Page 92 of The Fated Hunter Wolf

I caught his golden eyes, seeing protective worry warring with the need to support Logan’s crucial moment. Alpha Thorne was beginning formal pronouncements about Council procedures for agenda confirmation, ignoring the crisis unfolding in conversations around the room.

Behind me, Eve’s presence pulsed again through the bond—a warning to maintain silence. When I risked the briefest glance at her, her finger was pressed to her lips.

The message was clear: not here, not now, not in front of hundreds of supernatural beings who might be complicit in whatever was happening to those prisoners.

Transport arrives in ninety minutes, Astrid’s voice whispered through the bond, her abilities allowing her to communicate without breaking her illusion.If we don’t intercept them tonight…

The unfinished sentence hung in the air. Tomorrow’s auction would scatter those prisoners across supernatural networks that could take decades to trace. Some would disappear entirely, absorbed into private collections or breeding programs that existed in the darkest corners of our world. Or worse.

Orion. Crux. Rhys. I was caught between three different loyalties, three different bonds, three different crises converging in ways that could destroy everything we’d worked to build.

Logan was preparing to reclaim Orion’s place in supernatural governance. In the audience, hundreds of pack leaders debated territorial boundaries while Crux prisoners in chains dreaded their fate.

The auction was tomorrow. The transport was tonight.

And somewhere in this room sat the supernatural beings responsible for maintaining a trafficking network that operated under the noses of their supposed colleagues.

I had to decide which bond I was willing to break.

31

RHYS

Logan stepped onto the stage, and my wolf went silent.

Not calm. Silent. The way predators became still before they struck.

His emotions slammed into me through our bond—pride mixed with frustration, the weight of betting everything on words that might get us all killed. The guilt of Wyatt and Nash. His alpha presence rolled out across the assembly hall, making lesser wolves show signs of submitting without thinking.

This was it. Everything we’d worked for, everything Logan had sacrificed to keep our pack breathing, came down to the next five minutes.

Logan scanned the packs, nostrils flaring. “Today I formally offer Orion sanctuary to any pack, any wolf, any supernatural being threatened by those who would exploit their vulnerability.”

Silence.

My heart hammered against my ribs.Come on, you bastards. Give him a chance.

Alpha Emmanuel Vex threw back his head and laughed.

The sound hit me like claws across bare skin. My wolf snarled, every muscle going taut as their mockery bounced off the marble walls.

“Sanctuary?” Vex’s voice dripped poison. “Look at what Orion has become.”

The laughter spread—Cassiopeia first, then their allies, until half the room was choking on their amusement. Only those packs who held power dared to laugh. The rest were waiting and watching. No one spoke up in support. My vision went red around the edges.

“Six years without a single birth,” someone called out.

“Internal fighting with Heraclid refugees.”

“The cursed bloodline offers protection?”

Each word landed like a fist. Through our bond, Logan’s humiliation was burning in my chest, his control fracturing just enough to bleed through.

My wolf was done with this shit.

“You laugh,” I shouted, and the two hundred or so shifters turned to look at me. “But what you don’t see is the power of the bond in Orion. What Logan has built, what he has saved from the ash, is a pack where every shifter knows they are safe. No one is forgotten. No one is left to suffer. In Orion, we don’t abandon pack. Ever.”

My claws were already pushing through my fingertips. Screw diplomacy. If these bastards wanted to mock my brother, they could do it while I tore their throats out.