Fated Hearts: The Dark Secrets of Hollowbrooke Academy

POV: Reed Ashen The council meeting started at seven and Reed knew it was bad before he even sat down. He knew because Elder Voss had brought the manila folders. Voss only brought folders when he wanted something to feel official. Like paperwork made it less ugly. Reed took the chair closest to the door out of habit and watched the eight elders settle in around the long oak table. His father sat at the head of it, Alpha Marcus Ashen, shoulders straight, face the same temperature it always was. Somewhere between stone and ice. His cousin Damon was already seated two chairs down with his ankle crossed over his knee like he owned the room. He didn't own anything yet. He liked to practice though. "We'll begin." Marcus didn't look up from his notes. "Voss." Elder Voss opened his folder. He had the kind of face that looked permanently disappointed, deep lines around his mouth, heavy brows, the expression of someone who had decided the world owed him something and was still waiting on delivery. "We've confirmed Valentine presence at the neutral summit next month," Voss said. "Two heirs, limited escort. Their father is sending them as a show of good faith." "Good faith." Reed repeated it before he could stop himself. Voss looked at him over the folder. "The Valentine Alpha believes the summit is an opportunity for diplomacy." "Okay," Reed said. "So it is." Damon made a small sound. Not quite a laugh. Reed didn't look at him. "It is an opportunity," Marcus said. He turned his coffee cup one slow rotation on the table. Reed had watched him do that his whole life. It meant his father was choosing his words. "Not for diplomacy." The silence that followed had a shape to it. Reed felt it press against his chest. "Say it out loud," Reed said. "If you're going to put it in a folder and call a meeting, say it out loud." Voss set the folder down. "We intend to neutralize the Valentine heirs at the summit." "Neutralize." Reed looked at his father. "They're teenagers." "They are enemies." Marcus's voice stayed even. Quiet. The quiet was always worse than yelling. "They are the children of the family that took your mother. That took your pack's Luna. You of all people should understand what justice looks like." "Mom has been gone for six years." Reed's hands found the edge of the table. He pressed his palms flat against the wood to keep them still. "Killing kids at a peace summit isn't justice. That's just more bodies. That's just us becoming exactly what we say they are." Damon uncrossed his ankle. Leaned forward with his elbows on the table and his eyebrows raised like Reed was saying something amusing. "No one said anything about kids. They're heirs. There's a difference." "How old is the younger one." Reed looked straight at Voss. "How old." Voss didn't answer. "Seventeen," one of the other elders said quietly, from the far end of the table. He didn't look up when he said it. Reed pushed back from the table and stood. "Sit down." Marcus didn't raise his voice. He never had to. "The vote." Reed looked around the room. Eight elders, his father, his cousin. Every face already decided. "When did you take it? Before this meeting? Before I got here?" "You are not yet Alpha," Marcus said. "You do not hold a vote." "Then why am I here." Nobody answered that either. Damon leaned back in his chair with a small smile that he aimed at the ceiling, like he was being very patient and gracious about all of this. Like he was already running the numbers on what Reed's failure meant for him. Reed picked up his jacket from the back of the chair. "Reed." His father's voice followed him toward the door. "Leaving this room right now is a statement. You understand that." "Good," Reed said. "I want it to be." He walked out and closed the door behind him, not slamming it, which took more out of him than the entire meeting had. The hallway was dark and long and smelled like cedar and his mother's old perfume that still lived in the walls somehow, six years later, like the house refused to let her go even when everyone in it had moved on to using her memory as ammunition. He made it to the back porch before his aunt found him. Sarah Ashen had her reading glasses pushed up on her head and her cardigan half on, like she'd been in the middle of something when she heard him leave. She sat down on the top step without asking if he wanted company. She knew better than to ask. For a while neither of them said anything. The Oregon dark sat heavy over the tree line, wet and pine-thick, the kind of night that felt like it was listening. "I heard most of it," Sarah said. "Then you already know everything." "I know you did the right thing." She paused. "I also know that room doesn't care about right." Reed sat down next to her. His wolf was still pacing, still pushing against his ribs, wanting to run or fight or do something with all this feeling that had nowhere to go. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. "Damon thinks this is funny." "Damon has been waiting for you to fall since you were twelve years old." Sarah's voice was flat about it. Not mean. Just honest. "Don't give him the satisfaction of actually falling." "Maybe he should just have it." Reed dropped his hands. Looked out at the trees. "The title. The whole thing. I'm not going to sit in that room and vote on which teenagers we're going to ambush this month." "Your mother used to say something almost exactly like that." Reed's throat closed. "Don't," he said. "I'm not trying to hurt you. I'm trying to remind you that who you are isn't a weakness. It's the only thing in that house worth keeping." Sarah reached into her cardigan pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, held it out to him. "There's a school. Hollowbrooke Academy. It's where pack heirs go when they need space to figure out who they actually are before everyone else finishes deciding for them." Reed looked at the paper but didn't take it. "Dad's sending me away." "I suggested it. Your father agreed because he thinks distance will make you more manageable." She held the paper steady. "I'm suggesting it because I think it might be the only place you get to be seventeen for five minutes before they finish turning you into something else." He took the paper. He didn't unfold it. He just held it and looked at the tree line where the dark got thick enough to disappear into. "She would've hated all of this," he said. "Mom. She would've hated what he became." Sarah didn't answer. Which was its own answer. After she went inside, Reed sat on the steps alone for a long time. He pulled out his phone, opened the voice memo app, and picked out a chord progression he'd been working on for three weeks. No words yet. Just a feeling he didn't have language for, the specific feeling of being surrounded by people who shared your blood and having absolutely nowhere to put anything true. He recorded forty seconds of it. Listened back once. Deleted it. Then he went inside and started packing.