32
Savy
One glance at the expressions on the gathered werewolf council made it clear that this was going to get dark.
Some were in human form, and some were wolves. I was almost overwhelmed to be in proximity to so many powerful signatures, elders and alphas both. It was a sea of dangerous and unfamiliar faces. The loremaster was the only one I recognized from our pack.
All eyes locked onto us, but I kept my gaze fixed straight ahead, focused on one werewolf sitting directly across from us. His face was like Jaxson’s but much older. He lacked the perfection of my mate’s features but none of his ferocity.
Jaxson’s father.
His expression stopped me in my tracks: abject hatred.
My stomach spun. For all his fury, Jaxson had never once turned his eyes on me in that way, and I thanked God he hadn’t.
Screw this. I’m done being judged.
I raised my chin and stepped into the ring. My wolf might be bound, but I was still a wolf.
We’ve got this, I said to Wolfie, though I knew she wasn’t there.
If, somehow, we lived through this and I could release her, would she ever speak to me again after what I’d done?
I closed my eyes and let the despair have its moment. When I opened my lids, I was all fire, while Jaxson was practically an inferno of rage beside me.
“You came,” Jaxson’s father said flatly, holding back the anger in his voice.
Before I took another breath, they were both in the center of the ring, face to face, staring each other down. While his father was built like a mountain, my mate still loomed over him and commanded the attention of every wolf in the clearing.
“What are you doing?” Jaxson bit out. “You’re no longer alpha of our pack. You abandoned that role.”
“The chairwoman asked me step in, if necessary. We both agreed that the council had to be called, so I did.”
Jaxson bent his head low to his father’s ear and spoke quietly, though we could all hear. “Why not come to me? I’m the head of this council.”
“Because you should have come to us. Because there’s no time. Because the current head of the council has abandoned his pack and his wits, bewitched by a LaSalle. Someone had to do something.”
“Do something? We’ve been fighting every day to stop this. To save our pack,” Jaxson snarled, his voice razor sharp with a fury I’d never heard before. “Where have you been? Fishing?”
His father’s voice remained quiet and level. “I didn’t realize that the alpha was harboring a twin-soul, or I would have been here in a second and dealt with her myself.”
In an instant, Jaxson’s shirt ripped along the seams as his body swelled. Fur rippled along his arms as his fangs and claws shot out and his eyes turned the color of the sun—but he stopped the shift right there, holding it in the space between man and wolf with a foot in each of the two worlds, master of both.
That trick required absolute control of your wolf, a thing not many could manage.
“She is my mate,” he growled in a voice that was neither his nor his wolf’s. “No one touches her.”
His words dropped like a hammer, and shocked noises filtered through the council. Jaxson’s father’s expression hardened, and his pupils dilated. “So the rumors are true, then. It’s worse than I feared.”
Jaxson didn’t respond, nor did his gaze leave his father’s face.
If I’d had the strength of my wolf senses still, I might have been able to untangle the emotions raging in the space between them. It looked and sounded like the knife edge of violence, but it hid so much more.
Betrayal. Pain. Affection. Pride. Fury.
They were close, or they had been, once.
I swallowed, barely able to breathe from the tension in the air. Finally, his father submitted and stepped away. “Fine. Take your place at the head of this council—but make no mistake, you two are the ones on trial here.”
Jaxson looked at the stone where his father had been sitting, a weathered rock wrapped in roots. He turned his back on the council and strode to my side, his eyes burning with gold. “If we are accused, then I will stand by my mate.”
I licked my lips. He was transformed and more savage than I’d ever seen him. His power washed over me as he approached, and I had to fight down the raw desire that rose as he took his spot, standing by me while all the others stared.
After a stunned moment, Camila walked to the far end of the court and addressed the gathered wolves. “Now that that’s settled, I will run this meeting. We’ve all shared a dream of the Dark Wolf God. This woman here—a LaSalle by blood—is a twin-soul and the one who set him free. In accordance with the prophecy, that’s enough for us to condemn her. But beyond this crime, they have bound her wolf with sorcery. This is beyond the pale of anything I ever imagined a werewolf could do or would do. I don’t see how we can let this stand.”