Chapter 21 Harkan
Harkan
By the day of the Mating Moon, three more packs had arrived.
Theron of the Northern Reaches came first—a grizzled old wolf with more scars than smooth skin and a laugh that shook the rafters.
He'd fought beside my mother in her youth, back when the Divide was wilder and alliances were forged in blood rather than politics.
He greeted me with a bone-crushing embrace and a gruff "About damn time someone stood up to that bastard. "
He means it, the wolf observed. No deception in his scent. Only rage. Old rage.
Theron had loved my mother. Not romantically—he'd had his own mate, lost to a border skirmish decades ago—but with the fierce loyalty of a brother-in-arms. When she died, something in him had gone quiet.
Seeing that fire rekindled now, directed at my father.
.. it loosened something in my chest I hadn't realized was tight.
Blackmoor arrived an hour later. Alpha Ronan was younger than I expected—my age, maybe, with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue. His territory bordered my father's directly, and he'd spent decades walking a razor's edge of neutrality. The fact that he was here at all said more than any words could.
But I didn't fully trust him. Not yet.
Ronan was a survivor, which meant he was also a pragmatist. He'd thrown in with us because he'd calculated the odds and decided we might win.
If those odds shifted, would he shift with them?
I watched him greet Sera with practiced charm and made a mental note to keep him close.
Allies of convenience were useful, but they required watching.
Silverfen sent their Alpha's daughter, Mira, in his place. Her father was too old to travel, she explained, but their swords were ours. She was small and fierce and looked at Ulric's tent like she wanted to set it on fire.
I liked her immediately.
Pup has teeth, the wolf agreed approvingly. Good.
Mira reminded me of Helene, in a way that ached.
That same righteous fury burning behind her eyes.
That same refusal to bow to wolves who thought size meant strength.
I wondered if my sister would have approved of what I was doing—standing against our father, risking everything for a witch who'd stumbled into my territory bleeding and desperate.
I thought she would have. Helene had always been the braver of us.
The war council convened in the great hall just before noon.
Our last council before moonrise. Sera, Theron, Ronan, Mira, Cara, and—after a tense moment of consideration—Aldric.
He'd proven himself innocent of treachery, even if his political caution still grated.
And he knew my father's tactics better than anyone.
We needed every advantage we could get.
I took my place at the head of the table, acutely aware of the weight of every gaze in the room. These wolves had answered my call. They'd left their territories, their families, their safety—all because they believed I could give them something my father never had.
Hope. Or vengeance. Sometimes they looked the same.
"He won't come himself," Aldric said, his voice carrying the weight of decades spent navigating High Alpha politics. "Not to the ceremony. He'll send Varro as his proxy, with enough loyal wolves to make a show of force."
"Coward," Theron spat. "Hides behind his pet sorcerer while others do his bleeding."
"Strategic," Aldric corrected, though his tone suggested he agreed with the sentiment. "If something goes wrong, he maintains deniability. If Varro succeeds, he claims the victory. Either way, his hands stay clean."
My hands curled into fists beneath the table. That was my father in a nutshell—always clean, always distant, always letting others take the fall for his cruelty. He'd done it with Helene. With my mother. With me.
But it wouldn’t work this time.
"And the Devourer?" Cara asked, pinching her brow.
"Almost certainly." Aldric's jaw tightened. "It's his favorite weapon. He'll want it close in case things go... badly."
"Badly for whom?" Theron growled.
"That depends on us." But the tilt of his lips signaled he was betting on us.
I leaned forward, drawing every eye in the room. "The Devourer is the real threat. Varro is dangerous, but he's mortal. He can be killed." The words tasted like a promise. "The Devourer consumes magic. It exists to destroy things like my mate."
"Then we keep it far away from her," Ronan said, his sharp eyes calculating. "Surround her with wolves. Create a barrier it has to fight through."
"It'll go through your wolves like water through a sieve," Mira countered. "I've heard the stories. That thing doesn't fight—it consumes. Claws, teeth, magic—it eats everything."
"Then we need to be smarter than it." I met each of their gazes in turn.
"Sable warded the temple. Whatever she did to that altar, it rejected the Devourer's presence. I’ve had Gavin watching the place from above. A presence has tried and failed a dozen times to get in and can’t. If we can draw it there—"
"You want to use your mate as bait?" Ronan's eyebrow rose.
