Chapter Fifty
Savage
Trystan was alive.
Frosted hells, how could I have been so reckless? I should’ve confirmed he was dead before staggering off that cliffside.
Not even the night I skinned a king and wore his hide into this hall so that no Court could pretend the throne wasn’t mine did it feel so suffocating.
The grand hall was meant to make others kneel, but tonight, I was the one at its mercy. With Calista on my throne and Thornwild’s Alpha standing in my doorway, the air tightened until even the torches seemed to struggle for breath.
Trystan strode in, bloodied and bruised, walking like his bones had been rearranged, but walking all the same.
I didn’t move, nor did I react. A king’s face could be a weapon or a weakness. Mine was neither. It was stone. Even beneath the iron mask.
Only my Wolvryn shifted beneath my ribs, pacing, snarling, and furious at the sight of him. Not because he had survived but because he had seen everything. He had recognized my Wolvryn, the unmistakable glowing royal runes.
I felt it now in the way his gaze pinned me. Not at my crown, not at my mask. At my eyes. Then his gaze slid to Calista and lingered.
A cold blade turned slowly in my chest. If Trystan spoke, he could do more than ruin me. He could ruin her.
Thornwild could poison the Moon Crown before it ever touched her brow. He could fracture the Edicts she’d just spoken into nothing but a pretty story told by a wolfless female who dared to reach too high.
The law was clear. The king could not interfere in the Blood Hunt.
Logically, it should have been simple: protect my throne, crush the challenge, and move on.
Yet when I looked at her sitting there, pale with exhaustion, ankle wrapped and hands clenched around the throne arms like she could hold herself together by force alone, the thought of her claim being nullified struck something ugly inside me.
Calista had earned it. She bled for it. She practically crawled to my gates.
Pride cut sharp through my calm. Pride, and something more dangerous that I refused to name.
Her eyes flicked to Trystan, then to me. Tension emanated from every inch of her body. More than that, since the moment I strode back into the hall, I could feel her brimming with questions she couldn’t ask in front of the Conclave.
The Thornwild Alpha took one more step. His mouth parted, and the entire room leaned toward him. He stood there holding both our fates in his hands like a knife.
I let my voice fall into the space like frost settling. “Trystan.”
One word.
Not a greeting.
A warning.
A smile threatened at one corner of his mouth, the kind a male wore when he had found a weakness and wanted to savor it before he broke you with it.
“You’re late.” I kept my tone flat.
A few Alphas bristled at my indifference as if they could sense something in the air. They watched with the gleam of opportunists, already smelling blood and politics.
Trystan’s gaze flicked to the empty chair waiting for him, then back to me. “It seems the Hunt has been… eventful.”
It was bait. He wanted me to snap. He wanted the Conclave to see a crack in my control, but they would never. His gaze darted to Calista, and hunger flashed across his dark eyes.
My Wolvryn surged, hungry to tear his throat out for daring to stand in this hall and look at what belonged to me.
I kept my face still. “Sit,” I commanded.
Trystan’s brows rose as if amused by the audacity of being ordered in my own throne room.
He still didn’t sit down. “I do apologize for interrupting these sacred proceedings with my tardiness,” he drawled, glancing toward Calista like she was a prize in a market.
“Especially when the king’s shadow worked so tirelessly to keep your queen alive. ”
The words slid into the chamber like oil. A few Alphas shifted, clearly curious. Some even dared to smirk.
My gaze flicked to the priestess next. Neris watched from her place at the table, expression unreadable beneath her veil. Calista’s fingers tightened on the throne arms.
I swung my attention to Trystan. “Choose your next words very carefully, Thornwild.” It was quiet but the entire room heard it, the unspoken threat.
Trystan’s smile widened, showing too many teeth. “Is that concern I hear, Frostcrag?”
He wanted to turn this into a game. He wanted to remind me he had leverage and enjoyed it. Finally, he’d have his revenge for Valina.
I let a thread of ice enter my voice. “It’s a warning.”
