Twenty: Lucian

I pace the length of the study in a loop so tight it could wear a groove through stone. Boots strike flagstone, toe catching every third pass on the same uneven slab, a misalignment I should have fixed years ago but never did. The sound is its own kind of metronome—each step a tick, each turn a tock, the pattern as inescapable as the moon’s drag on the blood.

I stop at the far wall, bracing a palm against the bookshelves, and stare at my reflection in the leaded window glass. The night’s too black for detail, but I see the shape of myself: big-shouldered, jaw locked, eyes pale and rimmed with bruised shadow. The Alpha’s mask fits, but the eyes aren’t buying it. They flick, quick as a rabbit’s, never quite willing to rest.

The mate-bond thrums beneath my skin like a second pulse, out of time with my heart. I try to ignore it. I can’t. Every nerve is tuned to Wren’s frequency, the scent of her leaking through layers of stone, a ghost perfume that coats my tongue and settles somewhere below the sternum. Even after a dozen shifts, it still feels foreign, as if my body is staging a mutiny and waiting for the rest of me to surrender.

The desk in the center of the room is covered in the detritus of command: maps, old decrees, the ancient silver dagger that belonged to my father, and, incongruously, the half-empty mug of black coffee I haven’t tasted since sunset. Beside that, the speech. Three pages of perfect pack-law rhetoric, hand-written in my own blocky script, so rehearsed I could recite it backwards if asked. I stare at it, then look away.

Tonight, the pack expects a spectacle. A judgment. They want to see their Alpha uphold the bloodline, the code, the story they’ve told themselves about wolves since time began. It’s supposed to be simple: the law is the law, and the law is me. But nothing about this is simple, not since the moment I met her eyes in the snow and felt the world drop out from under both of us.

My fingers drag through my hair, pulling it back from my forehead. I force myself to stand still. That’s what Alphas do: they hold steady, even when the ground shakes. I reach for the jacket slung over the arm of the chair. It’s not the formal one—no medals, no showy embroidery—just plain black wool, the left breast patched with our insignia: a wolf’s head, rendered in silver thread so tight it gleams in the half-light. The weight of it grounds me. I slip it on, fasten the collar, and try to imagine it’s armor.

The clock on the mantel ticks, the hands stuck at three minutes to midnight. I know it’s off. I leave it that way as a warning.

A knock. Two short, one long. Jace.

“Enter,” I say, making my voice smooth as ice.

He comes in, as always, with the military posture but the eyes of someone who knows me too well to be afraid. The scent of pine needles and sweat trails after him, a reminder of the woods and the hunt and the old world that made us.

“Assembly’s formed up, Alpha,” he says, not quite meeting my eyes. “They’re… waiting for you. Prisoner’s secured in the west anteroom. Tessa and Luka are on watch.”

“Condition?” I ask, knowing he’ll give it to me straight.

“Agitated,” Jace says. “But holding together. She refused the tranq. Said she didn’t want to feel soft in front of the pack.” A twitch at the corner of his mouth—could be amusement, could be respect. “There’s talk already.”

I don’t ask what kind. I know.

The mate-bond seethes, tightening until it’s all I can do not to bare my teeth at the intrusion. I imagine Wren, sequestered in that freezing stone cell, wrists probably raw from the restraints, pulse racing in time with mine. I taste metal at the thought—a flare of adrenaline, or just the memory of blood.

“Thank you, Jace,” I say. “You may wait outside.”

He doesn’t leave. Instead, he watches me for a long, uncomfortable second. “You’re bleeding,” he says finally.

I glance down. The old cut at the knuckle’s reopened, probably from where I slammed my fist into the desk edge during the last round of pacing. The blood’s bright, new, but I can’t feel it.

“I’ll live,” I tell him.

Jace’s gaze drops to the speech on the desk. “You want me to bring that?”

I think about it. I think about the ceremony, the cold platform, the hundreds of eyes, the rows of warriors and elders and the four different news outlets that will record every syllable and body movement for the next ten generations. I picture myself reading the lines, voice flat and perfect, hands never trembling, then walking offstage to let the pack tear Wren to pieces.

“No,” I say, voice gone rough. “I’ll do it from memory.”

He nods, and for a second, I think he’s going to say something more. Instead, he pivots and exits, the door snicking shut behind him with mechanical precision.

I stand alone in the study, staring at the speech notes for one last heartbeat. The script is precise, legal, absolute. It leaves no room for what I’m feeling now: the sick tangle of desire and terror, the pull of the bond and the harder, older pull of the law. I could shred the paper. I don’t.

Instead, I steady myself against the desk, white-knuckled, until the tremor leaves my hand.

“The law is clear,” I mutter, just to hear it aloud.

It sounds like a lie.

I adjust the collar once more, check my hair in the window, and walk to the door. The corridor outside is as cold as a crypt; the wind’s found a way in, curling around my ankles, bringing the scent of snow and burning wood and something else, something that smells like the end of things.

Jace waits, silent, at parade rest.

I nod to him, and we fall into step together, boots echoing down the stone corridor, past the weapons hall and the trophy cases, past the mural of the first Alpha wringing a wolf’s neck with his bare hands. At every turn, the air gets colder, the walls narrower, the certainty thinner. The house is a living memory of every decision made and every blood debt owed.

We stop at the top of the stairs, just before the doors to the main hall.

“They’re ready for you,” Jace says, voice low.

“So am I,” I reply, though I’m not sure which part of me believes it.

He opens the doors. The sound of the assembly—the murmur, the anticipation, the appetite for blood—is instant and overwhelming. I let it wash over me. I put the Alpha mask on, the one that never cracks.

We descend the stairs, into the light, into the story, into the waiting jaws of the law.

And I do not look back.