Careful, the wolf warned, hackles rising. He questions us.
"I want to use the altar as a weapon," I said evenly. "Sable has power there. Power she doesn't have anywhere else. If it comes to a fight—and it will—that's where we make our stand."
Sera nodded slowly. "Elara would have done the same. Use the ground itself as an ally."
The mention of my mother's name sent a ripple through the room. Theron's expression softened. Even Aldric looked away.
The council lasted two hours. We discussed positioning, escape routes, which wolves could be trusted, and which were question marks.
Ronan had brought thirty fighters—good odds, but he'd positioned them near the edges of our territory, ready for quick retreat if needed.
I noted that. Theron's twenty were battle-hardened and loyal to my mother's memory, which meant loyal to me.
Mira commanded fifteen of Silverfen's best, young wolves eager to prove themselves, but they hadn’t seen real battle yet.
Combined with my own pack, we had numbers—but my father's loyalists outnumbered us still.
By tonight, we'd know if any of it mattered.
We'll rip its throat out, the wolf snarled. Nothing threatens our mate and lives.
I wished I shared his confidence.
The truth was, I didn't know if we could win. I didn't know if any of us would survive the Mating Moon.
And Sable—gods, Sable.
I’d yanked her into this mess and promised to free her. Instead, I'd painted a target on her back, making her a prize in a war she'd never asked to fight. If she died tonight—if my father's Devourer tore through her because I'd been too selfish to let her go—
She chose us, the wolf growled. She chose to stay. To fight. To be OURS.
He was right. She had chosen. But that didn't ease the guilt coiling in my gut like a serpent. I'd given her freedom from one master only to drag her into a battle with another.
Some salvation I'd turned out to be.
But I knew—with a certainty that burned in my bones—that I would rather die fighting than spend another century in my father's chains. And I knew Sable felt the same. She'd told me as much, her eyes blazing with that fierce fire that had undone me from the start.
I just had to make sure she survived long enough to see the other side of it.
When the council finally broke, I went looking for her.
The bond led me to the courtyard, where I found her sitting on a low stone wall near the stables, Trouble curled in her lap.
She looked better than she had in days—the shadows under her eyes had faded, and her color had returned.
But there was something contemplative in her expression, something distant.
And she wasn't alone.
Petra stood a few feet away, arms crossed, posture defensive. But she wasn't attacking. Wasn't sneering. She was... talking. Quietly. Though, her tone still carried that edge of superiority that made my claws itch.
I stopped at the edge of the courtyard, close enough to intervene if needed but far enough to give them space. Through the bond, her emotions pulsed—surprise, wariness, and underneath it all, simmering anger held on a very short leash.
This should be interesting.
Petra's voice drifted toward me. "—didn't know what Maren was planning. The bomb. The child." A pause, grudging. "I thought I was protecting the pack from an outsider who'd bewitched our Alpha. I didn't realize I was helping someone who wanted to burn it all down."
"Bewitched." Sable's voice was flat, her hazel eyes blazing with suppressed wrath. "That's what you're going with."
Petra crossed her arms over her chest. "It's what I believed."
"You believed I was a whore who'd spread her legs to steal power. You said it to my face. Multiple times."
Petra's jaw tightened, but she didn't deny it. "I was... mistaken."
"Mistaken." Sable laughed, and there was no warmth in it. "You kicked my familiar. You tried to crawl into my mate's bed. You called me a parasite, a witch-bitch, and told anyone who'd listen that I'd destroy everything Harkan built."
"I—"
"You made my life hell from the moment I arrived. And now you want, what? Forgiveness? Absolution? A nice little moment where we hug it out and pretend you weren't actively trying to ruin me?"
Petra's cheeks flushed. "I'm not asking for—"
"Good." Sable stood, and Trouble leapt to the ground, his fur bristling with foxfire. "Because you're not getting it."
She crossed the distance between them in three quick strides. Petra, to her credit, didn't back away, but her eyes widened, registering the threat a half-second too late. Rookie mistake.
Sable's fist connected with her nose.
The crack echoed across the courtyard. Petra staggered back, hand flying to her face, blood already streaming between her fingers.
"That's for being a bigot," Sable said, her voice cold and steady. "And for kicking my familiar." She shook out her hand, flexing her fingers. "Now we're even."