For a heartbeat, his gaze darkened like he might push harder and tear the secret open in front of priestesses and Alphas and the law we built Lunaris on itself. Then his eyes flicked to Calista again, and the calculation changed.
He remained silent.
Why?
The dense quiet was suffocating.
Gods help us… he wasn’t going to spend his leverage yet. He would keep it. Savor it and use it when it bled me the most.
Finally, Trystan lifted his hands, mockingly placating. “Of course. Forgive me, my king. I have been… distracted. My hunt did not go as planned.”
A few Alphas barked questions at once.
“Where is your hunter?” Tidebreak snapped.
“Dead.”
“What happened to you?” The Ironcliff Alpha eyed his wild state.
“I took his place.” He lifted a lazy shoulder.
“Were you attacked by one of the beasts of the north?” Dorian asked, voice sharp with suspicion.
Trystan shrugged as if his split lip and bruised ribs were nothing. “The north is unpleasant this time of year. I slipped and fell and unfortunately landed poorly.”
Lies. But why? Why wouldn’t he make his claim now? What did he want?
No Alpha questioned him further. None of the males may have trusted each other, but an open affront wasn’t wise. Especially not in front of the high priestesses.
He tipped his chin toward Calista, the motion subtle. “Congratulations are in order, I suppose. Hollowcrest made it. Though it was a close one from what Rhosyn claimed.”
Calista didn’t speak. She couldn’t, not without exposing how badly she wanted to. And from the fury in her eyes, she wanted to skin me and every male in here alive.
Trystan’s gaze slid to me again. “And it seems Frostcrag’s… efforts were not wasted.”
Efforts.
A few of the Alphas mumbled, confused by the barely veiled crack. My jaw tightened beneath the mask, but I kept my hands loose at my sides. He was simply attempting to bait me, as he would now for the foreseeable future. Until he made his true intentions known.
Neris stepped forward, clearing her throat. Her voice cut through the tension like a bell. “The Edicts have been spoken and accepted, and the Moon Crown has been earned. We’ve awaited Thornwild to seal witness. Now, may we continue?”
Trystan’s gaze locked onto Neris, all mockery smoothing into something more respectful, more careful. Even Thornwild knew better than to play games with Selraya’s priestesses.
The Alpha bowed his head. “Then I apologize for my delay to you, the priestesses and Selraya as well.” He finally moved toward the table and took his seat beside mine with the ease of a male settling into his own hall.
He grinned as if he hadn’t just walked in holding a dagger at me, at my bride, and the entire damned Conclave. He leaned back, folding his arms. His eyes moved between Calista upon the dais and me, slow and pointed.
The frost cursed bastard wanted her to feel it. He wanted me to feel it. That he owned us. Then he smiled wider, lazy and terrible. “Now, what did I miss?”
“Repeat your Edicts for Thornwild’s witness,” the high priestess instructed.
Calista’s shoulders lifted with a controlled inhale as she stood. Again, she did not wobble as she spoke them once more.
The legitimization of wolfless Wolvryn. Sanctuary for her mother and sister. The tithe of warriors, grain, and iron to Hollowcrest.
Trystan listened without interruption. Without a sneer, surprisingly. Only his eyes gave him away, too sharp, too interested.
When Calista finished, Neris turned to me. “Does Frostcrag accept?”
“Yes.” I spoke the word as definitively as I had the first time.
Trystan’s gaze narrowed a fraction, as if filing the word away for later use.
The High Priestess lifted her hands. “Then by Selraya’s rite and the law of the Blood Hunt, these Edicts become binding.”
My gaze flickered to Calista, unbidden. Her entire body was strung so tight I doubted she was breathing.
Neris’s mouth opened to conclude the rite, but Trystan leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “And let the record show that the Blood Hunt was lawfully executed. There was no interference. No breach of rite. No shadows crossing lines they should not.”
Silence snapped into place. Calista’s gaze darted to mine, a whisper of fear glistening beneath the brilliant emerald. I held, my expression neutral. A few Alphas blinked, clearly confused, while others shifted uncomfortably as if sensing the undercurrent.
