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CHAPTER 6: We Are Going to War

作者: Vee Okon
last update 公開日: 2026-08-01 17:01:26

SERAPHINE

I'd been coming to Blackthorn Manor for almost a month.

For most of it, the Alpha himself hadn't even been here. Mohan had told me, in his clipped, economical signs, that Kael was overseeing the southern mines three territories deep, where a dispute over silver quotas had turned two allied packs against each other, and beyond that a shipping dispute at the eastern ports that threatened half the grain routes feeding the lower territories through winter. 

I hadn't understood, until I saw the ledgers stacked in the study one afternoon, just how much of the twelve territories ran through this one man's hands. Mines. Mills. Trade roads that stretched further than I'd ever travelled in my life. He wasn't just an Alpha. He was the reason half these packs ate through the cold months at all.

I painted in an empty studio those weeks, half convinced the whole arrangement had been a fever dream conjured out of a desperate orphan's imagination. Then yesterday his convoy had rolled back through the gates at dusk, twelve carriages deep, dust still clinging to the horses' flanks, and this morning the manor felt like a different building entirely. Awake. Humming. Every servant moving at twice their normal speed.

I heard him before I saw him.

"Get me Cassian. Now."

The voice rolled down the corridor and stopped me cold, my satchel of brushes sliding off my shoulder and thudding against the stone. I'd never heard him raise his voice before. Never heard that particular register, low and cracking at the edges like something about to break loose. I followed it anyway, my bad leg protesting every hurried step, the way I followed everything now.

The war room doors stood open. Heat poured out into the corridor, the sharp copper tang of too many wolves running hot in too small a space, sweat and adrenaline and something underneath it, ozone, the smell that came before a storm broke.

 Maps covered the long table, weighted at the corners with carved stone markers, red pins clustered thick along a border I didn't recognise. Kael stood over it with Mohan at his shoulder, both men's hands moving fast, and Rhett pinned against the far wall like he was trying to become part of it.

"If Draven brings the Ashwood remnant with him, we lose the council's sympathy before I say a single word," Kael said, and his knuckles had gone white against the table's edge.

Mohan's hands cut through the air, sharp and fast: Then we don't let him bring them. I'll have Cassian intercept the eastern road before dawn.

"And if he's already past it?"

Then you walk in loud, and we walk in ready to leave in a hurry.

A muscle ticked hard along Kael's jaw. "Mobilise the border wolves regardless. I want eyes on every crossing by nightfall, and I want Draven's numbers before we set foot in that hall."

The room broke apart around the order, bodies scattering for the door, boots hammering stone, the whole space emptying like water through a cracked vessel.

Then his gaze found me in the doorway, and something in him eased. His jaw unclenched, just a fraction. His shoulders dropped half an inch, some invisible weight sliding off them for exactly as long as it took him to notice I'd seen it.

"Get her a new set of clothes," he told Mohan, without breaking my gaze. "Something suitable for the council."

"New set of clothes?" My voice came out thinner than I wanted.

"You're coming with me." He was already moving, three long strides toward the door.

"Where?" I half jogged to catch him, my leg screaming with every uneven step. "My job is painting your inspiration on canvas."

He stopped. Turned. For one breath he only looked at me, something warm buried far beneath the storm still moving behind his eyes.

"Change of plans. You work for me now. Get dressed for the occasion."

He kept walking. I stood there a second too long, then hopped forward to catch the corner, gripping the wall for balance.

"At least tell me where we're going."

He didn't slow. He didn't look back.

"We are going to war."

The words dropped into my chest like a stone through ice.

"Lord, no."

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