Chapter Seven: Cracks in the Crown

Xavier's visit lingered in my mind longer than I wanted to admit, threading itself into my thoughts during training, during meetings with allied Alphas, even during the rare quiet moments when I finally let myself rest. Marla noticed, of course. Marla noticed everything.

"You're distracted," she said one morning, watching me miss a strike I should have landed easily after months of practice.

"I'm fine," I said, resetting my stance.

"You're thinking about him."

I didn't bother denying it. There was no point lying to a woman who had watched me grow from a broken girl collapsed in a clearing into whatever I was becoming now. "I'm thinking about what he said. Camille getting nervous. Reyes growing paranoid. Something is unraveling back there, and I want to understand exactly what before I decide how to use it."

"Then let's find out properly," Marla said, setting down the practice blade she'd been using to correct my footwork. "Rather than waiting on secondhand information delivered by a man whose loyalties are clearly still tangled."

That was how, three days later, I found myself crouched in the underbrush at the edge of my old pack's outer territory, farther from home than I'd risked getting since the night of my exile, watching the familiar tree line with a mixture of dread and something uncomfortably close to longing.

Marla had insisted on sending scouts first, quiet, trusted wolves from Ashgrove who could move through the border unnoticed and gather information without revealing anything about our own movements. It took two full days of waiting before one of them returned with news significant enough to warrant the risk of me seeing it firsthand.

"There's a meeting happening tonight," the scout reported, a young wolf named Talia who had proven herself sharp and careful over the past several weeks. "Reyes called it personally. Full council attendance required, including all four of your former mates."

"What's it about," Marla asked.

"Unclear," Talia admitted. "But Camille has been noticeably absent from pack activities the past week. Some are saying she's ill. Others are saying she and Reyes have been arguing behind closed doors."

I felt something sharp and satisfied curl low in my stomach. "Arguing about what?"

"That's what we're hoping to find out tonight," Marla said.

The three of us positioned ourselves carefully near the old training grounds behind the Great Hall, close enough to catch fragments of conversation carried on the wind through cracked windows, far enough to escape detection if anyone happened to patrol the perimeter. My heart pounded steadily as I recognized the building looming ahead of us, the same stone walls that had watched my entire world collapse months earlier.

Voices drifted out eventually, raised just enough in frustration to carry beyond the walls meant to contain them.

"You promised me this would be handled quietly," Camille's voice, sharp and brittle in a way I'd never heard from her before, nothing like the soft trembling tone she'd used so effectively during my exile hearing. "You promised the rogues would take care of it."

"The rogues failed," Reyes' voice answered, low and controlled, though tension bled through every word. "Which means we handle this differently now."

"Differently how? She's out there somewhere, Reyes, gathering strength, gathering allies according to what my sources are telling me. If she comes back with proof"

"There is no proof," Reyes cut in sharply. "The documents were thorough. The testimony was consistent. Even if she returns claiming innocence, it's her word against carefully constructed evidence that has already been accepted by the full council."

"And if she returns as something more than an exiled Luna's daughter," Camille pressed, her voice climbing higher, cracking slightly at the edges. "If the rumors about her bloodline are true"

"Then we deal with that possibility when it becomes confirmed fact rather than paranoid speculation," Reyes snapped. "You came to me terrified of a rival you'd already destroyed. I fixed that problem for you. Do not make me question whether that was a mistake."

Silence followed, heavy and uncomfortable even through the walls separating us from the room. I glanced at Marla, whose expression had gone carefully blank in the way it always did when she was calculating something important.

"He fixed the problem for her," I whispered. "That confirms it. Reyes was directly involved in fabricating the evidence used to exile me."

"It confirms complicity," Marla agreed quietly. "Which is exactly the kind of confession we need, spoken plainly, without coercion."

Before I could respond, a new voice cut through the tension inside, one I recognized instantly and felt straight through my chest like a physical blow.

