Chapter 24
CADE
Watching the wolves bow to Rowan should have unsettled me. It should have triggered something territorial or defensive or instinctively resistant inside me. Alphas do not kneel. They don’t lower themselves without demand or defeat. They certainly don’t do so because of something they feel.
And yet, as I stand beside her and witness the room shift around my mate, there’s nothing in me that bristles.
There’s only certainty.
The wolves remain lowered for a suspended heartbeat longer than necessary, their broad shoulders tense but not rigid, their heads bowed not in submission but in recognition.
Even the vampires—pale, sharp-featured, dressed in dark, tailored layers—watch her with a wary kind of respect.
One of the witches, a woman with copper skin and hair braided in intricate spirals down her back, studies Rowan as if she’s observing a rare celestial event.
I knew she was special long before this moment.
I kept that knowledge to myself—not out of selfishness, but caution.
Rowan already walks with a target painted across her spine.
She didn’t need whispers of something greater following her through every pack and coven.
The supernatural world hasn’t always responded well to power it doesn’t understand. At least in my experience.
But instead of creating enemies, she has drawn allies.
After Rowan gestures for them to stand, her fingers slide between mine. Not to cling to me for support or reassurance. She simply keeps me beside her because she wants me there, and that choice alone steadies my racing heart.
“I’m not sure how to express what any of this means with words,” she begins, her voice clear and carrying without strain.
She presses her free hand over her heart, and I can feel the truth of the gesture through our bond.
“But please know I feel each of you here, and I won’t take that for granted.
In fact, I hope that none of you will have to fight in the coming days. ”
A low growl rolls through the space before it fully shapes into words, the sound carrying more memory than threat.
Taren, alpha of the Shadowyn pack, steps forward, her presence commanding without theatrics. Her dark hair, streaked lightly with white, falls in a braid over one shoulder. Her purple eyes—deep and unyielding—lock first on Rowan, then briefly on me.
Not long ago, those eyes had been clouded, vacant beneath Malrik’s influence, and I remember the rage in Rowan when she saw what had been done to her.
Now there’s nothing but clarity there as Taren speaks.
“You don’t intend to face Malrik alone,” she says, her voice low and steady, shaped by decades of command.
The room shifts at her words. The couple of Shadowyn wolves behind her straighten instinctively, their loyalty radiating outward.
Taren’s gaze stays fully on Rowan. “You freed me from his grip,” she continues. “You restored my mind when I would have torn my own pack apart under his control. I won’t watch you walk willingly into his hands without knowing you understand what he’s capable of.”
Rowan doesn’t flinch. In fact, I’m surprised when she smiles.
“We may not know what he’s fully capable of, but I do understand his motivations.
Malrik was abused. Used and discarded as if he were nothing.
That doesn’t excuse what he’s done. It doesn’t erase the blood he’s spilled.
But it does matter, and it changes how I intend to proceed. ”
There’s no apology in her voice. No hesitation.
Only conviction.
“He doesn’t want to directly harm any of you,” she continues, widening her gaze to include the room now rather than just Taren. “He wants to prove a point. He wants to demonstrate that he was right all along—that he should have been elevated and the one from the prophecy.”
Her hand tightens in mine.
“In his mind,” she finishes quietly, “I’m everything he was meant to be. And in order to become something greater, he believes he has to defeat me. Publicly.”
“And you’re going to let him?” another wolf presses from the edge of the circle. He’s younger with blue eyes, from Riverstone. “That won’t save any of us.”
“No,” Rowan corrects evenly. “You’re right. It won’t.”
She turns her head toward me, and the smile she gives is small but unwavering before she looks at her family, still standing near the back of the room.
“I don’t intend to sacrifice myself,” she continues. “I have more than the packs to fight for. I have family. I have a mate. I have a future I’m not ready to give up. But I also have a heart. And if I can save Malrik from what he’s become, instead of destroying him, then I will try.”
The room quiets again.
“But if I can’t,” she adds, her voice sharpening just slightly, “then Cade—and anyone who chooses to follow him—will help me end this.”
“I, too, will follow you anywhere,” Bram declares.
He stands with arms folded across his chest, his sandy hair falling loosely around his temples, his expression stripped of its usual teasing edge. There’s no flirtation there now. No challenge.
