy of letting you watch it happen."

Alistair's hand found the small of Eva's back again, steady, grounding, the only warm thing in a room gone suddenly very cold.

"Then we move faster too," he said. "Reyna full lockdown on the fortress by nightfall. Ansgar, I want every border patrol doubled and eyes on the eastern pass within the hour."

"And Ms. Cross?" Lady Voss asked, with the particular sharpness of someone who hadn't finished being difficult. "What role does the human play in all this, exactly, beyond being the reason we're preparing for a war we weren't ready for?"

Eva opened her mouth to answer and the chamber doors slammed open before she could, a guard stumbling through them, breathless, blood streaked across his uniform.

"Your Majesty." He was fighting to catch his breath, and every head in the room turned toward him with the particular stillness of people bracing for the worst. "The eastern pass. It's already gone. They're not coming, Your Majesty."

He swallowed hard.

"They're here."