22. Milo
— ? —
Milo
I’m awake instantly, centuries of pack conditioning, even in a body that’s only thirty years old, and my hand closes around the device before my eyes fully open.
Lynn shifts beside me, murmuring something incomprehensible, her arm tightening around my waist.
The text is from Cassius.
Emergency session called. Council chamber. Dawn. Non-negotiable.
My blood runs cold.
Who called it?
Elder Thorne. Seconded by Whitmore, Barrett, and Ashby.
Four elders. Four of the seven required to force an emergency session. They’ve been planning this.
What’s on the table?
The three dots appear, disappear, appear again. Cassius is choosing his words carefully.
Motion to bar the human from the ritual. Motion to review the succession criteria.
Review the succession criteria.
They’re questioning my crown.
I sit up slowly, carefully extracting myself from Lynn’s arms. She makes a soft sound of protest, reaching for me in her sleep, and my chest cracks open.
I’ll be there.
The response sent, I set down the phone and stare at the woman curled in my bed.
She looks peaceful. Soft. Her hair is spread across my pillow, and one hand is tucked under her cheek, and she’s wearing my t-shirt because she claimed it was “softer than hers,” but I know it’s because it smells like me.
I know everything about her now.
The way she hums when she’s reading. How she argues with Mr. Darcy like he can understand her. The way she says my name when she’s falling asleep, soft and wondering, like she can’t quite believe I’m real.
And I have to leave her.
Now.
The council won’t wait. If I’m not in that chamber at dawn, they’ll use my absence as evidence of my unfitness. They’ll claim the human has made me forget my duties. They’ll-
I run my hands through my hair, fighting the urge to throw something.
I should wake her, explain everything, the mate bond, the council, the political nightmare that’s been building since the moment I brought her into pack territory. She deserves to know.
But explaining “my government is trying to annul you” feels like a conversation that needs more than a rushed explanation in the dark. It needs time. Context. The ability to answer her questions without a clock ticking down to a confrontation that could determine both our futures.
I’m protecting her from worry, I tell myself. I’m giving her peace.
The goddess’s voice whispers in my mind: Coward.
I find paper on my desk. A pen.
Lynn-
Pack matters. Emergency session at the compound. I have to leave now, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’m sorry this is a note and not a conversation, you deserve better. You deserve everything.
I’ll explain when I return. I promise.
- Milo
P.S. Feed Mr. Darcy the good pellets. He knows when you give him the cheap ones.
I leave the note on my pillow, where she’ll see it when she wakes.
Then I press a kiss to her forehead, she sighs, turns toward my touch, and I leave.
The drive to the compound gives me too much time to think.
The goddess finds me twenty minutes in.
One moment I’m alone on the dark highway, headlights cutting through the pre-dawn mist. The next, she’s in my passenger seat, silver and terrible and profoundly unimpressed.
“You left your mate a note.”
“I didn’t have time-”
“You left your mate a note, pup.” Her voice carries the weight of centuries. “A note. I’ve seen empires fall over notes.”
“She doesn’t know she’s my mate.”
“And whose fault is that?”
I grip the steering wheel harder.
“I was going to tell her. After the ritual. When the timing was right.”
“The timing is never right. That’s the point.” She shifts in her seat, and moonlight ripples around her like water. “You think I gave you that bond so you could schedule a convenient moment to acknowledge it? You think fate waits for human appointment calendars?”
“With respect-”
“You have none for me at this moment, and I don’t require it.” Her eyes flash silver. “I require honesty. Which you’re currently failing at.”
“I’m trying to protect her.”
“From what? Truth? You think ignorance is protection?” She laughs, and it’s not kind. “Your father thought the same thing. Look where it got him.”
My hands clench on the wheel.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Speak truth in the dark? That’s all I am, pup.
Truth that can’t be avoided.” She leans closer, and her presence is overwhelming, ancient and cold and relentless.
“You’re about to walk into a room full of wolves who want to take your crown.
They’ll use that girl against you. They’ll call her a weakness, a liability, a symptom of your unfitness to rule.
And she won’t even know why, because you left her a note. ”
“I’m coming back.”
“Are you? The council forced this session. They have the votes to keep you in that chamber for days. They can question every decision you’ve made since taking the crown. They can demand reviews, audits, testimony.” Her smile is sharp. “By the time you’re free, she could be gone.”
