CHAPTER 34 — The Invitation

Something in me went very, very still.

Crowe’s voice rolled on about “public safety” and “restoring order,” but the important part had already crawled across the screen and sunk its claws in.

*With or without the Alpha’s consent.*

Daire’s consent.

My consent.

Neither mattered to a man who thought of me as a line item.

I turned the TV off.

The sudden silence rang louder than the broadcast.

***

The invitation arrived the next morning.

Not as a text. Not as a tribunal notice. As a physical card, hand-delivered by one of Ira’s glowering runners who looked like he’d rather be doing anything else.

He held it out to me in the pawnshop doorway, arm straight, as if the envelope might explode.

“Came by courier,” he muttered. “Said to put it in “Mrs. Vhaloren’s” hand only. I told him you didn’t live here. He said I was cute.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking it.

The envelope was thick, cream, and heavy enough to feel expensive. My name—*Elowen Mara Vhaloren*—was written in an elegant, looping script tha