Chapter 68 Mira
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Mira
So this is what being a queen felt like.
Reading a scroll of Veyndral sentencing laws while an entire camp waited for you to decide the fate of two women kneeling in the dirt who tried to murder your unborn children.
Former queen Rheda had pressed it into my hands the moment she’d stepped back. Small, worn leather, the kind of document that had been unrolled in judgment halls for centuries.
My eyes stopped on one entry near the bottom.
The Barrows. Beyond Veyndral’s northern border. Shifting terrain, beasts that had never been tamed, forests designed to trap and disorient. No shelter or death, because the land wouldn’t grant it. Sentenced lycans wandered until their bodies gave out, which for their species took a very long time.
I rolled the scroll closed.
Altun flanked my left, arms folded, his expression offering nothing. He’d delivered verdicts for centuries. This one wasn’t his to give.
Right. Punishment menu reviewed. Just needed to pick from it without vomiting, passing out, or looking uncertain in front of wolves who were still deciding whether the potential human queen was worth following.
I looked at Annora first.
The aristocratic mask was gone. Stripped by hours of captivity, a failed escape, and the particular humiliation of being dragged back to the camp she’d tried to burn down from the inside.
Her wrist still bore the marks from where I’d gripped it days ago.
The other cheek carried a bruise from the soldiers who’d caught her at the portal.
She met my gaze and the desperation in her eyes was real. Calculated, but real.
“It was Giselle,” Annora said. The words tumbled out in a rush. “She approached me. She had access to the supply station, she knew the schedules, she planted the...”
“That’s a lie!” Giselle’s head snapped toward her. “You brought the Nighthollow from Veyndral. You planned every detail. I followed your orders because you said the council would...”
“I said nothing of the sort. You were jealous. You wanted Solomon to...”
“You wanted the king! Don’t pretend this was about anything other than your...”
They turned on each other with the viciousness of allies whose alliance had been built on ambition rather than loyalty. Each sentence peeled back another layer of the conspiracy, exposing the architecture beneath.
Annora’s political strategy. Giselle’s personal vendetta. Both of them feeding each other’s worst impulses until the Nighthollow vial became the logical conclusion.
I let them talk. Let the clearing hear every word. Let the ravens record the unraveling for whatever council archive they fed into.
Then I walked towards them.
I could feel the three gazes on my back from Lucian, Solomon, and Percival but I focused on crossing the distance to Annora. Each step cost more than the last because my legs were still unreliable and the clearing was watching. The weight of what I was about to do pressed against my chest.
Annora looked up at me from her knees. The height difference was reversed now. She’d spent weeks towering over me with her aristocratic posture and centuries of breeding. Now she knelt in dirt and I stood above her with a fury that had been building since she arrived.
“You called my children half-breeds,” I said. My voice carried without effort. The clearing had gone silent enough that a whisper would have reached the perimeter. “You called them abominations. You said the bond was a mistake and their lives should never have been conceived.”
Annora’s mouth opened. To explain, to justify, to deploy whatever political framework she’d constructed to make attempted murder sound reasonable.
I slapped her across the face.
The sound cracked through the camp. Her head snapped sideways, a red mark blooming across the cheekbone that wasn’t already bruised, and the silence after was absolute.
My hand stung. The impact radiated up my wrist and into my forearm and I didn’t care because the satisfaction of it burned brighter than the pain.
Rheda’s mouth twitched. A micro-expression, gone before anyone else caught it. Approval wrapped in restraint.
“That,” I said, “was for calling them abominations.”
I turned to Giselle. She flinched before I’d taken a step. The soldier who’d extended her claws at a pregnant woman, who’d stood over me with grief wearing the costume of aggression, couldn’t hold my gaze.
“And you.” My voice dropped. “You said I’d never deserve them. That I was playing house. That when the war ended, I’d leave and ruin them.”
Giselle’s chin trembled. Tears tracked through the dirt on her face.
“You were right about one thing. I might not deserve him. But you don’t get to make that call. And you definitely don’t get to poison the woman carrying his children because your feelings got hurt.”
The clearing held its breath.
My gaze found Rheda. She gave me nothing. No nod, no signal, no hint. The lesson was the support of guidance. Make the decision, carry the weight.
A queen who needs permission isn’t a queen.
I turned back to the kneeling women.
“Annora Vael. Your nobility in Veyndral is permanently revoked. Your family’s titles, your registry, every stone that bears the Vael crest. Gone.”
The words came out with a steadiness I didn’t feel. Borrowed authority, maybe. The echo of every queen who’d ever stood in a clearing and decided someone’s future.
Annora whimpered. The sound was small and ugly.
“Giselle Dravon. You are dishonorably discharged. Your rank, your commendations, your decade of service. None of it exists anymore.”
Giselle’s spine buckled. The rigid posture that defined her finally collapsed and she crumpled forward, hands catching the dirt.
