Chapter 32 #2
My top lip snarled in disgust for a brief moment. The very thing I’d vowed wouldn’t happen, I’d invited in. A Pack Council delegation stepped into the Hollow. They tried not to look unnerved.
They failed.
I was sure they felt it; how could they not? The Hollow had a weight to it—it pressed against them, measuring, judging, remembering their trespasses.
I didn’t need to speak to draw their attention. Every pair of eyes was already on me.
Deryn stepped forward, flanked by two alphas I barely recognized—one tense, one pale. “Alpha Wolfe,” Deryn said stiffly. “We are here to conclude the hearing.”
A laugh tore out of Diesel before he could stop it. “A hearing?” he echoed. “After you razed a territory? After you tortured one of ours? You think you’re still holding a hearing?”
The Pack Council bristled.
Rowen lifted her chin. “You came here under the guise of law, but your wolves attacked us twice tonight. You came for war, not judgment.”
Deryn straightened, voice clipped. “We came to restore balance.”
“Balance?” Killian growled. “Where is the balance in killing? Of torturing?”
A flicker of confusion—or guilt—crossed one of the Council alphas’ faces. Deryn hid his reactions better.
I stepped forward. “Before we speak of law,” I said quietly, deadly, “we speak of proof.”
I nodded to the side. Two of my pack carried forward a stretcher—simple wood, nothing ceremonial—holding Brand’s barely-living body.
The Pack Council wolves recoiled. Brand’s face was still swollen, unrecognizable to those who didn’t know him.
His bruises were still fresh. The puncture wounds were still open, not healing.
He looked like what he was, a wolf who had been beaten, tortured, and left to die.
He was the first blow in the Council’s undoing. Gasps rippled through the Hollow. Even the Pack Council wolves flinched.
Deryn paled. “What have you done?”
I snorted in disgust. “We found him, where your forces left him,” I said. “They didn’t even bother hiding their work.”
“That is a lie—”
“Is it?” Rowen interrupted sharply. “The rogue’s attacks across multiple territories? The pattern pointing directly to you? The witnesses? The timing? The poisoning you believed we wouldn’t identify?”
Deryn’s mouth opened and closed.
Diesel took a step forward, eyes blazing. “And Axel,” he said softly, almost gleefully. “Shall we bring him out too?”
Some of the Pack Council wolves stiffened, their faces saying everything. They knew. They knew Axel was a traitor. They knew he’d been sent as a tool, and they knew this entire war had been orchestrated.
I let the silence stretch before I let every shifter in this fight watch them unravel.
When I finally spoke, I didn’t raise my voice.
“You wanted a hearing,” I said. “So here it is.” I motioned to the pack—still strong, bruised, bloodied, unbroken.
I turned to those who had fought us, making sure they could hear me.
“You stand before every wolf you’ve harmed.
Every territory you’ve manipulated. Every pack you expected to fall in line.
Tonight, you don’t answer to me.” I met each of their stares. “You answer to us.”
“We are not on trial,” Deryn snapped.
My alpha power surged, and my eyes gleamed silver. “Oh, but you are,” I said as I stepped onto my pack’s land. One foot—that’s all it took for the Hollow to sense me, and the Hollow responded.
Not to me. Not to Rowen. Not even to the pack. It answered them.
A sound like a deep exhale rolled across the clearing—so low, most wolves would have dismissed it as the wind.
But anyone standing on my packlands felt it.
Every single one of them froze. The ground beneath their boots shifted—just a subtle tilt at first. Enough to make them widen their stance. Enough to make their wolves bristle.
Deryn faltered, staring down at the ground and then up at me. “What—”
The soil trembled again. Not cracking. Not rising. Not attacking. Just shifting its weight.
Away from them and wrapping itself around me.
I felt her touch then, light, graceful as she gave me a gift and a curse in one. The Goddess Luna showed me and every shifter standing on Hollow land the truth.
They were in their home as they always were. Grandfather sat in his chair, half-asleep, as the click-clacking of Grandmother’s knitting needles lulled him deeper into slumber.
