To heal a Rogue

LYSANDER

The throne room felt far too large for this hour of the morning, lamp light casting long shadows against stone walls that had not yet seen enough daylight to lose the chill of the night. My footsteps echoed too loudly as I approached the dais, and at its base, I hesitated, staring up at the seat waiting for me.

One of the elders leaned closer, lowering his voice until it was meant for me alone.

”You must sit, Your Majesty. It is custom.”

”I’m regent,” I reminded him. ”Not King. At least not yet.”

”Custom does not distinguish between the two.”

There was not even the slightest hint of apology in his response.

I climbed the steps anyway and lowered myself into the chair.

It felt wrong beneath me immediately.

Not because the throne was uncomfortable, but because it was too large in a way that had nothing to do with its actual dimensions. It had been built for a body that had occupied it with decades of certainty, for a man who had known exactly what he was supposed to be and had never needed to question whether he belonged there.

I had held this title for less than two full days.

In many ways, it was still my uncle’s seat.

I could have sworn the wood itself remembered his weight better than mine, though that was probably exhaustion talking rather than anything real.

At the base of the dais stood Alpha Julius Knight, flanked by two of his own sentinels. Once I had settled, he bowed deeply, his gray-streaked beard nearly brushing his chest.

”State your business,” I instructed. ”And whatever it was you were discussing with my uncle before his death. I’ll be honest with you, Alpha Julius. I know very little about any of this.”

He straightened slowly, his eyes lingering on me for a moment.

It was the look of an older man measuring someone younger, deciding whether he was looking at a boy who had inherited a crown or a ruler who might eventually grow into it.

”The late King was determined to handle the rogue situation directly,” Julius began. ”In times past, when they grew too confident or too vocal about their demands, we would take measures periodically. Remind them of the pecking order before their grievances escalated into something that could no longer be contained quietly.”

Something in my stomach tightened at the word measures.

It was vague enough to mean almost anything, which somehow made it worse.

I understood the logic behind it, even if I disliked the shape it took. My uncle had been King. Kings made decisions that left little room for sentiment, decisions that sometimes cost lives in order to preserve order or at least the illusion of it.

But the rogues he had been managing that way were not monsters simply because they wanted a different life.

They were disgruntled. Desperate. People who had looked at the world they were born into and decided that the risk of losing everything was preferable to accepting what had been handed to them at birth.

And now, whatever my uncle had intended to do about them had become my responsibility.

”I’ve also,” Julius continued, ”for reasons I won’t pretend to fully understand, become something of a fixation among the more moderate rogue factions. The ones who still believe dialogue is worth attempting before everyone simply burns the whole system down together. You could call it a network, of sorts. Shaky. Entirely unofficial. But real enough that they send word through me rather than attacking blindly, the way the more radical elements tend to.”

He paused, his expression tightening.

”I received a new message recently. That’s why I’m here. I need to know how you’d like us to respond.”

”What message?”

”After the violence done to the King, we received new threats from the more radical factions.” His face darkened. ”Not the moderates I usually deal with. These factions are demanding an end to the entire caste system. A complete restructuring of werewolf society from the ground up, beginning immediately. Otherwise, they promise war.”

He let the word settle between us.

”i believe we should take it seriously too. It is not sound like theue usual skirmishes or the occasional uprising we’ve grown accustomed to containing quietly. It’s war.”

”As much as I’d like a system rebuilt from nothing to be a simple fix,” I replied, ”tearing everything down and starting over isn’t a solution. Neither is war.”

”I disagree, your Majesty.”

The response came immediately, firm and entirely without hesitation.

”I suspect the Elder Circle will as well.”

His gaze shifted toward the elders lining the walls on either side of the throne room.

He was right. Several nodded in silent agreement.

Their expressions carried that particular blend of certainty and thinly veiled impatience I had already grown tired of in less than days of wearing this title.

”Ordinarily,” Julius went on, ”I would say we decimate them outright. Call this what it usually is, the same posturing they’ve engaged in for generations. The lesser members of our society demanding to be treated as something they were never born to become.”

My jaw tightened.

”But murdering the King has apparently given them new pride. New audacity.” His fingers curled slowly at his sides. ”it happened because we did not see them as true threats before. We cannot afford to dismiss their words this time, Your Majesty.”

His jaw flexed beneath his beard.

”They’re no longer asking to be reasoned with. They’re calling for the eradication of our tradition itself. Of the entire structure that has held this society together for centuries. A millennium even. That is anarchy, plain and simple.”

He took a step forward.

”And granting them an audience means treating them as a legitimate threat worth negotiating with. That only emboldens every other faction watching to see how we respond. If they believe violence can earn them a seat at this table, what do you think will happen when the next volatile think-group decides they want something, Your Majesty?”

The room remained silent.

”For what was done to the King alone,” Julius added, ”they owe reparations. A thousand heads would not be an unreasonable demand, given the scale of what they have already taken from this house and Kingdom at large.”

The words settled over the room like a verdict already passed.

I felt the weight of every eye turn toward me, waiting to see which direction I would lean.

”Not everyone within a system agrees with everything that system enforces.”

My voice sounded steadier than I felt.

”I, for one, don’t agree with this particular solution.”