25. Chapter 25
The next day they gathered for the hearing.
Blackridge wolves lined the eastern edge in a formation tight enough to fight from. Thornwood held the west. Between them, fifty feet of hard-packed dirt where nothing lived and nothing grew.
Morning light cut through the branches in pale shafts. The air smelled like frost and pine resin and the sweat of wolves trying not to shift.
Nadia stood in Blackridge’s line. Not behind Rhys. Beside him.
She could feel forty sets of eyes on her skin. Thornwood wolves stared at her the way you stare at something you already own.
Neutral wolves studied her with careful interest. The weight of all of it pressed against her ribs.
She kept her chin up and her hands still.
You are not something to be claimed. You are not a thing to be won.
Rhys stood close enough that his shoulder almost touched hers. His leg bore his weight without shaking. His hands hung loose at his sides but his knuckles were white.
He was braced for a strike beside her, the animal in him coiled tight, ready to break free at the first wrong move.
Across the clearing, Garrett stepped forward from Thornwood’s line.
The old alpha raised one hand. The clearing went silent.
“Thornwood holds binding contract on the omega designated Nadia.” Garrett’s voice carried to every corner of the clearing. “Blackridge harbors her in violation of pack law.”
The envoy struck his staff once. Both wolves went quiet.
Jace stepped forward from Blackridge’s line. His face gave nothing away.
“The contract was signed under coercion. It has no weight, and Thornwood knows it.”
“Does Thornwood have the omega’s consent?” Jace fired back without pause.
Something flickered behind Garrett’s eyes. He recovered fast. Not fast enough for the front rows to miss it.
“The council also knows what it looks like when a pack drugs an omega, binds her, and drags her from a regional gathering under cover of a manufactured attack.” Jace’s voice hit like a hammer.
The neutral packs stirred. Heads turned. Eyes narrowed.
“Protective.” Jace let the word sit in the air until it rotted. He did not need to say more.
A Blackridge wolf rumbled low in his throat. The sound rolled across the clearing like distant thunder. Declan’s hand went to his knife. Across the open ground, a Thornwood beta shifted his feet into a fighting stance.
The space between the two lines hummed with the kind of tension that turned small movements into killing ones.
The mediator scanned both sides with hard eyes.
“The omega speaks.” His voice brokered no objection.
“She may speak.” Garrett recovered, spreading his hands with practiced ease. “Thornwood has nothing to fear from words.”
Nadia felt Rhys’s hand brush her wrist. Not holding her back. Steadying her. Through what stretched between them, his wolf sent one feeling toward her.
I’m right here.
She stepped forward into the open ground.
The clearing watched. Forty wolves from neutral packs. Thirty from Thornwood. Twenty from Blackridge.
The envoy with his staff planted like a root. The elder with his arms folded. All of them watching one omega walk into the space between two lines of wolves that wanted to tear each other apart.
She stopped at the center. Turned so both sides could see her face.
She locked her fingers behind her back, pressing her knuckles into her spine.
Then she looked. Blackridge first. She held the line until each face was familiar.
Neutral packs second. One alpha. The next.
The next. She let the silence work. She let them see who was about to speak before she opened her mouth.
“I was sold.” Her voice did not shake. She had spent every night for the past week making sure it would not shake when this moment came. “Not traded. Not contracted. Sold. By an alpha who treated me like livestock to a pack that treated me like something less.”
Silence. Deep and total.
“I ran because staying meant dying. Not fast. Slow. The kind of dying where they take pieces of you until there’s nothing left that remembers how to fight back.”
A wolf in the neutral line looked at the ground. Another shifted from foot to foot. A mated pair near the back exchanged a glance that held something sharp and uncomfortable.
“I ran four months through winter with broken ribs and stolen shoes.” Nadia’s voice carried steady and clear. “I ate from dumpsters. I slept in drainage ditches. I crossed three territories and not one wolf asked if I was okay. Not one asked what I was running from.”
The words settled into the clearing like ash after a fire.
“Thornwood calls me property.” Nadia turned toward Garrett.
Her eyes held his and did not let go. “But property doesn’t bleed the way I bled.
Property doesn’t run through winter to get free.
Property doesn’t stand in front of you right now and tell you to your face that you will never own me again. ”
The last sentence landed like a fist on stone.
Garrett’s jaw flexed. His knuckles went bone-pale. The pleasant mask held.
Behind him, the pale-eyed Thornwood wolf watched his alpha’s face. The Thornwood wolf stood very still. He did not blink. He did not look away.
The neutral packs shifted.
Not all at once. One alpha near the south edge crossed his arms and leaned toward Blackridge’s side. A small thing. But the alpha beside him noticed and moved half a step the same direction. Then a mated pair near the back took three full steps to the east.
He’s losing the room.
Garrett’s chin lifted. He drew a breath to speak but the old alpha cut him off with a raised hand.
The mediator turned to the envoy. They exchanged a look that held a conversation no one else was part of.
The Frost Hollow envoy lifted his staff and brought it down once. The crack echoed through the pines like a door slamming shut.
“The council finds no binding authority in Thornwood’s claim.” The envoy carried something older than the trees around them in his words. Older than the territory lines scratched into the dirt.
“The original contract lacks verified consent. The omega known as Nadia is recognized as a free wolf under council protection. Blackridge’s guardianship stands.”
The ruling fell into the clearing like an ax into wood.
Blackridge’s wolves did not cheer. They were too disciplined for that. But they straightened. Shoulders pulled back. Chins lifted. The relief moved through their line like a wave they were too well-trained to show.
Sage exhaled hard through her teeth. Declan’s hand came off his knife.
Thornwood’s line went rigid. Wolves looked to their alpha. Thirty sets of eyes waiting for direction.
Garrett stood very still. The kind of still that wasn’t calm. The kind a wolf only managed when every other option had been taken from him.
His face showed nothing. His eyes moved once across the neutral packs, counting the ones who had shifted toward Blackridge. Counting what he had lost.
His gaze traveled to Thornwood wolves and stopped on the pale-eyed Thornwood wolf.
The pale-eyed wolf held that gaze a beat too long.
That was the crack.
Garrett straightened. He rolled his neck once. A deliberate show of ease that convinced no one.
“Let the record show that Thornwood respects the council’s ruling and honors lawful arbitration.” His voice came out smooth and steady and perfect.
Garrett turned and walked through his own line. Thornwood’s wolves parted for him without a sound. He did not look back.
The pale-eyed Thornwood wolf was the last to turn. He looked at Nadia once.
Something moved behind his eyes that she could not name. Then he followed his pack into the trees.
The clearing exhaled.
Nadia walked back to Blackridge’s line on legs that felt like water. The strength that had carried her through those minutes in the open was draining fast.
Rhys met her at the edge. He did not speak. He placed one hand on the back of her neck, gentle, and pulled her close until his forehead rested against hers.
They stayed like that for three breaths. His warmth bled into her skin.
Around them, Blackridge moved. Jace gave a quiet order.
“Done,” Sage murmured as she passed. Her scarred hand squeezed Nadia’s arm once.
But Nadia watched the tree line where Thornwood had vanished. She could still feel Garrett’s presence out there like heat from a fire someone forgot to put out. Not retreating. Regrouping.
It’s not done. Garrett is the kind of wolf who comes back for the second round, not the kind who walks away.
But she did not sleep easy.