Chapter 8: The Idiot's Reckoning

The heavy mahogany doors to my private office didn't just open; they were violently kicked off their brass latch.

I barely had time to set my whiskey glass on the desk before Alpha Orion of the Ironclaw Pack stormed into the room. My father. He didn't look like a man arriving for a family reunion. He looked exactly as he had for the last thirty-two years: an immovable, scarred wall of muscle and absolute, suffocating arrogance.

He brought the freezing scent of winter wind with him, but beneath it was something sharper. The metallic tang of fresh blood and wood-ash.

Two of his massive, grey-furred personal guards stepped into the room behind him.

"Out," my father barked, not looking at them. His flat, cold eyes were locked entirely on me.

My own Beta, Thorne, had rushed into the hallway behind them, looking panicked. I caught Thorne's eye and gave a tight, sharp nod. Thorne backed away, pulling the broken doors shut as best as he could, leaving me, Selena, and my father alone in the sudden, tense silence of my office.

Neither of us moved to embrace.

"You look like hell," my father said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. He crossed the room without invitation and braced both of his massive hands flat on my desk, leaning over the polished wood. "My southern border camp was reduced to a crater of ash at dawn this morning."

I frowned, my beast bristling at his aggressive posture. "And how is it my business if you were attacked by rogues?"

"Rogues don't ride in expensive fucking armor, you fool," my father spat, his upper lip curling to bare his teeth. "It was the Lycan King’s vanguard. They rode straight through my territory, slaughtered twenty of my best warriors, and didn't even pause to demand a toll. I rode here to find out what the hell you did to provoke the King of this continent into mobilizing his army so close to my borders."

I stared at him. The King’s vanguard?

A slow, arrogant smirk pulled at the corner of my mouth. I picked my whiskey glass back up, leaning casually into the high back of my leather chair.

"I didn't provoke him," I said, taking a slow sip. "In fact, I did business with him. He passed through the Frostbane square this afternoon during the Slave Trade."

My father didn't blink. "And?"

"And he made a fool of himself," I scoffed, waving my hand dismissively. "He filed a mate-claim on a piece of Frostbane trash. I sold him my ex-wife for a chest of gold, and he rode off with her."

The office went completely, dead quiet.

My father stared at me, his thick brow furrowing. "Liora?" he rasped. "The barren one? The Lycan King’s mate?" He let out a harsh, incredulous bark of laughter. "That is the most impossible nonsense I have ever heard in my sixty years on this earth. A god of war mated to a dormant weakling?"

"Exactly," I said, leaning back with a cold, vindicated smile. "There's nothing to worry about. The King is notorious for his twisted psychological games. He puts his tributes on a pedestal before he snaps their necks. By tomorrow morning, he’ll realize she's defective garbage and toss her in the toilets."

My father didn't smile back. The vein in his thick neck began to violently throb.

"Do you think his Vanguard cares if it's a game?" my father roared, his fist slamming down on my heavy ironwood desk so hard the timber splintered. My whiskey glass toppled over, amber liquid spilling across the maps. "Do you think his army pauses to check if a claim is biologically valid before they start burning our borders? Whether it's a joke or not, you publicly sold a woman the King called mate!"

I stood up so fast my chair crashed to the floor behind me. "I was getting rid of her! I did what you told me to do!"

"I told you to dispose of her quietly!" my father bellowed, his spit flying. "Not put her on a public block and charge the most ruthless warlord on the continent for the privilege of taking her! You just gave him a legal excuse to wipe our entire bloodline off the map!"

"She is defective!" I yelled back, my beast clawing at my ribs. "She is weak! He took her straight from the clinic cot. She was bleeding, shivering, and clutching a miserable, premature brat!"

My father froze. The sheer, explosive rage radiating off him suddenly evaporated, replaced by a cold, terrifying stillness.

"A brat," my father repeated. His voice dropped to a whisper.

"Yes," I sneered, feeling a surge of triumph that I finally had the upper hand. "A pathetic, premature mistake that tore her womb apart. I smelled it myself before I dragged her to the square. It didn't have a single drop of Alpha blood. The miserable thing smelled entirely human."

My father stared at me. All the color drained from his weathered, scarred face.

He slowly stood up straight, looking at me not with anger, but with the profound, horrifying realization that he was looking at the dumbest creature on the face of the earth.

"You absolute, brainless fucking whelp," my father breathed, stepping back from the desk as if my stupidity were contagious.

"Excuse me?" my beast snarled.

"You didn't read the ancient texts, did you?" my father asked, his voice shaking with a mixture of terror and fury. "You spent your entire life in the training ring, but you never bothered to read the Lycan lore in the archives."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I snapped.

"Pure Lycan royal pups," my father said, his words dropping like anvils onto the floorboards. "When a royal Lycan heir is born prematurely, their aura is too dense for their fragile bodies to handle. To survive, their biology instinctively masks their scent. It suppresses the wolf entirely to hide them from predators until they are strong enough to shift."

My blood ran completely cold. My lungs stopped working.

"They don't smell like fucking wolves, Kaelen," my father whispered, his grey eyes wide with disbelief. "They smell human."

The ringing in my ears was deafening.

"No," I choked out. "No, she is a wolf-less…"

"You didn't just throw away a human mistake!" my father suddenly bellowed. "You just handed the Lycan King a god-tier royal heir! You gave away the ultimate biological weapon! You handed him our bloodline's greatest asset, and you charged him a bag of gold for it!"