To heal a Rogue

LYSANDER

The steward and two attendants worked over me in near silence, fastening layer after layer of dark burgundy fabric threaded through with gold at the collar and cuffs, until I barely recognized the shape looking back at me in the mirror. Heavier fabric than I was used to. Stiffer collar. A weight to it that had nothing to do with the material itself.

My eyes caught the throne through the open doorway leading into the adjoining hall, tall and carved, gold catching the last of the afternoon light through the windows.

”Am I meant to sit in that tonight?” I asked.

”No, Alpha Lysander,” one of the attendants said, tucking a final pin into place at my shoulder. ”We do not even use that anymore. If there is anytime it will be of use, that will be for your formal coronation. Tonight you’ll stand as regent before the visiting court.”

”You look every part the King already,” the steward said, stepping back to survey his work with something close to pride. ”The Lunas and Alphas gathered in the great hall will have no choice but to acknowledge you the moment you walk through those doors.”

”With everything we’ve arranged,” one of the elders added from near the door, ”I see no reason anything should go awry tonight.”

”What about the girl?” I asked.

She’d been shielding the bond for the better part of an hour now, and the silence of it sat uneasy in my chest, a held breath I couldn’t release.

”You’ll see her in the great hall,” the elder said smoothly. ”She’s perfectly fine I am sure.”

Another elder held up the leather pad from earlier. ”Have you gotten your lines?”

”I’ve scanned through it,” I said. ”I’m not particularly fond of it.”

”Oh... Why is that?”

”It sounds pretentious,” I said. ”Not like anything I would actually say.”

”That’s rather the point, Alpha Lysander,” the first elder said, not unkindly, though the words landed with a weight that irritated me regardless. ”You play the part until you fit the shape of it. Every King before you has done the same. It does not matter whether it sounds like you. It is important though that it sounds like a King or a would-be king would say it and this formula works.”

”Well, unfortunately, that will never be me,” I said.

They exchanged a glance, something resigned passing between them, before the elder simply nodded, as if deciding the argument wasn’t worth having twice in one evening.

”Are we going, then, or not?”

They gave in, gathering themselves with the particular tension of people hoping for the best outcome from a situation they no longer fully controlled.

They hated it of course. But that was the best they could do. Hate it.

My heart was loud in my own ears as they led me out through the estate. A procession of royal retainers and sentinels fell in step behind us, their boots striking the stone floor in a rhythm that felt uncomfortably close to a countdown.

We left the main house and I was guided into a car that carried us the short distance toward the grand hall, passing rows of parked vehicles along the way. There were crests I recognized from a dozen tedious dinners glinting under the estate’s outdoor lighting.

We stopped and so did the fleet of cars behind me. Sentinels and retainers spilled out of the cars that had trailed behind mine, falling into formation, and I let myself be steered forward, my pulse hammering steady beneath the weight of everything I was now wearing.

The doors of the grand hall opened, and I stepped through them into a sea of black.

Every visiting Alpha and Luna had come dressed in mourning. Every single one of them had rows of dark fabric stretching the length of the hall, and for a moment the sheer scale of it stole something out of my chest. Then my eyes caught on a face near the front, and something in me eased despite everything else pressing down.

Fia.

She smiled the moment she realized I’d found her, warm and familiar in a room otherwise full of strangers measuring me for weakness. Her mate, Cian stood beside her, and when he noticed where my attention had landed, he draped an arm loosely over her shoulder, and I nearly scoffed out loud at the transparency of it.

I hadn’t expected Skollrend to make the journey at all. They were nuring parents after all.

But this was good.

She’d been the one who told me I’d find my mate, months before any of this happened, and if anyone in this hall might know more about what my uncle’s death actually meant, it would be her. Perhaps even something useful for whatever mess was still unfolding around Bonnie.

I stepped forward, and the room bowed as one.

