To heal a Rogue

LYSANDER

Johann was not done. I could see that the moment his mouth opened again, the way his jaw set before the words even came out, like he’d rehearsed this particular argument in his head while the elders were still speaking.

”Legitimate process,” he said again, as if repetition alone could make it true. ”Through documentation. Through the will. That is how succession has worked in this pack for over four hundred years, and I refuse to stand here and let a verbal declaration made in a room full of half-drunk elders override four centuries of precedent.”

”Half-drunk,” one of the elders muttered, offended.

”Oh please...You know what I mean.”

”I genuinely do not think I do.”

I watched Johann’s hands curl at his sides. He was so close to losing whatever composure he had left, and I understood, in some distant part of me that still had room for understanding, why. His entire life had been built on an assumption. That assumption had been dismantled in a single night, first by his father’s private confession, now by mine, with these men to back me up and soon in front of even more powerful witnesses who would repeat every word of this to their own packs before the week was out.

But understanding him did not mean I trusted him. Not with a killer loose somewhere in this estate, not with Bonnie bleeding into wolfsbane rope three floors below us.

”Then let us read the will,” I said.

The room went quiet in a different way than before. The silence that came this time was not the tense kind. If I could link it to anything, it would be surprise.

Johann turned to look at me slowly, like he thought he’d misheard.

”What?”

”The will,” I said again, keeping my voice even. ”If documentation is what satisfies you, then let us produce the documentation. Your father kept a will. You seem sure of it and so am I. Every Alpha King does. If it says what you believe it says, then this entire conversation ends and you have your throne with my full support.” I spread my hands slightly, palms up, an offering. ”If it does not, then perhaps you will finally listen to the people who were standing in that room last night.”

Johann studied me. I watched something calculating move behind his eyes, the same look he used to give me across a chessboard when we were boys, and he was trying to decide if I’d set a trap or simply made a mistake he could exploit.

He was trying to figure out why I would offer this. Why would I risk a document that could, in theory, still name him?

The truth was simpler than he’d ever guess. I did not want the throne. I had never wanted the throne. What I wanted was this argument over, so I could get back down to the cell where my mate was kneeling in wolfsbane rope with three unhealed gunshot wounds, and every minute I spent trading barbs with my cousin in a library that still smelled faintly of his father’s blood was a minute I resented losing.

Plus... Alpha Cornelius was a very meticulous man. The thing he spewed was not by accident. I knew somewhere deep in my heart that the will would already name me heir.

”Is that necessary?” one of the elders asked, glancing between us. ”We have already confirmed the verbal declaration through multiple witnesses. A written will would only—”

”It is necessary,” Johann said, cutting him off, ”because I want it in writing. I want it read aloud, in this room, so there is no ambiguity for anyone who was not present last night.” He looked at me again, and something almost like triumph flickered across his face. ”My cousin is trying to intimidate me into silence with implications and theater. It will not work. Read the will.”

I said nothing. Let him have the small victory of thinking this was his idea.

An elder sighed and gestured to one of the sentinels stationed near the door. ”Reach out to Beta Bradley’s Gamma. Tell him we require the will reading to begin immediately, by order of the Elder Circle.”

The sentinel nodded once and left at a fast walk, boots echoing down the corridor.

Then we waited.

I had never known silence to have this sort of texture before, but the one that settled into the library did. It sat heavy and sharp at the same time, thick with everything nobody was saying. Johann paced a slow line near the window, arms crossed, jaw working. The elders murmured among themselves in low voices that never quite carried far enough for me to catch whole sentences. I stood near the desk and did not pace, because pacing would have told Johann something I did not want him to see.

The minutes stretched. Long enough that I started counting them, which was its own kind of torture, because counting minutes meant thinking about what those minutes were doing to her downstairs. Wolfsbane did not care about political theater. It kept burning whether or not I was standing in a library waiting for a piece of paper.

Finally, footsteps in the corridor. Measured, unhurried, the particular cadence of someone who had spent decades cultivating the impression that nothing could rush him.

High Gamma Cormac stepped through the doorway, carrying a leather folio under one arm, his silver hair combed with meticulous precision despite the hour, his face set in the practiced solemnity of a man who had delivered bad news to powerful people more times than he could count.

The bond hit me the second he crossed the threshold.

It was not gradual. It came like a blade between the ribs, sharp and sudden, a pulse of something raw and wordless that had nothing to do with the room I was standing in. Pain. Hers. Not the ordinary ache of wolfsbane doing its slow work, but something acute, a spike layered on top of everything else, and my stomach dropped straight through the floor.

I kept my face still. It cost me more than it should have.

”Cold feet, cousin?” Johann asked, and I realized he’d been watching me the whole time, waiting for exactly this kind of crack to appear.

”No,” I said.

”You look pale.”

”I look the way anyone would look when their uncle has been dead less than a day.” I met his eyes and held them, daring him to push further. ”Perhaps you should try it. It might improve your color as well.”

Johann’s mouth thinned, but he did not answer, which was a small mercy.

I breathed through it. Whatever was happening to her, I could not fix it from this room. I could not fix it by unraveling in front of Johann and the elders and the Gamma, who was currently laying out papers on the desk with the unhurried precision of a man who had done this a hundred times before. All I could do was hold the shape of myself together long enough to get through this and get to her, because that was the entire point of standing in this library and enduring my cousin’s insinuations. To save her. Everything else was noise.

”I spoke with Beta Bradley directly,” Cormac said, addressing the room in a voice trained to fill spaces without shouting. ”He granted permission for the reading to proceed immediately, given the circumstances.” He glanced up, and for the first time something human moved across his professional composure. ”I am sorry for your losses. Both of you.”

Johann said nothing. I inclined my head once.

Cormac opened the folio.

”This is the last will and testament of Alpha King Cornelius De’Lune,” he said, ”notarized and sealed by my own hand, dated—” he paused, checked the page, and something flickered behind his eyes before he continued, ”—dated three weeks ago.”