Chapter 10
DECLAN
The summons comes at dawn. Tessa knocks on the bedroom door softly and delivers it to me. Before I can reprimand her, she explains, extending a slip of paper to me. “It’s not a request. Not a suggestion.”
“Then what,” I whisper.
“A formal challenge to meet at the standing stones within the hour,”
I take the paper and glance at it. The damn thing is signed by Graeme Northshore, alpha of the Northshore pack. The wax seal is red—the color of blood and war—and the paper reeks of twenty different wolves, all of them agitated.
"Fuck." I crumple the letter in my fist. Beside me in bed, Eliza stirs, her warmth a stark contrast to the cold dread settling in my gut.
"What is it?" Her voice is sleep-rough, and concern pulses along our bond before she's even fully awake.
"Graeme Northshore." I toss the wadded paper onto the nightstand. "Alpha of the Northshore pack. He's calling a gathering. All three pack alphas. Which means he's making this formal. Making it about more than just you and me."
She sits up, the sheet pooling around her waist, and I force myself to look away from the claiming mark on her throat. Now is not the time to get distracted by how thoroughly she's mine.
"What does he want?"
"To challenge my authority." I'm already out of bed, pulling on jeans and a shirt. "To question my judgment. To make sure everyone knows that taking a human mate makes me weak."
"Does it?" Her question is quiet, but I hear the fear underneath. "Make you weak?"
I cross back to the bed, cup her face in my hands. "You make me stronger than I've ever been. But convincing them of that? That's going to take more than words."
Forty wolves fill the space between the standing stones when we arrive—maybe more.
Young and old, male and female, their eyes track my approach with varying degrees of hostility, curiosity, or calculation.
The air reeks of tension and barely controlled aggression.
This isn't just a gathering. It's a powder keg waiting for a spark.
Jax falls into step behind us, Tessa flanking our left. Finn materializes from the morning mist on our right. A show of unity, even if Jax's tension bleeds through the pack bonds. He warned me this would happen. That claiming a human would fracture everything we've built.
He wasn't wrong.
Graeme Northshore stands at the center, his pack arrayed behind him like soldiers.
He's built like a battering ram—broad-shouldered, thick-necked, with dark hair and eyes the color of winter ice. Twenty-three years old, hereditary alpha, but he’s already held his territory through two challenges and one attempted coup.
He doesn't suffer weakness, and he doesn't forgive mistakes.
"MacRae." The word carries across the circle like a whip crack. "You received my summons."
"I did." I keep my tone level, alpha to alpha. "Though I'm curious why you felt the need for such formality. If you had concerns, you could have come to me directly."
"Could I?" Graeme's smile doesn't reach his eyes. "Or would I have found you too... distracted... to hear them?"
His gaze slides to Eliza, and my wolf surges forward, demanding I put myself between them. I force the instinct down. Showing that kind of reaction will only prove his point.
"My mate's name is Eliza Warren." I let ice creep into my voice. "And yes, she's human. She's also claimed, marked, and pack. Which makes her under my protection and therefore not your concern."
"Not my concern?" Graeme's laugh is harsh.
"When one of the four alphas on this island compromises the secrecy we've all bled to maintain?
When you bind yourself to a human—a journalist, no less—who could destroy us all with a single article?
" He spreads his hands. "That becomes everyone's concern, MacRae. "
Murmurs ripple through the assembled wolves. I catch fragments of agreement, of fear, of anger. My pack stands firm behind me, but uncertainty radiates from even my most loyal wolves. Even Jax, who's been my second for five years, carries doubt through our connection.
"Eliza knows what we are. She's seen me shift. She understands the risks. And she's chosen to protect our secrets just as her aunt did for more than forty years."
"Her aunt's dead." This from a young wolf in Graeme's pack, maybe twenty-five, with the kind of reckless courage that gets people killed.
"Murdered. Which means someone knows what she was, what she knew.
And now you've given that same knowledge to her niece?
You've painted a target on your mate's back and ours by extension. "
"Careful, pup." Jax's growl is low and dangerous. "You're speaking to an alpha."
