Chapter 34
Merric
I call the pack together three days after the attack.
The compound has been repaired. The wounded are healing.
The evidence has been delivered to Viktor at Aurora, and the coalition work is underway.
Edda reaching out to sympathetic council members, Brenna’s field contacts carrying coded messages, Viktor building the larger case across the territories.
That’s a war for many days. For battles not yet fought.
Today, I have a different announcement.
Brenna knows I’m ready for this. We discussed it last night, lying in the dark, her head on my chest, breath soft on my skin.
“You’re sure about this?” she asked yet again.
“Absolutely.” I look down at her in the shadows. “Do you have doubts?”
“You’re asking me to be the reason you lose your pack,” she said.
“I’m asking you to be the reason I find my family.”
She was quiet for a long time after that. Her fingers traced patterns on my chest—circles, lines, the absent geometry of a woman thinking hard.
“They’ll think you’ve lost your mind,” she said.
“Probably. Does it change anything?”
“No. But I wanted it on the record.”
Now I stand in the lodge, facing my pack yet again. Brenna to my left, Cameron beside her. To the right, Rook, Sienna, Dane, Briar—my wolves, my people, the ones who followed me south without question and have been beside me through everything that came after.
“I’ll keep this short,” I say. “You know what happened three days ago. You know what we found in the evidence. And you know that the political landscape of the southern packs has changed in ways we’re still understanding.”
The room is attentive. Waiting. They can feel it: the shift in pressure, the weight in their alpha’s voice that means something foundational is about to move.
“I’ve been your alpha for two decades. In that time, I’ve tried to lead with honesty, with strength, and with the best interests of Frostbourne at the center of every decision.
” I pause. Look at the faces I’ve known for years: Tom Hale, who taught me to track when I was twelve.
The kitchen women who fed me when my mother died.
Petra, who I trained from a green recruit into the best fighter in the compound.
“I haven’t always succeeded. My absence these past weeks was a failure of leadership.
Edda was right to call me on it. Jonas held this pack together in my place, and he deserves recognition for that. ”
Jonas, leaning against the wall in his usual position, shakes his head slightly. Not false modesty. Genuine discomfort with public praise. Some things don’t change.
“I’ve made a decision,” I say. “And I want you to hear it from me, directly, before the rumors start.”
The room shifts. They know something’s coming. Wolves read their alpha’s body language.
“I’m stepping down as alpha of Frostbourne.”
Silence. Total. The kind of silence that you can feel pressing against your skin.
“I’m moving to Ravenclaw territory. With Brenna. With Cameron. My mate and my son need a home, and I need to be where my family is.”
The silence breaks. Not into shouting; into murmurs.
The low, spreading sound of a host of wolves processing something they didn’t see coming.
I scan the room: shock on most faces, understanding on a few, anger on fewer still.
Petra’s nostrils flare, and her eyes are bright.
Karl Harwick has closed his eyes, one hand on the table, absorbing.
Tom Hale grips his wife’s hand. Mira is staring at me like I’ve announced the end of the world.
Edda Beaumont is completely unmoving.
“I’m not abandoning this pack,” I say. “Frostbourne will always be part of me. Every wall, every path, every wolf in this room… you’re in my blood.
You’ll stay in my blood. But I spent eighteen years putting my title above my family, and I won’t do it again.
The man who walked away from his mate because an elder told him it was necessary…
that man made the wrong choice. I’m making the right one now, even though it costs more. ”
Rook speaks from beside me. His voice is low. Measured. The voice he uses when he’s translating something emotional into something the room can process.
“The alpha transition protocol is clear,” he says. “Merric has the right to step down voluntarily and name a successor for pack confirmation. The pack can accept or challenge the nomination.”
“I’m nominating Jonas.” I look at him across the room.
He’s pushed off the wall. Standing straight.
His face is unreadable, which means he’s working hard to keep it that way.
“He’s led this pack in my absence with more skill than I’ve led it in my presence.
He’s consistent, he’s principled, and he’s earned the trust of every wolf in this room.
Frostbourne deserves an alpha who’s all in. Jonas is all in.”
Jonas blinks at me. For a long moment, the mask of quiet competence drops, and I see what’s underneath: surprise, and the conflict of being handed something he never asked for and always prepared for without admitting it.
