Page 106 of Wolf's Vow

I looked between them and the males in front of me. “Why am I here?” I asked them. “Really? Why bring me here? What is it that you want?”

“Alpha Wolfe,” Deryn said, not even hiding the condescension, “some in this chamber have raised concerns that your…forceful methods reflect a dangerous precedent. That your merging of packs across territories, your reliance on raw power, even your choice of mate—all of it—strays dangerously close to personal ambition, not pack stability.”

“Some?” I asked. “You mean you.” Murmurs answered me. “And I did notchoosemy mate; Luna did.” My eyes swept the chamber. “As every one of you knows, the true mate of an alpha is the Goddess’s Will, not mine.”

“You mistake us,” the oldest member who had spoken to me before said, and he sounded tired. So very tired. “Our concern is not a personal slight on you, boy, it’s procedural.”

Alpha Deryn shifted the line of inquiry, and I felt the trap snap into place. “This…Corrin and Galvin,” he said, tapping his fingers against the desk. “Former elders. Advisors to your predecessor. You claim they’re complicit in organizing rogue movements?”

“No,” I said coolly, my temper climbing. “I’ve proven it. He fed information to someone outside of Blueridge Hollow. Our border patrols were compromised. Shiftersdied.”

“And yet you’ve kept them alive,” another one said—one of the quieter Council members until now. His voice was polished, almost bored. “Why?”

“Because I want answers. Don’t you?” I bit back my sigh. “And I know he didn’t do it alone.”

“Your predecessor,” another began carefully, “ran Blueridge Hollow with the support of pack elders. With stability. Since you became alpha, there has been…unrest. Might we suggest that the instability stems not from this Galvin’s or Corrin’s so-called betrayal, but from your…disbanding of Blueridge Hollow’s traditional power structures?”

I would have laughed, but they were serious.

“You think the problem is that I upset the system?” I took a slow step forward. “There is something broken, but it is not me, and it is not my pack.”

“Which pack?”

I turned back to the one who sat behind me.

“Which pack do you mean…Stonefang or Blueridge Hollow?” they asked me.

“Is that what this is?” I asked slowly. “That I hold two territories?”

“Should your question not be, should I be allowed to?” Deryn asked me, his eyes watchful as he looked at me.

“Who told you my pack was being attacked?” I asked instead. “How did you know?” I waited for an answer, and when one wasn’t forthcoming, I nodded slowly. “You’re watching. Am I right?”

“That is not what we asked you,” Deryn reminded me.

“No, it isn’t,” I conceded. “But it’s whatIam asking you. You know of the attacks, the deaths, all of it. Either one of my pack told you or you’re watching and your spies told you.”

“You sound delusional,” the one behind me muttered.

I turned to them. “Do I? Or do I sound like an alpha?” I leaned forward and sniffed. “Which you are not. Are you?”

Deryn called my attention back to him. “Wolfe…”

“Send your spies into Blueridge Hollow, have them and a group of my pack take Corrin, Galvin, and the others to you, and interview them. Hear the truth you won’t hear from me.”

Silence. Not one of them agreed, and I knew in that moment that they wouldn’t. Because someone up here was already protecting them.

Covering for them.

“You didn’t summon me to investigateunrest. You summoned me because of the size of my pack.”

“We summoned you,” Deryn said carefully, “to ensure thatbothpacks remain intact.”

“No,” I said. “You summoned me to see if you could pin blood on my hands and call the rest a coincidence.”

One of them shifted in their seat, and another dropped their gaze when I caught their eye. Guilty. Or worse—complicit.

I looked at all of them now, faces impassive, carefully hiding their agenda.