Damien.

"What exactly did you fix, Alpha Reyes?"

The room inside went utterly silent.

"This is a private conversation," Reyes said, his voice suddenly guarded.

"You called a full council meeting," Damien said, his tone flat and dangerous in a way I remembered from the rare moments he allowed himself real anger. "I arrived early. I heard enough to understand you're discussing fabricated evidence used against my mate."

"Former mate," Camille corrected quickly. "The bond was severed by council decision."

"The bond doesn't feel severed," Damien said, quiet fury bleeding into every word. "It's never felt severed. I told myself for months that the ache in my chest was grief over a decision I believed was justified. Now I'm standing here listening to you admit the evidence was fabricated, and suddenly that ache feels a lot more like guilt."

"Damien," Reyes said warningly.

"Was the letter real," Damien demanded, ignoring him entirely. "The one supposedly written in her handwriting, admitting she manipulated the council. Was any of it real?"

Another long silence stretched through the walls, thick enough that I found myself holding my breath despite the distance separating us.

"It doesn't matter now," Reyes finally said, his voice tight. "The decision has been made. Reopening it destabilizes pack leadership and gives our enemies an opportunity to exploit division within our ranks."

"It matters to me," Damien said. "It matters to Kade, and Ronan, and it clearly already matters to Xavier, considering he's disappeared twice in the past month without explanation."

My chest tightened painfully at the mention of Xavier's name, confirmation that his visit to me hadn't gone unnoticed entirely, even if the specifics remained hidden from the others.

"I want the truth," Damien said, his voice hardening into something that reminded me painfully of the man who used to press his forehead against mine before every hunt. "All of it. Right now."

"You'll get exactly what the council decides you need to know," Reyes said coldly. "This meeting is adjourned until tonight's scheduled session. I suggest you compose yourself before then, Damien, unless you'd like your growing doubts documented as instability during a time when this pack needs unified leadership more than ever."

Footsteps followed, sharp and hurried, and Marla immediately gestured for us to retreat deeper into the tree line before anyone emerged from the building and risked spotting us.

We didn't speak again until we were well clear of the territory, safely back within the boundaries Ashgrove warriors patrolled. Even then, it took me several long minutes to find my voice, my thoughts tangled somewhere between vindication and an ache I hadn't expected to feel this sharply.

"Damien doubts it," I finally said. "Genuinely doubts it, not just performing doubt to seem sympathetic."

"It would seem so," Marla agreed carefully, watching my expression with the same careful attentiveness she always used when gauging how much emotional weight I could handle in a given moment.

"That doesn't change what he did," I said, more to myself than to her. "Doubt after the fact doesn't undo standing silent while I was stripped of everything I had."

"No," Marla agreed. "It doesn't. But it does mean the foundation Reyes and Camille built together is far less stable than they'd like everyone to believe. Cracks like that, once they start forming, rarely stay contained."

I thought about Damien's voice, tight with barely restrained fury, demanding truth from a man who clearly had none left to offer honestly. I thought about Reyes' cold dismissal, more concerned with pack stability than actual justice. And I thought about Camille's brittle panic, so different from the soft, controlled tears she'd used so effectively months earlier to destroy me.

They were unraveling. Slowly, quietly, but unmistakably unraveling.

"How long," I asked Marla, as we made our way back toward Ashgrove territory beneath a sky just beginning to darken, "before we're ready to make certain that unraveling becomes complete."

Marla considered the question carefully before answering, her expression thoughtful in the fading light. "Sooner than either of us originally planned, I think. Cracks like the ones we just witnessed do not wait patiently for convenient timing. If we move carefully, and quickly enough, we may find ourselves with an opportunity even better than the one we've been building toward."

I looked back once, toward the direction of the pack lands I'd once called home, toward the hall where my entire life had been stripped away in a single evening.

Soon, I thought.

Soon, they would understand exactly what they'd thrown away.