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Combat Arbitration

Author: I.O PIETRO
last update publish date: 2026-03-29 07:31:30

He nominated himself," Bastien says.

He is reading from his phone, a forwarded message from his pack attorney, and his voice has the particular flatness of a man who is unsurprised by something he finds deeply irritating.

"My father challenged you personally," I say.

"Yes."

I look out the car window at the highway moving past. We are forty minutes from the Crest compound and Gregor Crest has just added a layer to the morning that changes the geometry of everything.

He can't beat you, Soren says
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  • PREGNANT WITH THE ALPHA'S UNWANTED HEIR    The withdrawal

    "Dorian's nomination has been withdrawn," Soren says.He says it at seven in the morning, standing in the kitchen doorway with his coffee and the specific expression of someone reporting something they did not quite predict and are recalibrating around.I look up from the table.When, I say.Six forty-three AM, he says. Filed by Dorian himself through the interim council system. Not by a staff proxy. His own credentials. He pauses. No statement attached. Just withdrawal.Bastien comes in from the hall. He has been on a morning call. He reads Soren's face and then looks at me.Dorian withdrew himself, I say.He sits down.My father told him to, I say. Or Dorian read the same article my father read and drew his own conclusions about the value of the association. I look at the table. Either way, it happened before seven in the morning. Before anyone in the compound would have expected it.Neve's nomination is now unopposed, Soren says.Not technically. There is still a formal vote in twe

  • PREGNANT WITH THE ALPHA'S UNWANTED HEIR    Alone

    "He went to see my mother's grave," Ivy says.She calls at eleven that night, hours after he left the compound, and her voice has a different quality than it has had in any of our previous conversations. Not soft exactly. More like someone who has received information that doesn't fit cleanly into any existing category and is deciding what to do with it.How do you know, I say.Marta's contact in the northern village confirmed, she says. The old Crest burial ground is forty minutes north of the compound. He was there for two hours. Alone. She pauses. He sat by her grave for two hours and then drove back to the compound and went directly to his room.I sit with this for a moment.Bastien is beside me in the library and he is very still.Did he know Sera Finn's article was up before he left, I say.Yes, Ivy says. He saw it. Marta's contact said he read it in the main hall. He stood there reading it and then he put his phone in his pocket and walked to the car. She pauses. He did not say

  • PREGNANT WITH THE ALPHA'S UNWANTED HEIR    Viable

    "He kept a copy," I say.Not a question. Of course he kept a copy. He is Gregor Crest. He has kept copies of everything since before I was born. The originals went into the case that Ruth brought out of the compound. But originals have copies and copies have copies and a man who has been running a twenty-three year plan understands that documentation is infrastructure.Bastien is already in the room.He has the specific expression from the early days, the operational one, except it is different now because three months have changed what it sits alongside.The document is from when you were nine, he says.Yes, I say.It is in the tribunal record, he says. It is in the committee evidence file. It is referenced in the Pack Observer article. It is not a secret document. He holds my gaze. "The information is already public.Publishing it with viable circles is different from referencing that it exists, I say. He is going to let the image do the work. A medical record of a nine year old chi

  • PREGNANT WITH THE ALPHA'S UNWANTED HEIR    Meeting neve

    "I don't need Iron Fang's endorsement," Neve says.She says it immediately, before I have finished my opening sentence, and she says it without sharpness, just the plain statement of someone who has been clear with themselves about what they want and what they don't want and has had the conversation in her head many times already.I liked her immediately.She is twenty-eight years old and she is on the video call in what appears to be an office in the eastern management building, practical space, no decorative effort, a stack of boundary maps visible on the desk behind her. She has the kind of face that reveals nothing by default and reveals everything when it chooses to.I am not offering an endorsement, I say. I wanted to meet you.She looks at me for a moment.Why, she says.Because the Crest Pack Alpha will be my daughter's closest pack neighbor for her entire life, I say. And I would like to know what kind of person holds that position.Something shifts in Neve's expression. The

  • PREGNANT WITH THE ALPHA'S UNWANTED HEIR    The visitor

    "Get a description," Bastien says immediately.He says it to Soren, who is already texting Ivy before Bastien finishes the sentence, which is the particular efficiency that has developed in this building over the last two months, the way everyone knows what everyone else needs before the words are fully out.Ivy's response comes back in four minutes.Male. Late fifties. Grey at the temples. Carries himself like someone used to being in rooms where decisions are made. He arrived in a car with out-of-territory plates and went directly to the study without speaking to anyone in the main hall.Soren reads it and looks at his screen.Out-of-territory plates, he says. If I had the plate number I could trace the registration.Ivy sends the plate number thirty seconds later without being asked.She is paying attention to everything, Bastien says.She learned from our father, I say. The best parts.Soren is typing.I sit at the kitchen table and I think about who my father would call today, im

  • PREGNANT WITH THE ALPHA'S UNWANTED HEIR    The external call

    "Vane," Bastien says.He says it at eight in the evening after two hours of Soren pulling communication records through every available channel, and he says it with the specific flatness of someone who is not surprised but is not pleased either.Vane is removed from the council, I say.He is removed, Bastien says. He is not gone. He is sixty-three years old and he has thirty years of pack-world connections and a lifetime of accumulated knowledge about bloodline tracking and pack law. He looks at the table. My father approached him. Years ago. Before the contract. Before any of this.You think your father reached Vane this afternoon, I say.I think Vane is the only external party with enough knowledge, enough motivation, and enough remaining resentment to be useful to my father right now. He holds my gaze. Vane lost a thirty-year career in one council finding. He will not have accepted that quietly.Soren turns his laptop toward us.The screen shows a communication log from a pack-adja

  • PREGNANT WITH THE ALPHA'S UNWANTED HEIR    The wrong floor

    It's a council representative," Bastien says.He is looking at his phone, at the security feed thumbnail, and his face has done that particular rearrangement where something unexpected has arrived and he is deciding in real time what it means."Pack council?" Soren is already at the door."Inter-pa

  • PREGNANT WITH THE ALPHA'S UNWANTED HEIR    What the baby is

    "She knew," I say. "She knew the whole time."Nobody argues with me. That is how I know it's true.We are back in Nadia's office, all four of us this time, and Nadia is standing behind her desk with her hands flat on the surface and her eyes on me and the expression on her face is the specific expr

  • PREGNANT WITH THE ALPHA'S UNWANTED HEIR    What he got

    "Ask him what he got."I say it out loud in the elevator on the way back up and the words taste exactly as bitter as I expected.Bastien is standing beside me, not touching me, watching the floor numbers rise. He has the card in his hand. He has been holding it since the stairwell and I have not as

  • PREGNANT WITH THE ALPHA'S UNWANTED HEIR    The man in the corridor

    "Stay behind me."I almost laugh. Not because it's funny but because this morning I was a contract mate with a packed suitcase and a car booked for ten and now Bastien Rourke is pulling me into a stairwell with his hand flat against the door and his entire body tuned to something I can't hear yet.

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