The break in the seal jerked him upright. Grandmother’s knitting stopped. They both reached for the ground, searching for the source of the power that had broken a Goddess’s gift. They found no sign of danger.
“Strange that,” Grandfather murmured. “Woke me up.”
“You’ve been sleeping for years,” Grandmother grumbled softly, a small smile on her face. She reached for the Stone beneath her again, feeling for the pack, with no signs of distress. All was well.
He opened the door, filling it like he always did. Big, brawny, but boyish in looks.
Grandmother’s needles paused once more. “Axel?” Wariness tinged her voice. “You left. How did you—”
He’d always been quick—faster than even Killian at times.
He moved across the room so fast that Grandmother barely had time to jump back.
But he didn’t lunge at her. His hands were on Grandfather’s neck, claws already extended, tearing through his throat and dropping his body to the floor like trash.
His grin was not the one she knew. His eyes were not the ones she recognized.
“What have you done to him?” she asked, clutching her needles. “Where’s my Axel?”
“I’m right here, Grannie.”
She felt a pang of sadness as he used the nickname, and she shook her head. “No. No, you’re not my boy.” She jabbed her needle outward. “What have you done?”
“I’ve played the longest fucking game in the history of double crosses,” Axel told her.
“I’ve burrowed so deep into this backward fucking pack, you don’t even recognize what is right in front of you, you old hag.
” He sneered and spat on Grandfather’s body.
“I’m going to kill you, slowly. I always hated you the most.” His smile had no warmth.
“Then my friends are going to enter this barren fucking rock, and we’re going to kill everyone here.
” His eyes were flat and dead. “Might take a turn on a few of the bitches here first,” he added with a wink.
“With you and the old timer gone, the land will break.”
“Wolfe will—”
“Wolfe will do nothing,” Axel cut her off.
“Because he is an idiot. He is a blind, incompetent fool. He looked for conspiracy theories when there were none. He’s so caught up in that redheaded slut’s pussy, he can no longer see straight.
He thought elders, elders of that hokey piss-lazy pack, tricked him and controlled rogues?
” Axel laughed loudly. “I control the rogues. I fed the Pack Council the information they needed on how to take that land. It is all me. Wolfe’s incompetent, Grannie.
His head will be mine before the winter solstice.
The Pack Council wants him and his slut dead and Blueridge Hollow theirs.
And I will be the one who hands it to them. ”
Grandmother watched him. “You are no alpha, Axel.” She looked him over from head to toe. “You’re not even a beta. What did they tell you you’d get in return?”
“You’re as stupid as Wolfe. I mean, he doesn’t even realize he’s truly your blood, that’s how clueless he is. The Pack Council doesn’t need more alphas. Pack leaders are the future.”
Grandmother laughed. “The only clueless idiot is you, boy. Alphas are born. They can’t be replaced.”
He held it up in his hand. A thin vial of liquid silver. “Not anymore. This is the future. Pity you won’t see it, bitch.”
“That’s how you crossed,” she said with understanding. She drew herself up to her full tiny height, and with a resigned nod, she shrugged. “Fair enough, tell me one thing before I die. Why?”
Axel mimicked her shrug. “Because I hate you all.” He stepped closer. “You most of all.”
“Come one step closer, boy,” she seethed.
“I will rip you from groin to throat for the blood you spilled today.” She could see them, those of her blood, watching.
Her gaze met the strongest of them, love filling her heart as his eyes met hers.
“Tell them we fought, Alpha,” she told her grandson. “The stone falls.”
I opened my eyes and met the gaze of the man who had orchestrated everything.
The one who had pulled all the strings. I looked around at the rest of them, everyone was still shock-stricken, but most were also watching Deryn and his fellow traitors, who had just had the ground ripped out from under them.
“Deryn, you and the members of the Pack Council beside you…you’ve been found guilty of treason and murder. Judged by every shifter here.” I bared my teeth.
“Your reign is over.”