"He's speaking truth." Graeme doesn't reprimand his wolf.
"We all know there's a summoning happening.
Three deaths in six months, all from the old bloodlines.
And now MacRae's mate—conveniently descended from one of those bloodlines, conveniently a watcher's heir—shows up just as the ritual accelerates?
" He looks at me, and there's genuine concern beneath the challenge.
"You can't see it because you're compromised.
But from the outside? This looks like a trap.
Like someone wanted you distracted, wanted you bound to a human who could be used against you. "
The accusation hits like a physical blow. Not because it's unreasonable—I've thought the same thing in my darkest moments—but because saying it out loud gives the fear weight.
"Eliza isn't working with the summoner. I'd stake my life on it."
"You already have." Graeme's words cut deep. "The moment you claimed her, you tied your life to hers. Your power to hers. Your pack's safety to hers. That's what the mate bond means, MacRae. If she betrays you—intentionally or not—we all pay the price."
"She won't." But even as I say it, I hear the defensive edge in my tone. The desperation. Exactly what Graeme wants everyone to hear.
"Can't, you mean." A new voice cuts through the tension.
Elena Southcove appears at the circle's edge, and the assembled wolves part for her like water.
She's smaller than Graeme but no less dangerous—lean and whip-fast, with silver-blonde hair and eyes like polished amber.
"The mate bond is absolute. If Eliza wanted to betray Declan, her own instincts would fight her every step of the way. "
"Unless she's strong enough to override those instincts," Graeme argues. "Humans don't feel the bond the same way we do. She could rationalize betrayal as protecting the greater good."
"She's not just human anymore." Elena moves to stand equidistant between Graeme and me, claiming neutral ground. "The claiming bite initiates transformation. She's becoming a shifter. That changes everything."
"Does it?" The young wolf speaks again, emboldened by his leader's lack of censure.
"Or does it just mean we've handed our secrets to someone who's going to gain all our strengths without any of the loyalty?
She wasn't raised pack. She doesn't know our laws, our ways.
She's going to get people killed through ignorance if not malice. "
"Then we teach her." Tessa's voice cuts through the murmurs. "She wasn't raised pack, fine. But she's pack now. We teach her our laws, our ways. That's what pack does."
"And I'll learn." Eliza steps forward, out from behind me, and my wolf screams at me to pull her back to safety.
"You're all standing here talking about me like I'm not present.
So let me be clear: I understand what's at stake.
I know that exposing your existence would put innocent people—shifter and human—at risk. I'm not going to do that."
"Why should we believe you?" The young wolf sneers. "Because you fucked the alpha and now you wear his mark?"
The insult detonates like a bomb. Jax lunges forward, Tessa's right behind him, and half of Graeme's pack shifts into defensive positions. The air fills with growls and the scent of aggression.
"Enough!" The command rolls out of me with the full weight of my power, and every wolf in the circle freezes. Even Graeme goes still, though his eyes flash with challenge. "You will show my mate respect, or you will leave this circle. Those are your options."
"You're proving my point." Graeme's voice is quieter now but no less cutting. "You're choosing her over pack law. Over tradition. Over the careful balance we've maintained for generations."
"I'm choosing both." I meet his stare without flinching. "Eliza is pack now. That's not negotiable. If any of you have a problem with that, you can challenge me. Right here. Right now. One-on-one, to the death."
The offer hangs in the air like a blade. Challenging means a fight to death or submission. It's not done lightly. It's especially not done when the one being challenged has storm-sense magic and a mate bond driving him to protect what's his.
Graeme holds my stare, and I watch the calculation play out behind his winter-ice eyes.
He's weighing the cost of a challenge against the threat of what's coming.
Weighing pride against survival. The silence stretches until I can hear my own heartbeat, Eliza's pulse through the bond, the breathing of forty wolves waiting to see if blood will spill today.
Finally, Graeme shakes his head. "I'm not here to challenge you, MacRae. I'm here to remind you that your decisions affect more than just your pack. We're all connected on this island. If you fall, we all fall."