26. Milo
— ? —
Milo
The great hall has never felt smaller.
The weight of every stare presses against my chest until it’s hard to breathe.
This is it.
The formal session. The final challenge. Everything I’ve been fighting for, and everything I’ve been fighting against, coming to a head in this ancient chamber.
Lynn is somewhere in the crowd. My mother and Isla flanked her when the doors opened, positioning themselves as shields, and I’m grateful for their presence even as every instinct screams at me to pull her closer.
Not yet. Soon.
Elder Thorne rises from his seat at the council table. His face is carved from the same stone as this hall, ancient, unforgiving, utterly convinced of his own righteousness.
“We are gathered,” he intones, “to address matters of succession and sacred tradition.”
“We’re gathered,” I correct, “because you called an emergency session you have no grounds for.”
“The king’s choice of mate is absolutely grounds for-”
“I haven’t made a choice. Not formally, anyway. Not yet.”
A murmur ripples through the crowd. Thorne’s eyes narrow.
“You bring a human woman to the compound. You install her in the king’s quarters. You claim the goddess’s favor. And yet you say there’s been no choice?”
“I say the choice isn’t yours to make.”
“The council has a duty to-”
“The council has a duty to advise.” I let my voice carry across the hall. “Not to command. Not to obstruct. And certainly not to question the goddess’s will.”
“We question nothing about the goddess.” Elder Whitmore rises now, her silver hair catching the torchlight.
“We question you. A king who has barely held the throne a season. A king who abandons his pack to play professor at a human university. A king who chooses a mate based on - what? Convenience? Proximity?”
“Careful.”
“A king who has shown no evidence of the strength required to-”
“Careful, Elder Whitmore.”
The temperature in the room drops.
I’ve been playing nice. For weeks, I’ve been diplomatic, measured, political. I’ve let them question my choices, challenge my authority, drag out sessions that should have taken hours into days.
I’m done playing nice.
“You want to question my strength?” I step forward, and the elders nearest to me step back. “You want to question whether I’m fit to lead? Then do it properly. Challenge me directly. Put your title where your mouth is.”
Silence.
Thorne’s jaw tightens. “We’re not questioning your combat ability-”
“You’re questioning everything else. My judgment. My devotion. My right to choose who stands beside me.” I look at each elder in turn. “So if any of you want to make this official - if any of you want to test whether the ‘boy king’ can defend his crown - now’s the time.”
More silence.
The crowd is holding its breath.
“No one?” I let the question hang. “Then I suggest we move on to-”
“I challenge.”
The voice comes from the crowd.
A man pushes forward, young, maybe twenty-five, built like a fighter. His features are sharp, familiar, and when I see Thorne’s expression, I understand why.
“Kellan Thorne,” I say. “The elder’s son.”
“Kellan Thorne,” he confirms. “And I challenge your right to rule.”
A ripple of shock moves through the hall.
“Kellan-” Thorne starts.
“You wanted someone to challenge him, Father.” Kellan keeps his eyes on me. “You’ve been wanting it for months. Every private dinner, every closed-door meeting-’someone needs to show the boy his place.’ Well. Here I am.”
“This isn’t what I-”
“This is exactly what you wanted.” Kellan is already stripping off his jacket, rolling his shoulders. “You just didn’t want to get your hands dirty.”
I study him. He’s strong, genuinely strong, with muscle that comes from years of training. His stance is practiced. His confidence is real.
But he’s never killed anyone.
I can see it in his eyes. The uncertainty beneath the bravado. The part of him that isn’t sure he can finish what he’s starting.
“You understand what you’re asking for,” I say quietly. “A challenge to the throne is to the death.”
“I understand.”
“You understand that if I win, your father loses his seat on the council.”
“I understand.” His voice doesn’t waver, though his scent does.
“And you understand that I will win.”
His jaw tightens. “We’ll see.”
The crowd parts, forming a rough circle in the center of the hall. I move to one side, Kellan to the other. The elders remain at their table, Thorne’s face a mask of barely concealed fury.
“The challenge is witnessed,” Elder Gray announces, his voice heavy. “May the goddess guide the true king.”
Kellan shifts first.
The transformation is fast, faster than I expected, and suddenly there’s a massive wolf where a man stood. Gray fur, yellow eyes, easily two hundred pounds of muscle and teeth.
He lunges.
I sidestep.
His jaws snap closed on empty air, and I’m already behind him, still human, still calm.
“Sloppy,” I observe. “You telegraph your strikes.”
He spins, snarling.
“Your back leg tenses before you move. Anyone watching can see exactly where you’re going.”
Another lunge. Another sidestep.
“You’re angry. That’s good - anger gives you power. But you’re not using it. You’re just throwing it around.”
This time when he lunges, I don’t move.
His jaws close on my forearm.
The pain is white-hot, blinding. I feel bones grind, feel blood spill, feel the triumph surge through his body-
And then I shift.
The transformation takes less than a second. One moment I’m human, injured, seemingly defeated. The next I’m twice his size, black-furred, ancient power surging through every cell.
I use the grip on my arm as leverage.
I throw him.
His body slams into the stone floor with a crack that echoes through the hall. Before he can recover, I’m on him, paws pinning his shoulders, jaws at his throat.
Yield.
