29.Punishment

Elle

The day after I signed myself to Dominic for a year, he drove me back to Moonlight and held my hand for most of the trip.

He had let me sleep past noon. The bruise along my jaw had darkened, and Dominic kept looking at it as if he might turn the car around and hunt Soren down himself.

Each time his thumb crossed the moonstone at my wrist, the word from the rooftop came back.

Mate.

I kept it to myself.

Dominic had not repeated it after waking. He had ordered breakfast into the villa, argued with Mrs. Vale about whether I needed a physician for my jaw, and stood too close while I dressed. He behaved like a man whose wolf had nearly marked me and who remembered none of it.

That should have made the word meaningless.

My wolf disagreed.

The car slowed at Moonlight’s western boundary. Home reached me through the cracked window: pine, wet earth, woodsmoke, and the familiar pull of the pack bond. Boundary stones flashed beneath the ferns as they recognized my blood. My wolf lifted her head. Dominic’s answered with a low pressure beneath my skin, unwilling to release me even here.

Then shouting carried over the ridge.

Dominic went still. “Soren.”

He said the name like a sentence already passed.

“Dad banished him last night.” I pulled my sleeve over the bracelet. “If Soren came back, he came under guard.”

“That does not make him harmless.”

“No. It makes him desperate. Desperate men show you what they were hiding when they still had something to lose.”

Dominic studied me. His hand tightened once before he let go. “Call me if he gets within reach of you.”

“He won’t touch me.”

“Promise me you’ll call anyway.”

I almost told him I could handle Soren. The words felt cheap after everything Dominic had done for Franz, so I gave him the truth instead.

“I’ll call.”

He caught my hand again when I reached for the door. For a second, the king looked as if he had no idea what to do with it. Then he pressed his mouth to my knuckles.

“Thirty seconds,” I said.

His lips moved against my skin. “I’m getting worse.”

I shut the door before I could lean back through it and kiss him.

The car remained at the boundary while I followed the noise toward the packhouse. Dominic had no right to enter Moonlight without Dad’s invitation, and despite being king, he respected the old law. The knowledge warmed me almost as much as the fact that he did not drive away.

Beyond the training field, half the pack crowded the courtyard. Wolves filled the steps, balconies, and council path. Dad stood near the doors with Kevin at his right. Four warriors formed a loose ring around Soren.

The courtyard had been Moonlight’s hearing ground long before Dad became Alpha. The stone beneath our feet carried shallow claw marks from wolves who had challenged judgments, sworn blood oaths, and confessed crimes where the entire pack could scent a lie. No formal council had been called today, but the loose circle around Soren turned the argument into something older than a dispute over property. He stood where accused wolves stood, whether he understood it or not.

Pack members were still arriving through the paths between the pines. Bakers came with flour on their sleeves. Two patrols entered without changing out of their rain-dark uniforms. Even wolves who had defended Soren after Franz’s arrival kept their distance from him now. They had come to hear which version of the man survived daylight.

Mom watched from an upstairs window with one hand on the back of Franz’s chair. Dad had kept both of them clear of the courtyard, but Franz’s good eye was fixed on Soren. When he saw me, his shoulders dropped.

I touched the pack link. I’m here.

Franz could not answer through it yet, but Mom did. Her relief reached me first, followed by a fierce command.

Do not let that bastard touch you.

I almost smiled. Apparently Dominic and Mom had found common ground.

Three wooden crates sat at Soren’s feet.

“The house was mine,” he shouted. “The car was mine. I earned every damn thing you locked away.”

Kevin held an inventory ledger against his chest. “Your clothes, personal records, and anything you owned before joining Moonlight are in those boxes. The house, vehicle, accounts, and land were assigned under the succession charter. They returned to the pack when Alpha Mason revoked your rank.”

“He can’t revoke gifts because his daughter spread her legs for a king.”

Dad’s power struck the courtyard hard enough to shake water from the pines.

Soren’s head snapped toward me.

Dominic’s scent clung to my skin. It was in my hair, beneath my clothes, and woven through the moonstone at my wrist. Soren recognized it. The last polish fell from his face.

Once, I would have prepared for the punishment that followed that look. Now my wolf bared her teeth, and hatred settled inside me like a blade finding its sheath.

“You didn’t waste any time,” Soren said.

“Neither did you. Franz had been free less than a day before you came back for property you were given while you tried to take his place.”

A murmur moved through the courtyard.

Soren faced the crowd as though it still belonged to him. For years, he had won warriors, elders, and families one private conversation at a time until his ambition sounded like loyalty. His scent no longer moved through the pack bond, but habit made wolves listen.

“You all know me,” he said. “You trained beside me. I defended this boundary. I sat in council when Elle walked away from the succession and Mason had no blood heir. Now a stranger appears with a birthmark and a story, and I’m condemned before anyone asks what he wants.”

His voice still carried the shape of authority. The power beneath it was gone.

An older warrior near the training path shifted uneasily. Soren saw it and pressed harder.

“I spent years earning a place here. I bled for this pack while Franz lived under Silver Claw protection. You have one test arranged by Mason, one accusation from a woman who hated me the moment I found my true mate, and suddenly everything I built belongs to a man none of you knew existed yesterday.”

Franz flinched behind the glass.

I stepped into the ring of warriors. “Silver Claw didn’t protect him. They tortured him after you left him outside our boundary to die.”

Soren’s mouth curled. “That is what he told you.”

“He told us you recognized his birthmark.”

“He told you exactly what he needed to become an Alpha heir.”

The lie moved through the courtyard, searching for fear. Some wolves rejected it immediately. Others remembered the years Soren had spent beside Dad and hesitated.

That was how he worked. He did not need everyone to believe him. He needed enough uncertainty to make truth look like one more side in an argument.

Dad descended the packhouse steps.

“You want Moonlight to hear you?” he asked.

Soren lifted his chin. “I want the hearing you denied me.”

Dad stopped in the center of the courtyard. The Alpha power around him settled, no longer a blow but something deeper. Wolves at the rear straightened. Patrols beyond the trees turned toward us. Children fell silent in homes scattered through the territory.

Then Dad opened the pack link completely.

Hundreds of familiar minds pressed close. The bond carried the scent of home, the weight of old oaths, and the attention of every wolf who had accepted Dad’s protection. Soren stood in the middle of it and felt nothing.

He only saw everyone answer a command he could no longer hear.

For the first time since I had known him, fear touched his scent.

Dad looked at the wolves gathered around us and then at the man he had once planned to make Alpha.

“Soren asked for Moonlight to hear him,” he said through the bond. “Moonlight will hear everything.”

His gaze settled on Soren.

“You wanted questions. Now you will answer them.”