Chapter Seventeen The Sovereign Verdict

Chapter Seventeen

The Sovereign Verdict

The violet light of the Agatha amulet didn’t just pulse; it bled into the cold stone corridor, casting long, jagged shadows against the heavy oak doors of the Alpha’s quarters.

Elena took a step back into the dark recess of the hallway, her striking blue eyes wide with a mixture of terror and sudden reverence.

In that light, Emmy didn’t look like a twenty-year-old pack wolf.

She looked like Caliana.

She looked like Gemma.

She looked like an apex force capable of bending the laws of nature to her will.

“Hide in the east wing,” Emmy whispered, her voice layered with the subtle, echoing weight of the witch power inside the stone. “Do not let the dawn guards see you. I am ending this tonight.”

Elena nodded frantically, her delicate hand pressing one last time over her abdomen to shield the tiny, fast-paced heartbeat of the unborn alpha heir.

With a fluid, silent grace, she vanished down the servant’s staircase, her soft clover scent fading from the air.

Emmy turned back to the double doors.

She didn’t knock.

She didn’t ask for permission.

Drawing upon her vampire speed and her inner wolf’s raw, furious strength, she slammed her palms against the heavy wood.

The iron latches shattered instantly under the pressure, the doors exploding inward and slamming against the interior walls with a sound like a thunderclap.

Dimitrius Mortaga didn’t flinch.

The blind Lycan Alpha sat at his heavy oak desk, his massive frame illuminated only by the dying embers of the hearth.

He wore a simple white linen tunic, his long, dark hair wild around his shoulders.

His milk-white, scarred eyes turned slowly toward the shattered doorway, but his head tilted with absolute, clinical precision.

In his stark, black-and-white Lycan vision, Emmy was no longer a quiet silhouette.

She was a raging vortex of silver hybrid energy, completely bounded by a massive, blinding web of dragon gold that pulsed in perfect rhythm with the northern mountains.

“You break my doors like an invading warlord, Emmy,” Dimitrius said, his deep, gravelly voice carrying a low, dangerous vibration that vibrated through the floorboards.

“The dawn is only three hours away. The elder council is already lining the sacred clearing with silver-edged stakes for the severance ritual. Go back to your room.”

“I am not going anywhere, Father,” Emmy spat, her amber eyes flashing with a fierce, hybrid rage as she marched into the center of the chamber, her boots clicking sharply against the stone.

“You think you are a god because you carry the alpha title? You think you can rewrite the laws of the soul because you are terrified of a ghost?!”

Dimitrius stood up slowly, his towering frame casting a massive, dark shadow across the desk.

His alpha aura exploded into the room like a crushing tidal wave, a heavy, suffocating pressure designed to force any lower wolf to their knees in absolute submission.

“Do not speak to me of ghosts! I buried your mother because her heart couldn’t handle the strain of her own nature! I am tearing that beast’s fire out of your spirit at sunrise because I am your father, and I will not let a dragon lock you in a mountain grave!”

“You didn’t bury my mother because of her nature, Father! You buried her because she was fighting a house divided, and you let your own stubborn blindness guide her choices!” Emmy screamed, her voice cutting through his alpha pressure like a silver blade.

She took a step closer, her face inches from his.

“You talk about saving my life, yet you are currently slaughtering your own.

“I know about Elena.”

The silence that followed was absolute.

The crushing pressure of Dimitrius’s alpha aura stuttered, the silver heat signatures around his broad shoulders fluctuating wildly in his black-and-white vision.

His jaw clenched so tightly the bone audibly cracked, his fists tightening until his claws pierced his own palms, drawing thick, dark wolf blood.

“Elena is an intruder,” Dimitrius whispered, his voice dropping to a low, lethal register that carried a profound, devastating sorrow.

“She is a distraction sent by the Moon Goddess to test my loyalty to Jasmine’s memory.

“She means nothing to this pack.”

“She is your fated mate!” Emmy roared, her hand flying to the Agatha amulet, a sudden burst of violet lightning crackling down her forearms.

“The Moon Goddess paired your souls two years ago, and you have spent every single day treating her like a criminal because you are too cowardly to let your heart heal!

“You look at her through your blind, broken vision, and you refuse to see the truth!

“She has stayed by your side in the dark, she has tended your wounds, and you are throwing her to the pack borders like a piece of refuse!”

“Silence!” Dimitrius bellowed, his fist slamming against the heavy oak desk, splitting the solid wood clean down the center.