“She won’t leave.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I-”
“Because you what? Told her you love her? Told her what she is to you? Told her that her presence in your life is literally written in the stars?” The goddess shakes her head. “You’ve told her nothing. You’ve given her everything except the one thing that matters.”
The compound gates appear in the distance, iron and stone, ancient and imposing.
“I’ll tell her,” I say. “When this is over. I’ll tell her everything.”
“If this goes wrong,” the goddess says, “she’ll never know.”
The words land somewhere under my sternum and stay there.
She’s right. If the council strips my crown, if they exile me, if they-
Lynn will never know she’s my mate. She’ll think she was just a relationship. A fling. Something that happened and ended.
She’ll never know she’s my everything.
“Fix it,” the goddess says. “Or I will.”
She’s gone before I can ask what that means.
By the time I reach the compound, the council chamber is already packed.
Dawn light filters through the high windows, casting long shadows across the circular table. Seven chairs line the outer edge, the elders, the voices of tradition, and one chair sits at the head.
My father’s chair.
It’s empty.
It’s always empty now. Still new to the crown, I keep walking into this room expecting him to be in it, keep opening my mouth some mornings to ask his advice before I remember there’s no one on the other end of the question anymore.
He would have known what to do about the girl. He married a woman half the council hated and led for forty years and never once looked like the ground was moving under him. I have his crown and his chair and his enemies, and none of his certainty.
The way they looked at me in those first weeks comes back every time I sit down here. Not grief. Calculation. Can the boy-king hold the pack together, or do we start measuring him for a smaller role.
Can this boy-king hold the pack together?
I take my place at the head of the table, my father’s empty chair a physical reminder of everything I’ve lost.
“Elder Thorne.” I keep my voice level. “You called this session.”
Thorne rises. He’s old, older than my father was, old enough to remember the last succession crisis, and his face is carved from stone.
“I did.” His voice carries through the chamber. “We have concerns about the direction of this pack.”
“Specify.”
“The human.” He doesn’t use her name. None of them will. “You brought a human into sacred territory. You included her in pack events. You’ve been seen with her publicly, repeatedly, in ways that suggest this isn’t a temporary arrangement.”
“It’s not.”
Murmurs from the other elders. I see their faces, Whitmore, Barrett, Ashby, the ones who called this session. And the others: Elder Gray, who served with my father for thirty years. Elder Vasquez, who held me as an infant. Elder Winslow, who taught me to hunt.
They all watched me grow up. And now they’re watching me like they don’t know who I am anymore.
“The ritual requires only a willing human woman,” Thorne continues. “It doesn’t require… attachment.”
“Attachment.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Say it plainly.”
His jaw tightens. “You’ve mated her.”
The word hangs in the air. Mated, in every tense at once, the bond that changes everything.
“I haven’t claimed her yet.”
“But she’s your mate.”
“Yes.”
More murmurs. I see the calculation in their eyes, some of them knew, suspected. But hearing it confirmed changes things.
“The goddess chose a human,” Elder Barrett says. She’s younger than Thorne, but her voice carries the same weight. “That’s… unprecedented.”
“Unprecedented isn’t forbidden.”
“It’s concerning.” Elder Whitmore, leaning forward. “The goddess chooses our mates for a reason. To strengthen the pack, to continue the bloodline, to ensure our survival. A human can’t-”
“Can’t what?” I let my power slip, just slightly. Just enough to remind them who sits at the head of this table. “Cannot love? Cannot commit? Cannot stand beside me?”
“Cannot bear lycan children.”
The words knock the air out of me.
I knew this was coming. Of course I knew. It’s the oldest argument, the deepest fear, the bloodline, the succession, the continuation of everything we are.
“The goddess chose her,” I say quietly. “If she intended for me to have lycan children, she would have given me a lycan mate.”
“Perhaps the goddess made a mistake.”
The room goes silent.
Elder Thorne said it. He’s standing at the far end of the table, his face impassive, and he said the one thing no one is supposed to say.
The goddess made a mistake.
“You want to tell her that?” My voice is soft. Dangerous. “You want to stand in the moonlight and tell the goddess she chose wrong?”
“I want to protect this pack.”
“From what? A human woman who’s done nothing but show kindness to our people? A woman who treated my mother with respect, who charmed my sister, who earned the affection of wolves who’ve never trusted an outsider?”
“She’s not one of us.”