Only loyalty.
Others begin to nod. Low affirmations ripple outward, but it’s Thane, the beta from Glacier Crest, that steps forward.
“I’ve lived many decades,” he says with a measured voice.
“There’s a legend that speaks of an Alpha Queen.
Not one who rules through fear or dominance, but one who emerges when our kind has fractured beyond recognition.
When we forget what it means to be pack.
I would not have believed it if I had not felt it for myself in this room tonight, but you are her.
And we need you more than any of us have yet to realize. ”
Rowan’s throat bobs once, and I feel the flicker of nerves through our bond before she smooths it down. She doesn’t shrink beneath his words. She absorbs them.
“Please,” Thane finishes, “do not let mercy rob us of hope. Let us fight for what you represent.”
She releases me and steps toward him, placing her hand firmly on his shoulder. “I will, I promise. If it becomes clear that taking Malrik’s magic won’t work, I won’t hesitate. I’ll fight to the death, and I’ll accept your help.”
And I know Rowan means it. Not because she seeks permission, but because she understands the weight of leadership now.
Iris, of course, is the one to break the momentum.
“What if RikRot makes sure that can’t happen?” she calls out from behind us, her voice sharp enough to cut through the hum of the room. Every head turns toward her, even the vampires who had been lingering in the shadows near the far wall.
She pushes herself up from her chair with a dramatic sigh, floral skirts swishing around her ankles.
“He’s a sorcerer,” she continues, stabbing a finger toward the ceiling as though Malrik himself might be perched there listening.
“A powerful one with a boulder-sized chip on his shoulder. Do you honestly think he won’t come prepared?
Shields, barriers, wards layered on wards to keep all of you out and my grandbaby in? ”
Her eyes narrow as they settle on Rowan.
“I love you, sugar plum,” she says, the affection in her tone doing little to soften the warning beneath it.
“And I have no doubt in your strength. But you haven’t lived in this world long enough to think with darkness.
That isn’t a flaw. It’s a blessing. But it means the rest of us are here to remind you of the possibilities you may not instinctively consider. ”
Her frying pan idea may have been asinine, but the old kook isn’t wrong about this.
The room absorbs her words with more seriousness than it did moments ago.
“That’s precisely why we’ll be present,” a smooth voice interjects.
Katerina steps forward from the few witches gathered near the entryway. She’s tall and lean, her copper-toned skin glowing beneath the overhead light. Her dark eyes are intelligent, carrying the quiet confidence of someone who has lived long enough to see arrogance crumble.
“Malrik may be a sorcerer,” she continues evenly, “but he won’t stand strong enough against the covens united. He knows it. That’s why he has hidden himself for so long. We may not be able to kill him outright—at least not without great cost—but containment? That we can handle.”
A ripple of reassurance moves through those at her back, their presence steadier now that strategy is taking form.
Rowan nods thoughtfully before asking the question that tightens the air again.
“Has he taken anyone else from the packs, dens, or covens?” Rowan asks, and I can see her brain working overtime. “I may not understand all the possibilities of this world, but I do have an imagination, and if he’s taken key leaders, then his plan might be bigger than any of us realize.”
I step closer, placing my hand between her shoulder blades, grounding both of us. “What are you thinking?”
“Malrik is my opposite,” she replies, turning slightly toward me but speaking to everyone present. “Where I can strip power from supernatural beings, he can impose his will over them. If he’s collecting leaders, he isn’t just creating chaos. He’s assembling something.”
The weight of that settles heavily.
“The vampires,” Liz says quietly, pushing off the wall she’d been leaning against. “He was controlling them at The Keep. Not influencing. Controlling.”
“And Glacier Crest wolves,” Thane adds. “He infiltrated our pack first because he had already rooted himself in our territory. I believed it to be a spell at the time, something we could eventually unravel. But it was never that simple, was it?”
Rowan nods slowly. “No, I don’t think it was, but I also think it depended on how much he needed a certain wolf. I didn’t have to free the pack wolves, but Taren would have soon died if I’d not been there, and Bram could have been next if he’d not shown up at NightShade.”
Silence stretches.
Claude, the eldest vampire present, steps into the light next.