Chapter 24 - Chris
I expect Wayne to hit him again, although my fingers have already clenched into a fist. And I just might do it myself, considering that my temper is already climbing toward something I won’t easily control.
Instead, Charlize speaks first.
She steps forward slowly, deliberately, and something about the way she moves stops even Wayne mid-motion. He glances at me, uncertain, and I shake my head once. Not yet. Let her.
“You know what?” she begins. “You’re right. This is all my fault. The Alpha Kings won’t have to deal with someone as heartless as you if I wasn’t in their lives.”
“I beg your pardon?” His face twists in anger, humiliated by the fact that she’s standing up to him. Bold and fearless.
“Did I stutter?” She takes a step forward.
Wayne’s brows arch, and he glances at Sinth and me.
“Know your place, woman. You’re speaking to an elder.”
“No, I am speaking to someone who disregards the Kings’ mate and ridicules her every chance he gets,” she shoots back, her tone firm and authoritative.
“I will not stand here and be insulted by a…shiftless wolf.” He tries to walk away.
Her voice stops him before he can even take a step forward.
“You will go nowhere, Elder Edgar, until this ‘shiftless wolf’ is done talking.”
He doesn’t move. All eyes are on the two of them now.
I haven’t seen this version of her before, and I must admit, I’m thrilled.
“Shame on you,” she says, her eyes shifting across the other elders. “Shame on all of you who think cruelty makes them strong.” Her voice is steady, carrying clean across the hall.
They don’t speak.
“Unfortunately for you, your insults are a few years too late because I’ve been called worse by my own family.” A pause. “I won’t spend the rest of my life listening to strangers say the same thing dressed up as concern for these packs.”
Edgar sneers, swallowing hard. “But concern is exactly what this is.”
“No. Concern doesn’t sound like contempt.” She doesn’t raise her voice. She doesn’t need to. Something in her tone holds the whole hall still.
His jaw locks.
“Concern would be asking how I was recovering. Concern would be asking about the child I’m carrying, instead of calling it a risk to be managed or discarded.”
A murmur moves through the crowd. Not hostile this time. Uncertain, listening.
She turns slowly, taking in the full breadth of the hall, meeting eyes rather than looking past them.
“You should be thanking your stars that I’m the one handling this situation and not my Kings.
” She lets the words settle. “Left to them, you’d be on the floor by now, bleeding from more places than one. ”
She’s not wrong. We would’ve pounced on him if she hadn’t stepped forward first.
“You know how violent they can be.” She looks right at him. “And I could’ve easily let you meet your fate at their hands. But I chose not to. Not because I’m weak. Because I refuse to let one bitter man decide what kind of person I become.”
The crowd in the hall is affected by her words, and most of them have their expressions softening involuntarily.
“I know what most of you think when you look at me,” she continues, turning slightly to address the gathered pack members instead of just Edgar. “Shiftless girl. No wolf, no worth, no business standing where I’m standing. And trust me, I understand that fear.”
Something frozen is starting to thaw inside of me.
“Because I carried it myself for most of my life. I was told, over and over, that I was less than everyone around me.”
She pauses, letting the silence stretch.
“My father told me that. My stepmother told me that. An entire village told me that, every single day, until I believed it as easily as I believed my own name.”
A woman in a corner already has tears in her eyes as if she’s touched by Charlize’s story.
”I came to this island already convinced I was exactly what they said. Extra. Unwanted. A burden nobody asked for.”
Something shifts across the faces watching her. Not agreement yet. But attention, real attention, the kind that listens instead of waiting to argue.
“I was wrong to believe it. So are you.”
I watch her without breathing, something building in my chest I don’t have a name for yet.
“My wolf was never dead,” she says clearly. “Only sleeping. Now, she’s finally awake.”
Charlize closes her eyes and draws a deep, long breath.
For a moment, nothing happens. The hall holds its breath along with me. Then the air around her shifts, subtle at first, a ripple of warmth I feel even from where I stand.