It still didn’t sit right in my chest, watching that many powerful people fold themselves in deference toward me. But they rose again, and I cleared my throat, ready to begin.

That was when the doors behind me opened.

The elders turned first, and I followed a half second later, watching Johann step through them dressed in midnight blue trimmed with a gold royal pin at his collar, looking healthier and more composed than I’d seen him look in years. I hated admitting it, even silently, but my cousin looked genuinely magnificent.

Murmurs rippled through the hall immediately.

Only the King, or the man standing regent in his place, was permitted color tonight. Everyone else wore black, the culture demanding visible grief from every guest except the one meant to carry the crown forward. Johann knew that as well as I did. Better, probably. This was calculated, staged specifically to cause exactly the reaction now spreading through the room in whispers behind raised hands.

He offered an apology to no one in particular and took a seat near the front, smiling at me the entire way down, and I ignored him even as the elders beside me muttered curses under their breath.

”You may begin, Alpha Lysander,” one of them said, low and tight.

I cleared my throat again.

”My uncle,” I said, my voice carrying out across the hall, ”was a man many of you knew far longer than I did. Some of you sat beside him in council chambers decades before I was old enough to understand what any of it meant. You knew him as a King. I knew him, until very recently, simply as my uncle. A man who taught me that the moon goddess favors those who protect what’s been placed in their hands, whether that’s a pack, a family, or a single life that crosses their path.”

The room settled into something attentive, a few heads nodding along.

”The De’Lune line has always claimed a particular closeness to Lady Selene,” I continued. ”My uncle carried that closeness with him in everything he did. In how he ruled. In how he treated those beneath him.” I let that land, watching a few faces soften. ”He did not deserve what happened to him in his own library, in his own home, surrounded by people meant to protect him.”

I felt the room still further, grief settling back over it properly now, and I pressed forward into the part I’d been dreading since the moment I first read the elders’ prepared lines.

”Tonight,” I said, ”there is someone who will be brought before you. Someone accused of ending his life.” I kept my voice even, though something in my chest had started to twist. ”I would ask that this room extend the kind of judgment my uncle himself valued. Clear eyes. Patience. A willingness to see the full truth before—”

The shift in the room was immediate.

Faces that had softened moments ago hardened again, confusion and displeasure rippling outward from the front rows, and I saw Johann lean back in his seat, satisfaction spreading slow and unmistakable across his face. He turned slightly toward the crowd beside him, murmuring something I couldn’t hear, mocking me without needing a single word directed my way.

One of the elders standing just behind me cleared his throat sharply, a warning disguised as a cough.

I felt the weight of every expectation in that room pressing down at once, felt the careful script I’d been handed hours ago waiting in my mind, the version meant to project strength instead of mercy, meant to prove the throne hadn’t weakened the moment my uncle’s body hit that library floor.

I let the silence settle before speaking again.

”Do not mistake restraint for weakness,” I said, my voice carrying to every corner of the hall. ”The throne of the Alpha King has endured wars, betrayals, rebellions, and bloodshed long before any of us drew our first breath. It has never survived because it rushed to anger. It survived because it dealt justice with an unwavering hand.”

My gaze swept across the gathering.

”And to the one who was responsible for my uncle’s murder, you will stands on these grounds tonight and come to realize that your belief and will is hopeless. No wall will hide you. No false title or rebel and rogue will shield you. Not even the goddess will save you from the wrath of my good people. You will answer for what you have done before the Moon, before this kingdom, and before me.”

Yells started coming. They agreed with this more. The elders had been right.

I struggled through the final line, the words feeling like stones in my mouth.

”Bring in the murderer for judgment!”

The doors at the far end of the hall opened.

Bonnie was shoved through them, stumbling forward into the light, and my vision went red at the edges the instant I saw what covered her.

Chains. Wrapped around her wrists, looped at her throat, gleaming under the chandeliers in a way that made my entire body lock rigid with the effort of not crossing that hall and tearing every link of them apart with my bare hands.