Eve
Chaos so grating it made my eye twitch was what greeted me when I walked into the council chamber.
These men are children, I thought, walking in with Elliot.
I took my seat, my ears buzzing, threatening to bleed from the sheer volume. This meeting was different—not just the Alphas who governed quadrants of the Obsidian packs were present, but also governors, ambassadors, and the sovereigns of those quadrants: the lesser Alphas.
Even seated, they were all on their feet, facing each other, hurling accusations, fingers jabbed into chests, profanities flung, nostrils flaring like they were one insult away from lunging.
The pack was in disarray—its Alpha and Beta missing, a considerable number of Gammas unaccounted for. Unrest brewed among the civilians. Chaos inside and out. That’s what Obsidian had become in the absence of the authority that once kept them all in line.
I tapped my foot on the marble, watching them cluck at one another like irate chickens.
"Fangridge belonged to my grandfather! He built the pack from the ground up!" a balding lesser Alpha barked, nearly frothing as he sparred with another. "When Obsidian falls, it should be mine. It’s ancestral land."
The other Alpha scoffed, clearly unimpressed. "The one he built on the backs of slaves stolen from the Northwood sector? My pack? Screw your slaver of a grandfather. You have no right to that land. Your entitlement is breathtaking."
The first Alpha had already begun to shift.
Fifty panicking Alphas, both lesser and higher, scrambling to lay claim to a pack while our enemies likely already had their claws around the only capable leader we had. We were on the brink of utter defeat.
These were the men Hades had to lead? No wonder he was always cranky. No loyalty to the pack they claimed to serve, no faith in the Alpha who had pushed them through time and again—just greed and selfishness, fighting over whatever scraps they believed would remain.
"Pathetic" couldn’t begin to cover it.
Disgust was too mild for what I felt. It coiled deep in my gut.
There was no pain. No hope left in the men now gathered in this room.
I exchanged a glance with Montegue. He stood still, assessing the situation like a spectator at a play rather than someone drowning in the same sinking ship.
Every second wasted here was a yard of land lost to Silverpine—figuratively, but lost all the same. And they were here fighting over metaphorical bones, as if their dead grandfather’s claims could guard borders.
Numb. Hollow. So damn tired of every loss, every hit from Silverpine. Of walking blind through a ploy whose full shape I still couldn’t grasp. What was the goal?
The cold dread that cleaved through me when I read James’s letter had hardened into something sharper. Clearer. Ice in my veins. My anxiety had shattered and left something clearer in its place.
I allowed myself a faint smirk. It was almost funny—my father forgot that for a time, even if he had only been pretending, he raised me to be an Alpha. To lead. To rule.
And James forgot that I had known him my whole life. His betrayal on my birthday had been unprecedented, but I had been wearing rose-colored glasses with frames so large I couldn’t see anything they didn’t want me to.
But that had changed.
Now I could see through the bullshit—at least some of it.
I locked my jaw and signaled Montegue as I raised my hand above the desk.
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