“You know nothing of the pack’s burdens, Emmy! A leader does not simply move on! I loved Jasmine—”

“And Jasmine is dead!” Emmy yelled back, the words breaking with a raw, agonizing heartbreak.

“She died, Father!

“But Elena is alive.

“She is alive, and she is currently carrying your son!”

The word son hit the room with the force of a physical blast.

Dimitrius froze entirely.

His massive frame went completely rigid, his head tilting down as his blind white eyes stared blankly at the floorboards.

In his black-and-white Lycan vision, the entire world seemed to tilt.

His sharp, advanced ears—ears that could track a heartbeat from a mile away—suddenly focused on the distant, faint echo of the manor’s lower levels.

He filtered out the heavy thuds of the dawn guards, the crackle of the hearth fire, and the frantic hammering of Emmy’s heart.

And then, he heard it.

Deep within the eastern wing, tucked away in the shadows of the servant’s quarters, a tiny, hyper-fast heartbeat was pulsing.

It carried the unmistakable, heavy baseline rhythm of the Mortaga Alpha lineage—a vibrant, silver spark of new life that was undeniably his own.

“A son…” Dimitrius breathed, his gravelly voice turning completely hollow, breaking with a rare, devastating vulnerability he hadn’t shown since the day Jasmine died.

His hand drifted slowly to his own chest, his chest rising and falling in ragged, uneven gasps.

“She… she didn’t tell me.”

“Because you told her to pack her things and leave by sunrise!” Emmy said, her voice dropping to a sharp, unyielding whisper.

“You told her you would have the guards escort her to the borders.

“You were prepared to exile your pregnant fated mate and murder your daughter’s spirit at dawn, all under the delusion of keeping us safe.

“Look at what your protection is doing to this family, Father.

“It is turning us into monsters.”

Dimitrius sank back into his high-backed chair, his face pale, his blind gaze locked onto his ruined desk.

The absolute, unyielding stone of his authority had completely shattered.

For two years, his wolf had thrashed against his mind, demanding he claim Elena, demanding he let the pack heal, but his human grief had kept the cage locked.

Now, the realization that an innocent alpha heir was growing in the dark—rejected by his own father—broke his spirit completely.

“The severance ritual…” Dimitrius murmured, his voice sounding weathered, old, and entirely spent.

“The elder council… they have already drawn the runes, Emmy. The silver spikes are in the earth.

“If I call it off now, the pack will see it as a sign of absolute weakness. Cato will demand control of the borders.”

“Then let them see it as weakness,” a deep, velvet resonance boomed from the high arched windows behind them.

Emmy whipped her head around, her heart giving a violent, joyful throb against her ribs as the soul-tether inside her chest sang in absolute recognition.

The heavy glass window frames didn’t shatter—they simply dissolved into a cloud of golden smoke and ancient ash as Ignisvath stepped into the chamber.

He wore his dark, forged steel armor, the metallic plates glowing with an intense, radiant heat that completely pushed back the chill of the morning air.

His molten gold eyes flared in the dim light, the vertical slits of his pupils locked onto Emmy with a fierce, consuming possessiveness that left no room for argument.

Dimitrius stood up instantly, his inner wolf letting out a sharp, defensive snarl as his Lycan vision tracked the absolute furnace of the Dragon King entering his private space.

“You…”

“I told you, wolf,” Ignisvath said, his voice a low, draconic rumble that vibrated through the stone walls, “the tether screams when my mate is in pain.

“I felt her spirit fracturing across the peaks, and I tore through space to find her.

“If you march her to that clearing at dawn, I will bring the entire aerial fleet of the Aethelgard Citadel down upon your valley.

“I will not negotiate for her life.”

Ignisvath walked past the blind Alpha, entirely ignoring the wolf’s defensive stance, and stopped right in front of Emmy.

His massive, calloused hands rose to gently frame her face, his touch instantly igniting that familiar, electric fire that quieted her restless hybrid bloodlines.

“Two weeks remain until the full moon apex, Emmy,” Ignisvath whispered fiercely, his forehead resting gently against hers as his breath warmed her skin.

“Your father cannot save you from the countdown, and his silver spikes will only ensure your grave.

“Come to the mountains.

“Let Caliana teach you the balance.

“Let my fire anchor your soul.”

Emmy looked into his gold eyes, then looked back at her father, who stood ruined and silent by the hearth.

The final battle lines had been drawn, but for the first time, her father wasn’t her enemy.

He was just a man trying to find his way out of the shadows.