“Both of you are sentenced to the Barrows.”
The lycan audience reacted as one. A collective flinch, a murmur of horror rippling through soldiers and representatives. They knew the Barrows and they feared it.
Giselle screamed. Guttural, from somewhere deeper than pride. Annora made no sound. Her eyes went vacant, her mind already in the forest that would hold her forever.
Altun stepped forward. Not to override but to reinforce.
“The sentence stands,” he said. “Sanctioned by the current queen and witnessed by the former crown.”
Queen. The word landed differently when Altun said it. A title, granted by the man who’d held it before his son.
Soldiers hauled Annora and Giselle to the edge of the clearing. Altun raised his hand and the perimeter opened.
The converted hunters filed in after they called for them. Wyatt first, followed by Kaia, Damon, Reese. They took positions alongside the lycan soldiers with an uncertainty that hadn’t been there during training drills.
This time, I stepped back.
Altun surveyed the combined force. Lycans and humans, side by side.
“This alliance is unprecedented,” he said. “The history between our species is not a misunderstanding to be corrected. It is a wound. Generations of it. Neither side is innocent and I won’t insult you by pretending mine is.”
The clearing held.
“But the women bleeding in that corner did not act because they are lycans. They acted because they were cowards. And the hunters standing among you did not defect because they are human. They defected because they are brave. Species didn’t make those choices. Character did.”
Rheda stepped beside him. “The compound behind those walls is manufacturing a weapon that will destroy lycan and human alike. The Order does not discriminate in cruelty. Neither should we discriminate in our resistance.”
“This alliance has the full sanction of the Veyndral crown,” Altun said. “Former and current. Any lycan who undermines it will join those two in the Barrows. Any challenge to the next queen’s authority will be treated as treason.”
Voss stepped forward. His jaw worked, his posture stiff, and whatever internal battle he’d been fighting since arriving resolved itself in a single nod directed at Altun.
The converted hunters straightened. Kaia’s hand left her blade. Damon uncrossed his arms.
An alliance held together by grudging respect and two retired monarchs who could still command a room without raising their voices.
The evening unwound slowly and I was finally able to sigh in relief.
Farmon adjusted my supplements while Altun commandeered Solomon and the compound maps. Rheda cornered Percy near the fire pit.
“Did your guardians feed you properly as a child?” she asked, inspecting his arms as if she was assessing livestock.
“I ate fine.”
“Define fine.”
“Food. Regularly. With my mouth, Your Highness.”
“Vegetables?”
“Some.”
“Some is not a quantity, Percival.”
Percy shot me a look across the clearing that said ‘help me,’ I waved.
Annora and Giselle remained under guard at the clearing’s edge, awaiting transport to the Barrows with the former king and queen in the morning. Neither spoke nor looked up.
The alliance had royal sanction and the compound operation was greenlit. The women who’d tried to kill my children would spend eternity wandering a forest that wouldn’t let them die.
It was the first moment since the poisoning that the rage in my chest began to quiet. Stored in the place where every woman who’d survived what I’d survived kept the fire burning for when she needed it again.
Lucian reached his limit when Rheda attempted to rearrange the sleeping quarters for “proper maternal airflow.”
“Enough for tonight,” he said. “Mira needs rest. Not a renovation.”
“We’ll finish in the morning,” Rheda conceded. She kissed my forehead, pressed three supplement vials into Farmon’s hands, and pointed at Lucian. “Hourly raven updates on the pregnancy.”
“Hourly,” she repeated when he didn’t respond fast enough. “Don’t forget.”
“Goodnight, Mother.”
The camp settled into quiet.
And I was alone in the command tent with three alphas whose bond channels had been blazing at full capacity for hours.
Percy sat on the bedroll beside me. Solomon leaned against the map table, arms crossed, watching me with silver eyes that tracked every breath. Lucian sealed the tent flap behind him, his body blocking the exit.
“I need to go back to the compound soon,” I said. “The window is narrowing.”
“Soon,” Lucian said. “Not tonight.”
“Tonight,” Solomon added, his voice dropping to the register that made my spine straighten, “you’re not going anywhere.”
Percy’s hand found the curve of my waist. His thumb traced a slow circle against my hip. The dimples were back, but the warmth behind them carried an edge.
“You scared us today, love,” he murmured. “Properly scared us.”
The three channels pulsed in unison. A synchronized demand. Their mate had almost died, their children had almost been taken, and every alpha instinct in the room was vibrating. I could feel it on my skin.
Solomon uncrossed his arms and pushed off the map table. Lucian stepped away from the entrance. Percy’s thumb stopped circling and his hand spread flat against my hip.
Three alphas. All channels open. Moving toward me with a coordinated intent that made my breath catch and my pulse hammer against my ribs.
I looked at Lucian. Then at Solomon. Then at Percy.
“Well,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere tonight.”
The tent flap stayed closed.