Burn Him

Chapter 2: Burn Him

Lucian's Pov

There is a specific kind of quiet that follows a confession and I know it well because I have been in enough rooms where someone said something true and the air just stopped moving while everyone decided what to do with it.

This one lasted about four seconds before it became the loudest room I had ever been in.

They took me by both arms before I finished my next breath, two of Scrolsal's men who had clearly been waiting for a reason to be in charge all evening.

I let them, because fighting in that moment would have made me look like I regretted it and I didn't, not yet, not while I could still see Kae Armstrong standing across the table looking at me like I had just spoken in a language he didn't know existed.

That look was worth something. I hadn't decided what yet.

They put me in a room on the twenty-eighth floor with one light and no windows and a lock that was built for humans, not for what I am.

I sat down on the single chair and waited because waiting was the only move I had right now and I have never been bad at waiting.

What I was bad at, it turned out, was the next two hours.

The voices sounded through the walls the way they do in old buildings, not clearly, just enough to catch pieces of it.

They were Scrolsal's voice mostly, but then a word I hadn't heard applied to anyone in eleven years sounded out.

“Burn him.”

The old law, the one that hasn't been enforced since before my father was an Alpha, says that any wolf who raises a hand against the ruling Alpha of the territory forfeits their right to a clean death.

It’s like there will be no pack burial or rites. You burn and your line burns with you, your pack will get disbanded, your territory will be absorbed, and your name will be removed from every record that matters.

I knew that when I stood up. I want to be clear about that, I had done the math before I opened my mouth and I had stood up anyway, and I am not going to sit in this chair and pretend the math wasn't terrifying.

The voices got louder for a moment then went quiet.

Then someone disagreed and I heard that too because the someone was Kae Armstrong and Kae Armstrong disagreeing with a room sounds like a controlled detonation.

I leaned back in the chair and looked at the ceiling.

Interesting.

Scrolsal came to me first, alone, about forty minutes later, and he sat down across from me with his hands folded the way he always sits and he looked at me the way he looks at problems he's already solved in his head.

"You understand what the vote means," he said.

"I understood before I called it."

"Then you understand that Armstrong objecting doesn't change the count, it only delays it, and a delay is not a reprieve." He tilted his head. "I want you to know there is no personal satisfaction in this for me Lucian."

"I believe you," I said, because I did, Scrolsal was a lot of things but petty wasn't one of them.

"Then you also understand that his objection puts him in a complicated position and I intend to make that clear to him." He stood, smoothed his jacket. "I thought you should know what's coming."

He left and I thought about what he'd said and what he hadn't said and what it meant that Kae had objected at all.

I was still thinking about it twenty minutes later when the door opened again.

Kae Armstrong came in and closed the door and stood there and looked at me and I looked back.

"Why?" he asked.

"Good evening to you too," I said.

"Lucian." His voice dropped as he said my name. "Why?"

I looked at him for a moment. At the line of his jaw and the way he was holding himself very carefully still the way he does when he's working hard not to react to something.

"Help me get out of here," I said instead..

The silence that followed was a different kind, it was more weird than the one in the summit room.

"You're asking me," Kae said slowly, "to help you escape a lawful detention, in a building full of Alphas who already suspect me of one crime tonight."

"Yes."

"Help you escape," he repeated. "The man whose territory shares a border with mine, whose pack has been a problem for two straight years, and whose removal from the board tonight gives me a direct and uncomplicated path to the Alpha title." He stepped closer. "You're asking me to give that up."

"Yes." I looked up to his eyes.

"Give me one reason." He stared back at mine.

I stare more at the man who had been my rival for six years and my problem for longer than that and the person I had crossed a room full of hostile Alphas for without stopping to think about what that meant.

"Because you won't do it," I said. "Not because you're noble. Or because you owe me anything." I leaned forward. "But because you know what I know Kae, and you've known it longer than I have, and the only reason you're standing here asking me why instead of standing upstairs watching them schedule my burning is because some part of you already answered that question."

He just kept staring at me. The thing about Kae Armstrong is that he never loses his composure. In six years I have never once seen this man look like the ground moved under him.

But right now, he just lost his composure because he looked like the ground moved under him.

He didn't say anything for a long time and when he finally opened his mouth.

Then my phone beeped. I looked down at the screen as I read the name on the screen. It was my Beta. And the message beneath the name said only four words.

“They know about Elara.”****