Chapter 1 #2
Even though they were behind me, I could feel the eyes of my pack on my back.
The messenger glanced at me quickly, almost afraid to make eye contact.
The weight of Wolfe’s words hit me because he was right; the Hollow was a familiar burden that was never a burden at all.
The druid gave me titles and legacy, but the bond gave me something else… choice.
I lifted my chin. “Blueridge Hollow is not dissolved,” I said, every syllable scraped from the center of my chest. “You can write whatever you want on your scrolls. The land still knows its own, and we still know it.”
From the way the messenger studied me, it looked like I was a problem on a board he wasn’t expecting. “You defy the Council openly, then?” I heard the scorn in his voice.
I wanted to say yes. To spit it in his face, but Wolfe’s hand brushed my back, a warm drag between my shoulders. A reminder that war doesn’t start with blood. It starts with silence.
And we’d already declared this war once.
“We will attend the hearing,” Wolfe said, voice smooth as ice. “Together. You can tell your Council that.”
The messenger relaxed a fraction, which was a mistake.
“But hear me,” Wolfe continued, the growl under his words raising the hair on my arms. “There is no world in which I surrender this land. There is no world in which you break this pack.” He reached back, curling his fingers around mine, anchoring us both.
“You can stamp and sign and decree anything you damn well want, but the Hollow knows who guards it.”
And the Hollow answered—just for a heartbeat. The ground hummed under my boots, a low, thrumming acknowledgment, and from the low murmur around us, I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt it.
The messenger paled significantly. His gaze dropped to the parchment, his hands shaking just enough for me to see. “I’ve delivered the decree,” he said, suddenly brisk. “My duty is done.”
“Run back to them, then,” Killian called out, not bothering to hide his contempt. “Tell them how it felt standing on soil that doesn’t recognize their authority.”
The messenger took a step back with stiff movements, as if every muscle was fighting not to bolt. He didn’t look at me as he backed away; his eyes were on Diesel, who had taken another step forward. The messenger turned abruptly and ran.
The silence he left felt heavy. For a moment, no one moved. No one spoke.
Wolfe turned to face his pack, his eyes glowing faintly with alpha power. I moved with him, and we stood shoulder to shoulder, most eyes on Wolfe, some on me.
“Is that real?” someone muttered finally. “Can they do that? Can they just…wipe us out?”
“They think they can erase him,” another voice said. “Us with him.”
“They think wrong,” Diesel said flatly, back in his human form, pulling on a pair of black jeans.
Wolfe squeezed my hand once, then let go only so he could fully address the gathered pack.
“You’ve heard their decree,” he said. His voice carried in that way only an alpha’s can, hitting every ear, every wolf.
“You know what they want.” He didn’t need to repeat it.
I doubted any of us standing here would forget it.
“They want our land,” he continued. “They want our submission. They want Rowen removed and me back on Stonefang ground.” His gaze swept the crowd, steady and merciless.
“They want you to remember the feeling of being scared, broken. Defeated.”
My wolf snarled.
“And what do we want?” Killian called, stepping up on his other side.
Wolfe didn’t look away from his pack. “We want only what was always ours. Our ridges. Our dead. Our future.” His jaw clenched.
“So we will prepare. Rowen and I will answer their summons—not as beggars, not as traitors dragged to heel—but as alpha and mate of this pack, a pack that refuses to die because someone in a tent stamped a scroll.”
The murmur that rolled through the crowd this time was different.
Darker. Stronger. War wasn’t lurking at the door anymore; it was standing in front of us, and it was not the enemy they expected.
They expected a rogue band of shifters, but what they faced was the very Council that had made their laws.
Wolfe turned his head, meeting my gaze. In his eyes, I saw everything we’d survived to get here—blood and betrayal and the first time I realized how much I loved him, long before I allowed myself to admit it.
“You with me, princess?” he asked me quietly.
It wasn’t really a question that needed an answer. Not anymore. I looked out over my pack. My land. The place the Council thought they could claim. I felt it again—the Hollow hummed under my boots, old and watching.
“I was born here,” I said to him. “I’ll bleed here before I let them take it.”
Wolfe’s lips curved, his smile fierce and proud. “Then we go to their hearing,” he said, voice dropping so only those closest heard the promise under it. “And we show them exactly what Blueridge Hollow is.”
Beneath me, the Hollow didn’t breathe again.
It roared.