Neris’s eyes narrowed slightly. “So witnessed.”
Trystan’s gaze cut to me, pointed and smug, then swiveled to Calista again. My Wolvryn clawed to the surface, held back by sheer will alone. Selraya help me, if he so much as looks at her one more time...
The Thornwild Alpha continued to grin, his message as clear as a blade held to my throat. You owe me a debt, and I will collect later.
I wouldn’t pay this bastard a damned thing. Once I ripped out his throat, I’d salt his withered corpse and toss it along the shore so the crabs had no mercy.
Neris dismissed the Conclave with a sweep of her hand. “Prepare yourselves, Alphas. The mating ceremony must be arranged before nightfall and our queen crowned at moonrise. The Moon Crown does not wait for Court squabbles.”
Chairs obediently scraped stone and Alphas rose, muttering, already arguing about raids and tithes and what they would lose to Hollowcrest’s survival.
I remained seated, unmoving, until the last of them filed out. Only a handful of Frostcrag sentinels, the priestesses, and Trystan lingered.
Calista had not moved from the throne. She had folded back down after proclaiming her edicts for a second time, but I could feel her attention like knives on my back.
Trystan waited until the hall had emptied, then he stood and strolled around the table as if he were taking a leisurely walk through a garden. He dipped his head at my queen, a grin smothering his lips. “The future Moon Crowned.”
The beast beneath my skin clawed at my flesh, desperate to rip through its skeletal confines. A growl vibrated the back of my throat, rippling across the hall. “Stay away from her.”
Trystan took another step, brave move considering, and stopped beside me. Leaning down, close enough that only I and Selraya could hear, he whispered, “One hour. North parapet. Alone.”
I turned my head slowly toward him. “Who are you,” I murmured, “to mistake yourself for someone I answer to?”
His smile didn’t falter. “A male who saw something he shouldn’t have.”
Calista’s eyes leapt to mine. She’d heard… Of course she had.
My Wolvryn surged harder, claws scraping behind my ribs. I kept my voice even all the same. “You overestimate your importance.”
He leaned in a fraction closer, lowering his voice until it was almost intimate. “And you underestimate how quickly a throne can become a pyre.”
Again, cold slid through me. Not for myself but rather for Calista. For her claim. For the Edicts she had just dragged into existence with blood and stubborn will.
If the hall had been empty, I would have slid my blade under his throat and finished this. A foolish dream. I still needed Thornwild alive, for now.
Calista moved, catching my eye. She rose from the throne in a single, unsteady motion. Pain flashed bright in her face for a heartbeat before she buried it under steel. “I believe you’ve been dismissed,” she snarled, fury lacing her tone. “It’s time to prepare for the ceremony.”
Trystan’s gaze slid over her, amused. “You’re bold for a female who can barely stand.”
“And you’re daring for a male whose face looks like it lost a fight with a meat cleaver.” Calista’s hand went to her crescent, but I crossed the distance between us and caught her wrist in a silent warning: not here.
Not now. Not in front of the priestesses.
She glared at me anyway, eyes blazing with the kind of rage that had carried her across snowstorms, feral wolves and certain death.
Trystan’s smile grew more brazen. “Look at you,” he murmured. “Already defending each other.”
Calista’s expression flickered, something unreadable cutting through her rage for one heartbeat. Before she could speak again, footsteps echoed from the side corridor.
Neris reappeared, robes whispering like moonlight over stone. Her gaze swept over the three of us, carefully cataloguing. “Enough.” Her tone was calm and absolute. “This hall is not for petty threats.”
Trystan bowed his head slightly, all false respect. “Of course, High Priestess.”
Neris’s eyes remained on him. “The goddess does not favor males who try to twist rite for sport.”
His smirk returned as he straightened. “I would never.” Then his gaze flicked to me one last time, then to Calista. A taunt.
One hour. A promise and a threat braided into one.
“We will continue this later.” Trystan stepped back, already turning away, voice as light as if we’d been discussing the weather.
The arrogant ass sauntered out of my throne room like he already owned it.