Rumors & Restlessness

POV: Luther

The council hall never changed.

Same carved wolves glaring from the beams. Same braziers pumping heat into stale air. The same men and women wrapped in velvet and certainty, pretending they could leash an Alpha with a vote.

I sat the way my father taught me—shoulders loose, hands light on the arms of the chair. A predator at rest. It made them sweat.

They droned through patrol rosters and winter stores until the door guards thumped their spears and a new scent cut the smoke—iron and arrogance.

The visiting Alpha from Iron Fang strode in with two lieutenants and a smile polished for an audience. Scars laddered his knuckles. Not decoration. Real.

He didn’t bow.

“Red Moon,” he said, letting the words scrape. “My father told me this hall felt larger.”

No one answered. He turned his smile on me.

“Your father built this pack with iron. You’ll let it die in silence.”

Recce surged in me like a storm.

I didn’t move. “Choose your next words carefully.”

“Oh?” His eyes widened, mock-innocent. “Shall I say Luna instead? That’s the word your elders choke on. Iron Fang hears the whispers: the Wolf of Wall Street with empty cradles at home.” His teeth flashed. “Half a wolf, some say. All masks. No legacy.”

The air went sharp. Elders froze. Even the braziers seemed to dim.

Recce’s claws raked bone. End him.

I stood. One step closed the space. Two fingers hooked his collar and slammed him into the wall so hard the sconces rang. His men lunged—Garron’s blade stopped them cold. The guards didn’t breathe.

“Say it again,” I said, low.

He spat blood at my boot. The scent hit like a spark.

I didn’t let Recce take over. I only let my hand shift—claw pressed at his throat. Not enough to tear. Enough to bleed. Bright beads welled under each point.

“Your father,” he rasped, eyes bulging, “would have—”

“My father taught me one truth,” I cut in, close enough to taste his fear. “Pack first.”

I pushed until a thin line of red marked his neck. “And pack means reminding you whose roof you stand under.”

“Alpha,” Mira said, too high, too fast.

I heard every heart hammering in the room. Fear. Not respect. It threaded the air like wire.

I opened my hand.

The Iron Fang Alpha crumpled, coughing, clutching his throat. He glared up, pride stitched over fear. He wanted to speak. He wasn’t stupid enough.

I turned on the council.

“You preach legacy,” I said, letting my gaze skate across Rowan, Mira, and the old men who thought gossip was law. “But your sons can’t last a round in the yard. Your captains collapse after three circuits. You want heirs? Breed courage first.”

Rowan’s mouth pinched. “We want a Luna.”

“So do I.” The confession landed heavily. “Find me one who can stand in this room, look my wolf in the eye, and breathe. Find me a woman who won’t die under my teeth because fate says her blood is thin. Bring her. I’ll mark her here.”

Silence fell like snow.

No one offered a name. Of course they didn’t.

“Strange,” I added softly. “You demand I choose, yet none of you step forward. Perhaps you know something your gossip doesn’t.”

Mira’s rings clicked. Rowan studied the floor. The Iron Fang Alpha dragged himself upright, pride badly sewn.

“Meeting’s over,” I said.

No one argued. Garron shadowed me out, jaw tight.

“You can’t keep baiting them,” he said once the doors closed. “They won’t cut you. They’ll cut the wolves under you.”

“I am the pack,” I answered.

He didn’t argue. That was the problem.

---

By noon I wore another skin.

Glass walls framed the skyline; cameras bloomed like steel flowers; microphones waited like prey. Humans called it a press conference. To me, it was a hunt with brighter lights.

“Mr. Reed, what’s the thesis behind the Archeon acquisition?” a reporter asked.

“Analysts confuse appetite with ability,” I said, and the room chuckled nervously. “Archeon failed because it feared the market. We don’t fear the market. We shape it.”

Another voice: “What’s your secret, Mr. Reed? How do you keep winning hostile takeovers?”

I let the cameras catch my eye. “Simple,” I said. “Eat or be eaten.”

Phones shot up. The clip would trend before I reached the elevator. Ruthless. Visionary. Inevitable. They loved me because I made their world make sense: the strongest wins.

Almost honest.

By the time the car carried me back through Red Moon’s gates, the headline was already live: REED: EAT OR BE EATEN. Someone had photoshopped a wolf into my headshot.

If only they knew.

---

Dusk bled out of the trees. The training hall stood dark, smelling of smoke and dust. I didn’t bother with lights.

The first dummy cracked at the ribs. The second lost its head. The third went through a pillar in a burst of straw. Still, the hollow stayed.

Recce circled. He mocked you. You let him walk.

“Not under my roof,” I muttered, breath hard.

You think roofs matter to the Goddess? Walls don’t keep fate out.

I punched through oak until splinters cut skin. Blood slicked my knuckles. Still not enough.

“She’s alive,” Recce said suddenly.

I stilled. Not the first time—but it hit different.

“Don’t.”

I feel her.

“You feel what you want.”

Her heat. Her scent. Now. Sparks. Four of them. Ours.

My palm flattened to the wall. Old stone. Cold.

“Pups,” I said, and the word broke in my mouth.

Heirs, Recce corrected gently. Not ghosts. Ours.

“You’re chasing shadows,” I said, but my throat had closed. A scent lingered, faint—cedar, dust, rain. A hand in my coat. A voice whispering tomorrow.

“I buried her,” I told the dark. “With my own words.”

Words don’t bury fate. They sharpen it.

Boots scuffed the doorway. Garron again.

“You’re keeping the yard awake,” he said carefully.

“Tell them to sleep.”

He didn’t leave. “The Iron Fang party cleared the border an hour ago. Fast.”

“They should.”

He hesitated. “They’re not wrong about the pressure.”

“I know,” I said too sharply.

He bowed out. The hall swallowed him.

I leaned into the scarred wall and let the quiet bleed in. Not the bond screaming as it once had. Not the lash that gutted me in the hall. Softer now. A hum under ice. Stubborn as tide.

Alive, Recce whispered. Closer than you think.

I shut my eyes. Didn’t chase it. Last time I chased, I lost.

But the truth cut clean: the elders could call me hollow, the humans could call me god—none of it mattered if the thing I’d thrown away refused to die.

I left the hall looking like war had passed through it. No one would ask. They were good at swallowing fear.

In the corridor, a servant flattened herself against the wall, smelling of bread and nerves. “Alpha,” she whispered as I passed.

The word rattled in my chest.

Outside, the forest breathed. Somewhere far away—or close—something answered.

Not a howl. Not yet.

But soon.