A Warrior Luna's Awakening (Freya and Caelum) novel Chapter 148

Chapter 148

Freya’s POV

+8 Pearls

Caelum looked as though the ground had opened beneath him. For once, it wasn’t me who wore the mark of abandonment. It was him. He was the one stripped bare in front of the packs–pitiful, exposed.

Aurora, ever eager to stitch her dignity back together, forced a brittle smile. “Affection,” she declared, her voice pitched too high, “isn’t measured by a male’s wealth, but by how much of himself he gives you. A man might clutch a hundred coins but offer only one–what value is that bond?”

Her gaze flickered toward me, triumphant, as though she had made some grand revelation.

Before I could answer, Silas looming beside me like the iron spine of a fortress, spoke with cold amusement. “And yet Caelum spends his hoarded coins well enough on you, doesn’t he, Aurora? Jewelry, baubles–gifts from the silver coffers of Silverfang. Tokens of a bond born in another’s ruin.”

The air in the hall shifted, a ripple of wolf–scent and restrained growls. Aurora’s cheeks flamed scarlet.

Those trinkets had painted her in the world’s eyes not as a Beta’s daughter or a promising pilot of the Bluemoon Airborne Wing, but as Caelum’s mistress–the interloper who gnawed at another female’s place. She had flown bold and reckless over the sea isles, stunts meant to repair her image. But Silas’s words dragged her face back into the mud.

He didn’t stop there. His voice rumbled steady, the weight of a Whitmor decree. “As for what I own–if Freya desires it, she will have it. My pack’s hoard, my blade, my blood. All of it.”

Gasps shuddered through the chamber.

Silas Whitmor, Alpha of the Ironclad Coalition, was no minor wolf. His empire’s reach stretched across borders, its wealth a shadowed mountain none could map. The implication was staggering.

Aurora’s chin jutted, sharp and desperate. “Then tell me, Alpha Whitmor–what if Freya demanded Whitmor Industries itself? Would you place it in her hands?”

Silas turned his head slowly, a predator’s smirk tugging at his mouth. He didn’t even glance at her–his gaze found me, steady, unshaken. “If she asked, I would.”

The chamber exhaled as one, a hiss of disbelief and awe.

I froze, caught off guard. I had expected protection, maybe words of defiance on my behalf. But this? Even as jest, it was more than I imagined–he had just placed me on a pedestal in front of half the Capital’s wolves. My cheeks heated, though I forced my spine straight.

“No,” I said at last, voide low but clear. “What I want, I’ll take with my own claws. I don’t need to be given.”

Some around us nodded knowingly, dismissing the exchange as courtly flourish, politicking. But whether they believed or not, they had seen enough. They had seen that in Silas’s eyes, I was not a discarded mate. I was chosen. Elevated.

Silas’s lips curved faintly. “Of course. A wolf like you hunts for herself. Not like some others, who cling to scraps tossed from a stronger’s table.”

Aurora’s flush deepened to crimson, shame burning through her mask. Even Jocelyn at her side shifted uncomfortably, unable to defend her ally. Silas’s words had struck like claws across both their faces.

Before the tension could snap further, the convocation shifted. The summit began in earnest.

He began to speak, words clipped, forced.

I had seen him sell before, striding with confidence before investors and officials, weaving visions with his silver tongue. But today? Today the words snagged. He stammered. Even when he read straight from the page, the cadence faltered, unsteady.

Because he knew every syllable had my scent on it.

A fog of shame swelled in the hall, wrapping tight around him. My gaze did not leave him, and under it, his wolf cowered.

At last he finished, lips dry, voice cracking.

For a moment, silence. Then one of the government men–Director Leo, if I recalled right–nodded approvingly. “I find this project promising. The application of unmanned craft in isle development is keenly suited. Efficiency, reduced labor, accelerated construction. And SilverTech’s patent, in particular, is valuable–its innovation would serve Ashbourne’s coast well.”

I nearly laughed, though it caught sharp in my throat. The patent. Mine. They lauded him for my claws‘ work, my sleepless hours.

He stood there, basking in the official’s praise, and I wondered if he felt it burning through him–how easily his triumph would unravel the moment I chose to speak.

I said nothing. Not yet.

But my wolf stirred restlessly, knowing the reckoning was close.