Chapter 3

Chapter Three: The Council's Warning**

By the time the sun rose fully over the pack house, word had already spread beyond the estate. Aurora could feel it in the way people avoided her eyes on the way to the dining hall, in the way conversations dropped the moment she entered a room.

She had expected fear. She hadn't expected the way some of them looked at her like she was dangerous.

"They're saying you're cursed," Noah told her flatly, setting a plate in front of her that she had no appetite for. "Someone from the eastern border pack already reached out. News like this doesn't stay contained."

"Great," she muttered. "So on top of everything else, I'm apparently a curse now."

"You're not a curse." Noah sat across from her, his voice gentler than before. "You're my sister. Whatever this is, we'll figure it out."

She wanted to believe him. She wanted, more than anything, to believe that this was something that could simply be figured out, solved, put back into whatever box it had escaped from the night before. But the tightness in Noah's jaw told her he wasn't as certain as his words suggested.

The council arrived just after noon.

Three representatives, dressed in dark formal robes that marked their rank, walked through the front gates with the kind of authority that made even Damon straighten his posture. Aurora watched from the upstairs window as the pack gathered below, whispering, watching, waiting.

"They're early," Luca said beside her, arms crossed. He'd barely left her side since the meeting that morning, though he hadn't said much either. "That's not a good sign."

"Nothing about this is a good sign," Aurora said.

They were called down within the hour.

The council members sat at the long table in the main hall, flanked by pack elders and Damon standing rigid at the head, representing the Alpha seat even though his own fate now hung in the balance. Aurora sat beside Noah, aware of Ryder, Kieran, and Luca standing along the far wall, tense and silent.

The lead councilwoman, an older woman with sharp eyes and silver hair pulled back tightly, studied Aurora for a long moment before speaking.

"Aurora Hale. Do you understand the nature of what occurred last night?"

"Not entirely," Aurora admitted. "But I understand the consequences you're threatening."

A murmur passed through the room at her tone. The councilwoman's expression didn't change.

"Five bonds," she continued, "igniting simultaneously, has never been recorded in three centuries of tracked history. Our laws exist for good reason. A single Alpha, a single mate. Anything else destabilizes pack hierarchy, breeds conflict, and in some recorded cases, has led to war between rival packs competing for the same bonded mate."

"I didn't ask for this," Aurora said. "None of us did."

"That may be true," the councilwoman said. "But the law does not concern itself with intention. It concerns itself with outcome." She glanced toward the four men along the wall, then to Damon standing at the head of the table. "You have thirty days, Miss Hale, to select one bonded Alpha. The remaining four bonds will be severed through ritual, and life will return to its intended order."

"And if I don't choose?" Aurora asked.

The councilwoman's eyes were cold. "Then all five men currently bonded to you will be executed under law, and your own status will be reviewed separately, given the unprecedented nature of your bloodline reaction."

"My bloodline reaction," Aurora repeated slowly. "What does that mean?"

For the first time, something flickered across the councilwoman's expression. Something that looked almost like hesitation.

"Nothing that concerns today's matter," she said, too quickly. "Thirty days, Miss Hale. The clock has already started."

She rose from her seat, signaling the end of the meeting, but Aurora wasn't ready to let it go.

"You said my bloodline reaction like it means something specific. Like you already know something about me that I don't."

The councilwoman paused at the door, her back to the room. For a moment, nobody moved. Then she turned, just slightly, enough for Aurora to see something guarded behind her eyes.

"Your family's history is more complicated than you've been told, Miss Hale. But that is not a conversation for today." She glanced briefly at Damon, something unreadable passing between them. "Perhaps you should ask your Alpha why certain records regarding your parents were sealed the year they died."

The room went utterly silent.

Aurora turned sharply toward Damon, whose face had gone pale, his jaw locked tight, his eyes fixed on the councilwoman with something dangerously close to panic beneath the surface.

"Damon," Aurora said slowly. "What is she talking about?"

He didn't answer.

The councilwoman offered a thin, humorless smile before walking out, her two companions following without another word, leaving behind a room full of people who suddenly understood that the danger to Aurora's life wasn't only coming from ancient law.

It had been living inside the pack house the entire time.