I feel it before I see it—that same thread of connection I’ve felt since the throne room, sharpening, pulling taut.
Her form blurs at the edges.
Gasps ripple through the crowd as her wolf emerges, smaller than most Alpha wolves but unmistakably real, fur the deep red of her hair, eyes the same clear blue.
She stands there a moment, steady on four legs for the first time in her life. And something in her posture reads as pure disbelief even in wolf form—like she still can’t quite trust that this is real.
She holds the shift only a moment before returning to her human form, breathless but steady, chin lifted, refusing to waver.
The hall falls utterly silent.
“I am not shiftless,” she says, voice ringing clear now.
“I never was. And I choose, freely, standing here in front of all of you, to accept the bond these three men offered me. Not because fate demanded it. Because I want it. Chris. Sinth. Wayne. I claim you, exactly as fully as you’ve claimed me. ”
She says our names like a vow. Like a challenge. Like something no elder in this hall has any power left to undo.
I’ve never been prouder of anything in my entire life.
Edgar tries to speak again, some final attempt at authority, and it’s Elder Corvin who cuts him off this time, calm in a way I’ve rarely seen from him.
“You’re done,” he says, like he’s been waiting a long time to put him away. “Guards. Arrest this traitor.”
Edgar’s face drains of color entirely. “You cannot arrest an elder over the word of a shiftless—”
“Finish that statement, and it’s your corpse they’ll drag out of here,” Wayne says, his voice low and venomous.
The guards move without hesitation, and Edgar’s protests dissolve into sputtering as they drag him from the hall.
The crowd parts to let them through without a single voice raised in his defense. A few of the other elders exchange uneasy glances, clearly recalculating their own positions in real time.
“He’ll be tried for treason against the crown,” Corvin says, loud enough for the whole hall to hear. “Inciting rebellion. Slander against a King’s chosen mate. He will not see the other side of that trial.”
I meet his gaze, and he gives me a curt nod.
Nobody argues. Not one voice, not one objection, and the silence that follows tells me everything I need to know about how thoroughly the balance in this hall has shifted in the span of a single afternoon.
The crowd doesn’t fall in line all at once. I notice that clearly, scanning the faces still watching her with lingering doubt.
But enough of them do. A soldier drops to one knee first, then another. Pack members from all three territories follow, slowly but steadily, until the hall is filled with bowed heads where moments ago there was only sneering doubt.
The previous woman I spotted earlier standing in the corner presses a hand to her chest and bows her head deeply, tears visible even from where I stand.
A young guard from Trident murmurs something to the soldier beside him, both of them nodding, expressions shifting from doubt to something like respect.
Even a few of Wayne’s own people, who never needed convincing in the first place, look at her now with something closer to reverence than mere acceptance.
Not everyone. I catch a few faces still guarded, still unconvinced, watching her with wary suspicion.
It’s enough anyway. More than enough.
I cross the hall to her, ignoring the crowd entirely, and take her face in my hands.
“You didn’t need to do that,” I say, voice rough. “You didn’t need to prove anything to any of them.”
“I didn’t do it for them.” She looks up at me, something fierce and unguarded in her eyes. “I did it because I’m done being afraid of what people think I’m worth.”
Sinth reaches us next, pressing a kiss to her temple, quiet pride written across his whole face.
Wayne throws an arm around her shoulders from the other side, grinning wide despite the tears he isn’t bothering to hide.
“That,” Wayne says, “was the single most terrifying and impressive thing I’ve ever watched anyone do. And I’ve watched men charge into battle.”
“High praise, coming from you.” She smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners.
“The highest I’ve got…well, for now, obviously.” He presses a kiss to the top of her head, still grinning.
I kiss her then, in front of the entire hall, without a single thought toward propriety or protocol.
She kisses me back without hesitation and then proceeds to kiss Sinth and Wayne as well. She does this in front of all these people, confident and proud.
For the first time since this began, I don’t feel like a King managing an inconvenient problem.
I feel like a man who finally deserves what he’s been given.