Killian

The council chamber smelled like old money and grudges, and I had spent the better part of an hour listening to five men who had never worked a day outside a boardroom lecture me about legacy.

“Six generations, Killian.” Elder Voss said my name the way he always did, without the title, a small deliberate insult he thought I hadn’t noticed. “Six generations of Blackwoods have led this pack, and every one of them secured the line before their thirtieth year. You’re twenty eight.”

“I’m aware of my own age.”

“Then you’re aware of the timeline you’ve been given.” He folded his hands on the table between us, a gesture meant to look reasonable. It didn’t look that way. “A year, Killian. That was the agreement when your father passed the seat to you early. A year to secure an heir, or the council reconvenes on the matter of leadership.”

I kept my expression flat, the same one I used in every boardroom in this city, the one that gave nothing away. “The agreement was made under duress, at my father’s funeral, by men who wanted a weakened Alpha they could steer. I remember it clearly.”

“The agreement was made because the pack needs stability.” This from Marchetti, younger than Voss but hungrier. “A bloodline secures loyalty in a way corporate success never will. You’ve built an empire, no one disputes that. But empires collapse without succession.”

I could have argued the point further. I’d argued it a dozen times over the past year, in a dozen rooms exactly like this one, and it had never once moved the needle. The council wanted an heir because an heir meant control. A mate meant a weakness they could work with. A child meant a future they could shape long after I was gone.

I didn’t want a mate. I had watched what losing one did to my father, the slow unraveling of a man who used to run an empire with a clear head, reduced to a shell who forgot what day it was more often than not after my mother died. I wasn’t interested in handing anyone that kind of power over me.

But I wanted the council off my back even less.

“Fine,” I said.

The room went quiet in a way that told me they hadn’t expected it to be that easy.

“Fine,” Voss repeated, testing the word like it might not hold weight. “You’ll take a mate?”

“I said fine to the heir. Not to a mate.” I stood, buttoning my jacket, done with the meeting whether they were finished with me or not. “There are other ways to secure a bloodline that don’t require me to hand my life over to the council’s approval.”

Marchetti’s mouth twisted. “Surrogacy. You’d have this pack’s future carried by some contracted stranger, no bond, no lineage worth speaking of.”

“The lineage worth speaking of is mine. That doesn’t change based on who carries the child.” I gathered my folder off the table. “You wanted an heir within the year. You’ll have one. How I get there isn’t the council’s business.”

I left before anyone could object further, Jace, my right hand man and best friend, fell into step beside me halfway through pulling up something on his tablet like he’d been waiting outside the whole time for exactly this outcome. 

“You actually said yes.” He sounded almost impressed. “I give it a week before Voss tries to insert himself into the vetting process.”

“He can try.”

“He will. He hates that you’re doing this on your terms instead of theirs.” Jace fell into step beside me down the corridor, his voice dropping into the low timbre he used when we are alone. “I’ve had the agency compile a shortlist. Full medical histories, family backgrounds, discretion agreements already drafted. You can review candidates by end of day if you want to move fast.”

“I want it handled quietly. No press exposure, no pack gossip, and nobody outside the two of us and the agency knows this is happening until there’s a child to show for it.”

“Understood.” He tapped something into his tablet without looking up. “For what it’s worth, I think this is the smart move. Clean, controlled, no emotional entanglement to complicate things.”

“That’s the point.”

We reached my office and he handed me a tablet loaded with files, dozens of them, faces and names and health records reduced to a catalog. I sat behind my desk and started scrolling without much interest, aware only that I needed to pick one and be done with it, the way I approached most decisions that didn’t involve the company.

Face after face slid past. I registered almost none of them.

Then one stopped me.

I don’t know what it was. The photo was nothing remarkable, a young woman with tired eyes and dark hair, a candidate file like any other. But something in me reacted before I’d even processed why, a low pull in my chest that had no business existing, my wolf going suddenly, unnervingly still.

“This one,” I said.

Jace glanced over my shoulder at the screen. “Elara Vance? You haven’t even read her file.”

“I don’t need to.” I was still staring at the photo, at the particular tilt of her chin, the way her eyes held something guarded even through a screen. “Her. That’s the one.”

“Killian, this isn’t how you usually operate. You run background checks on vendors who supply the office coffee.” He frowned, scrolling through her file himself, reading aloud the parts that mattered. “Twenty one. Works two jobs. Father recently deceased, some outstanding debt attached to the estate. Omega, scent suppressed on the medical intake, which is unusual for someone her age.”

Something about the word omega settled strangely in my chest, a discomfort I couldn’t place and didn’t like. I told myself it meant nothing.

“Run the standard checks,” I said. “Confirm there’s no conflict of interest, no connection to the pack or the company. If she’s clean, offer her the contract.”

“And if she’s not clean?”

“Then you find someone who is who still makes me feel the way this file did.” The words left me before I fully understood them, and I caught the way Jace’s eyes flicked to me, sharp and assessing in a way that told me he’d noticed something I hadn’t meant to reveal.

“You felt something,” he said slowly. “Looking at a photograph.”

“I felt nothing. I only picked a candidate.” I set the tablet down harder than necessary and stood, moving to the window because I needed somewhere else to look. The city sprawled out below, gray under a sky that hadn’t cleared in days, and I stared at it without really seeing it. “Run the checks, Jace. Quietly.”

He didn’t push. That was one of the things I valued most about him, the way he knew exactly when to let a thing sit rather than dig at it. He gathered the tablet and headed for the door, pausing just before he reached it.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I’ve known you seventeen years. I’ve never once seen you react to a photograph like that.”

“It’s a coincidence.”

“Sure.” He didn’t sound convinced, and neither, if I was honest with myself, was I. “I’ll have the paperwork ready by tomorrow. Full anonymity clauses, same as always. She won’t know your name. You won’t know anything about her beyond the file.”

“Good. That’s how it needs to stay.”

He left, and I stood at the window a long while after the door closed, turning the strange, unfamiliar pull in my chest over and over, trying to explain it away as fatigue, as stress, as anything other than what some quiet, ignored part of me suspected it might actually be.

I told myself it didn’t matter. A contract was a contract. A name on a page, a stranger who would carry what the council demanded and then disappear from my life entirely once the terms were fulfilled.

I had no intention of letting it become anything more than that.

Some part of me, even then, must have known I was already lying to myself.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​