The command isn’t spoken. It doesn’t need to be.
He shifts back to human, gasping, blood streaming from a gash on his forehead. His eyes are wide, terrified.
“I yield,” he chokes. “I yield, I yield-”
I shift back too.
The silence in the hall is absolute.
I’m bleeding, my arm is a mess, pain throbbing with every heartbeat, but I’m standing. I’m standing, and he’s on the ground, and every eye in the room is watching what I do next.
Kill him, some of them are thinking. That’s the law. That’s tradition. Finish it.
I extend my hand.
Kellan stares at it.
“Get up,” I say.
“What?”
“Get up.” I keep my hand extended. “You challenged me. You lost. That’s the end of it.”
“But the law-”
“The law says the challenger forfeits their life. The law says the king can take it.” I meet his eyes. “The law doesn’t say I have to.”
Slowly, hesitantly, Kellan takes my hand.
I pull him to his feet.
“You’re exiled,” I announce, loud enough for the hall to hear. “From this pack, from this territory, for a period of five years. You may petition for return when the term is complete.”
Kellan’s face cycles through confusion, relief, shame.
“Why?” he whispers. “Why not just-”
“Because my father taught me that mercy is strength. Because killing you wouldn’t prove anything I haven’t already proven.” I release his hand. “And because when you come back in five years, I want you to remember that the ‘boy king’ had your life in his hands and chose to give it back.”
I turn away from him.
The crowd parts as I walk back toward the council table. Thorne’s face is purple with rage, but he says nothing. What can he say? His son challenged me and lost. And his son lives, which is more than anyone expected.
“Now,” I say, settling into my chair despite the blood dripping down my arm. “Unless anyone else wants to test my fitness, I suggest we move on to the actual business of this session.”
“My objection still stands,” Whitmore says, but her voice is weaker now. “The human woman hasn’t proven-”
The torches gutter.
Every flame in the hall dims simultaneously, as if something has stolen the oxygen from the room.
And then the moonlight moves.
I’ve seen a lot of things in my thirty years. I’ve witnessed transformations and battles and deaths. I’ve stood in the presence of power that would break lesser men.
I’ve never seen light bend.
And I’ve never, not once, not in my whole careful, self-protective life, stood bleeding in front of my entire pack with a beaten challenger at my feet and felt a single thought cut cleaner than all the rest: her.
She’s mine, and I am taking her home. The thought arrives fully formed and deeply unhinged and I don’t have the bandwidth to be ashamed of it right now.
But it’s bending now. The moonlight streaming through the high windows is shifting, pooling, gathering into a column that stretches from ceiling to floor.
And at its center-
Lynn.
She’s standing exactly where she was before, flanked by my mother and sister. But the light is on her now. Around her. Bathing her in silver radiance that turns her hair to spun gold and her skin to pearl.
She looks like a goddess herself.
Well, the actual goddess murmurs in my head, I do good work, don’t I?
The entire hall drops.
Every lycan, every single one, elders included, falls to their knees. Even Thorne, even Whitmore, even the ones who’ve spent weeks trying to block this. They bow their heads, and the only people still standing are Lynn, my mother, my sister, and me.
Lynn looks terrified.
“What’s happening?” she mouths at me.
“The goddess,” I mouth back. “Just stay still.”
The light holds for a long, eternal moment.
And then it fades.
The torches flare back to life. The moonlight returns to its normal angle. And three hundred lycans slowly, reverently, rise to their feet.
“I believe,” Elder Gray says into the silence, “that settles the question of the goddess’s will.”
No one argues.
No one.
Later, after the hall has emptied, after the healers have bandaged my arm, after my mother has fussed and Isla has threatened to kill anyone who looks at Lynn wrong, I stand alone in the moonlit corridor.
You’re welcome.
The goddess’s voice is smug. Impossibly, insufferably smug.
“Was the light show necessary?”
Necessary? No. Satisfying? Absolutely. A pause. Did you see their faces? Thorne looked like he swallowed a wasp.
“You’re enjoying this too much.”
I’m enjoying this exactly the right amount. Which is immensely. Her presence settles around me like a warm blanket. Now. Business. You’ve won your battle. The council is folded. The ritual is clear.
“I know.”
Do you? Her voice sharpens. The moon rises TONIGHT, pup. The veil is thinnest at midnight. If you want to complete the bond, if you want her to truly be yours, you have hours, not days.
“I need to talk to her first.”
Obviously. Which is why I’m telling you NOW instead of letting you moon about dramatically for another week. A beat. Tell her what she is to you. Tell her about the mate bond. Tell her EVERYTHING, and then let her choose.
“And if she chooses no?”
Then you honor that choice. The goddess’s voice softens, just slightly. But pup… I’ve seen her heart. I’ve watched her stand before hostile wolves and not flinch. I’ve watched her love you without knowing what it meant, without understanding what she was offering.
“She deserves to know.”
She does. So TELL her. The presence begins to fade. Tonight. The moon. The clearing deep in the woods. I’ll see you both there.
“Wait-”
Don’t make me do everything, pup.
And then she’s gone.
I stand alone in the corridor, moonlight streaming through the windows, my injured arm throbbing.
Tonight.
I have to tell her everything tonight.
And then, goddess help me, I have to let her choose.