Chapter 25

Ryker's POV

The letter arrived sealed in plain wax, no house crest pressed into it, delivered by a rider I didn't recognize who refused to wait for a reply, and I carried it up to my room before I opened it, some old instinct telling me this wasn't something I wanted my father reading over my shoulder before I understood it myself.

The handwriting inside wasn't one I knew, careful and slanted, and it took me a moment to realize the letter wasn't addressed to me at all, but to my father, apparently delivered to my room by mistake by a rider who didn't know one Ashwood from another, and even as guilt told me to seal it back up and hand it over unread, curiosity won out the moment I saw Elara's name written plainly in the second line.

*Elder Mathis sends his gratitude for the information regarding the Ashwood ceremony and the girl's history.

It has proven useful in building the council's case against the King's attachment.

He asks that you continue supplying whatever details you can regarding her upbringing.

Particularly anything concerning her mother's arrival in the pack, as this may prove valuable in questioning the legitimacy of any claim she attempts to make within Nightfall Hollow's succession laws.

I read it three times before the meaning fully settled, cold and ugly, into my chest.

My father wasn't simply watching from a distance, wringing his hands over political theory the way he'd tried to make it sound at dinner weeks ago.

He was actively feeding information to someone inside Kael's own court, someone working to tear apart whatever Elara had found there, and he'd been doing it since before I'd even had the chance to fully understand what my own rejection of her had set into motion.

I found him in his study that evening, the letter clutched in my hand, and the moment he saw my face, whatever calm he usually wore dropped away fast enough that I knew immediately he understood exactly what I was holding.

"That wasn't meant for your eyes," he said, setting down the papers he'd been reviewing with careful, deliberate slowness.

"It was meant for yours, apparently, which is somehow worse." I threw the letter onto his desk, my hands shaking with an anger I hadn't let myself feel this fully since the night of the ceremony. "You're working with someone inside Nightfall Hollow.

Against her, after everything you said about protecting family, about wanting to understand what she was so you could look out for her, you're actively helping some elder tear apart her life."

"I'm protecting this pack," my father said, his voice hardening into something I recognized from years of watching him negotiate with rival Alphas, cold and utterly convinced of his own righteousness.

"Do you understand what it means for Ashwood if a woman born within our territory ends up sitting beside the most powerful Lycan King in three kingdoms, with no ties left to the pack that raised her?

We lose any claim to influence over that bloodline entirely, Ryker.

Every advantage her existence might have brought us disappears the moment she severs herself from us completely, and every day that passes, she grows more attached to that court instead of this one."

"She's not a resource," I said. "She's a person. A person you helped me destroy in front of two hundred witnesses because you were too much of a coward to explain what you actually suspected about her before it was already too late to fix."

"I did what was necessary at the time, with the information I had." My father's jaw tightened. "And I'm doing what's necessary now, with the information I have currently, which is considerably more than I had that night.

Elder Mathis reached out to me weeks ago, concerned about the stability of what's happening in Nightfall Hollow, and I saw an opportunity to salvage something from a situation you created when you rejected her without consulting me on the timing."

The blame landed exactly where he intended it to, an old, familiar tactic, and for a moment the guilt threatened to swallow whatever anger I'd walked in with, before I forced myself to hold onto the fury instead, because guilt had kept me quiet for weeks already, and quiet hadn't helped Elara at all.

"What exactly does Mathis want from this," I asked. "What is he actually trying to do to her?"

"Discredit her claim," my father said simply, like it was the most reasonable thing in the world.

"If her bloodline has no legal standing within Nightfall Hollow's succession laws, if enough doubt is cast on the legitimacy of her mother's origins, the council retains grounds to limit her influence regardless of whatever bond she shares with the King.

It protects the stability of that court, and it ensures Ashwood pack isn't simply cut out of any future advantage her bloodline might offer."

"You're helping him erase her," I said slowly, the full shape of it finally settling clear in my mind. "Make her into nothing again, the same way I made her into nothing at that ceremony, except this time it's permanent.

This time there's no King standing beside her to catch her when it happens."

"That's not my concern."

"It should be." My voice came out rougher than I intended, something raw underneath the anger that I hadn't expected to still be carrying this deep, weeks after I'd told myself I'd made peace with losing any claim to her at all.

"I rejected her because you convinced me it was necessary, because you filled my head with doubts about her strength, her worth, everything I was too blind to question at the time.

I've spent every day since watching that decision eat away at me, and now I find out the entire reason you pushed me toward it was so you could keep some kind of leverage over her bloodline for this pack's benefit."

My father's expression didn't soften, didn't offer even the smallest crack of the regret I found myself desperately wanting to see there.

"Sentiment doesn't protect a pack, Ryker. I did what a leader has to do.

Someday, when you're Alpha, you'll understand that difficult choices rarely feel good in the moment they're made."

I stared at him for a long moment, this man I'd spent my whole life trying to make proud, and felt something inside me settle into a decision I hadn't fully realized I was building toward until the words were already leaving my mouth.

"I'm going to warn her," I said. "I'm going to tell her exactly what you're doing, and exactly what Mathis is planning, because whatever I feel about losing my chance with her, she deserves to know the danger coming for her, especially when part of it is coming from the pack that's supposed to be hers too."

"If you do that," my father said, his voice going dangerously quiet, "you'll be choosing her over your own pack.

Over your own future as Alpha. Think very carefully before you make a decision like that, Ryker. It isn't one you'll be able to take back."

I thought of Elara's face in that clearing, the moment before I'd said the word weak, the way her chin had lifted anyway even as I watched something inside her break in front of the entire pack, and I thought of every quiet moment since where I'd told myself I'd made the right choice, when some part of me had always known exactly how much of a lie that was.

"I already made my choice," I said. "The night I stood in that circle and threw her away because you told me to. I'm done letting you make my choices for me."

I turned and walked out before he could respond, already planning the fastest route toward Nightfall Hollow's border, though I had no idea yet whether Elara would even agree to see me.

Whether anything I had to say would matter after everything I'd already done to her, or whether I was simply walking toward a door that had already closed for good the moment I'd called her unworthy in front of everyone we both used to call family.