“I didn’t want this,” he says.
“Best alphas never do.”
A ripple of something moves through the room. Not laughter. Recognition.
Edda stands. The room tenses, conditioned by years of expecting opposition from the woman in the back row.
But she’s in the front now, and her expression isn’t combative.
It’s something I’ve never seen on her face before.
Something that might be respect, if Edda’s version of respect didn’t look so much like controlled pain.
“I opposed your mating,” she says. “I opposed your decisions. I thought you were compromising this pack for personal reasons.” She pauses.
The room holds its breath. “I was wrong about the mating. I was wrong about the witch. But I wasn’t wrong about one thing: an alpha’s first duty is to his pack.
If you believe that moving to Ravenclaw is the right choice, then I trust the alpha who made that choice, even as he stops being our alpha. ”
She turns to Jonas. Holds out her hand. “You have my vote.”
Jonas takes her hand. The room exhales.
Karl seconds. Then Petra—fierce and fast, her bandaged arm at her side, her voice carrying: “Aye.” Then the Hale family.
Then the younger wolves, the middle ground, the kitchen women, the patrol runners.
One by one. Wolf by wolf. Not unanimous; there are a few holdouts, a few wolves who leave the room without voting, their absence a statement of its own. But overwhelming. More than enough.
Jonas stands in the center of his pack and accepts it with the quiet grace of a man who’s been carrying it in practice for weeks and is finally being given the title that matches the burden.
“I’ll do my best,” he says. Simple. Honest. Exactly Jonas.
“You’ll do better than your best,” I tell him. “You’ll do what’s needed.”
The meeting breaks. Wolves approach, some to clasp my hand with both of theirs, some to embrace me, some to glare with expressions I’ll carry for a long time.
This pack raised me. Shaped me. Made me who I am.
The first faces I saw when I shifted at thirteen.
The hands that built my cabin. The voices that howled for my father’s funeral, sang at my naming ceremony, and argued with me over supply routes and training schedules and every small, essential decision that makes a pack into a family.
Leaving it is the hardest thing I’ve done since—
Since the last time I chose duty over love. Except this time, I’m choosing love over duty. And the difference is everything.
Rook finds me outside afterward. He leans against the lodge wall and looks at the mountains the way he always does… like he’s reading them.
“Sienna, Dane, and Briar will want to come with you,” he says.
“I know.”
“I’m staying.”
I look at him. My second. The man who sees through every wall I build and never once used what he found there as a weapon.
Who sat on a porch at Ravenclaw and told me to go after Brenna in a voice that meant he’d already decided for me.
Who ran ten miles through the forest on legs that should have given out at eight, because his alpha was running, and that’s what seconds do.
“Jonas needs a second,” Rook says. “Someone who knows the pack, knows the politics, knows where the bodies are buried.” He pauses. “Metaphorically.” Another pause. “Mostly metaphorically.”
“You sure?”
“Frostbourne was home before you were alpha. It’ll be home after.” He looks at me. “Besides, somebody needs to keep Edda honest. That’s a full-time job.”
I grip his hand. He grips back. The grip carries a lifetime of silences that didn’t need filling, of battles fought shoulder to shoulder, of a trust so deep it became part of us. We don’t say what it holds. We’ve never had to.
“Take care of them,” I say. Meaning the pack. Meaning everything.
“Take care of yours,” he says. Meaning Brenna. Meaning Cameron. Meaning the life I’m choosing.
I nod. He nods. We let go.
It takes a long time for my hand to stop feeling the ghost of his grip.
Brenna is waiting at the cabin. Cameron beside her. Bags already packed because Brenna is Brenna, and she had everything ready before I walked into the lodge. Her eyes read my face the way they always do, searching for the damage underneath the composure.
“Well?” she says.
“Jonas is alpha. Edda voted for him. Rook’s staying as second.”
“You’re okay?”
I look at her. Beautiful eyes. Mate mark on her throat. The woman I loved and lost and found again, standing in front of me with her arms crossed, her chin up, and my son at her side. The truth between us settles… two people who chose each other over everything else and are done apologizing for it.
“I’m okay,” I say. And mean it.
We load the trucks. We head south.
We go home.