Chapter 3

Hours had passed since the notification for the meeting and the Alpha found his progeny tarrying. They had fashioned their score of disjointed excuses before gathering round at last. Presently however, the chair directly across Lucian remained vacant. It was Callum's. Lucian tapped his feet and fingers impatiently. Rowan gnawed away at his fingernails. Something he did out of habit. Freya had her head under her arm on the table, idly fiddling with her pencil between her fingers.

They heard Callum and Selena laugh heartily in their usual fashion.

Lucian shook his head in incredulity. They were really something else.

“What is this misdemeanour?” The Alpha barked as they rounded into the Council Room.

"My sincerest apologies, Dad..." Callum trailed off.

At once, his eyes took in the singular empty chair. “Uhh-” His eyes searched the availability for another. "-I'm pretty sure we need one more chair?"

Lucian chuckled somewhere deep in the recesses of his chest.

Selena was distraught. How pliant her wolf was under his air. It had immediately curled in on itself.

“I suppose Leni didn't quite get the information across,” He said, a smile playing on his lips and Selena saw how little of an effort he put to merely keep his eyelids open, a match to his smack indifference. His smile fell. “Only those marked by blood.” He said jabbing his index on the table.

Selena caught herself ensnared in his ivy green eyes. They were mesmerising.

She rushed to take shelter behind Callum's frame and cast her eyes down at the marble flooring. In part, because she didn't know what to say. But chiefly, to soothe her restless wolf. He was obviously doing this to spite her. Or perhaps he had become unnerved like she was about the reality they were about to face. An imminent, discordant contingency which she prayed to be some inaccuracy.

“I believe I was not speaking to you” Callum said coolly.

“For Moon's sake it's a meeting, Cal. Are you allergic to separation?" Rowan chimed in.

Callum shifted his gaze to his father. “Then you'll have to excuse my absence”

“Most tragic. Door's that way” Lucian gestured with his hand.

"She sits at the table!"

Selena touched his shoulder. “That's enough Cal-” She couldn't bear to be within the precincts of such strong alluring energy anyway, and defiant to her will at that. It drove her mad. Callum turned towards her. “I'll just go hang out with my sister. She wanted to see me.”

He sighed. “Okay. But please come back soon.”

Selena offered a faint smile. He squeezed her hand once before letting her go.

“Selly?”

Selena looked over her shoulder. It was Uncle Bane. “Do stop by at my quarters tomorrow” He blinked tiredly. “I have some important news for you”

Fear gripped Selena. She nodded and Callum watched her silently round the corner.

Somewhat dejected, he strolled over to his seat, hands buried in his pockets and his head bowed.

Alpha Renwick inhaled, clasping his hands at the table.

“In the absence of further petty disruptions from bursts of sentiment,” he said, as Callum plopped into the seat beside Rowan, “–I won’t waste your time... I’ve called for this gathering to officially disclose a few things.”

Lucian caught his father glancing at him from the corner of his eye, stern, immovable.

“Of which Lucian is already aware”

The table, expansive enough as it was, stretched endlessly before his eyes. His father swam further away from him, growing smaller and more distant. The chandelier above scorched too close to his face. Freya's pencil tapping poked at his nerves. If she didn't persist, the pencil was going out the window. With her.

“For many a paragon is come undone by time, and his deeds eventually forgotten… so must I.” His tone was polished, political. “But Moonglade shall endure forevermore.”

Whenever his father spoke in cipher, Lucian knew he meant business.

He fought the urge to roll his eyes. And then came the silence, long, heavy, and nerve-racking. The kind that let those obtrusive words nestle deep in his mind.

Uncle Bane’s eyes found his, soft, steady, ever understanding. Lucian looked away.

Then Rowan broke silence.

“But seriously... what were you doing at the portal?” he asked. Every head turned. Even the Betas.

“Trying to teleport into early retirement?” Rowan added, raising a brow. “Because unless you’ve secretly got nine lives, that move was borderline ridiculous.”

Alpha Renwick didn’t say a word.

Rowan blinked.

“Things could’ve gone terribly wrong, you know.”

“Your Luna doesn't even want to be found" Callum muttered under his breath.

Alpha Renwick shot Callum a glare. He jolted from his seat, slamming his fist onto the table. "We're dismissed."

He stormed out of the Council Room.