They Cut Out My Wolf. My Father Hunts Wolves. Chapter 09

They Cut Out My Wolf. My Father Hunts Wolves. Chapter 09

What,” Kael said, “did you say.”

Cassian couldn’t get off the floor. He knelt there in my blood holding his phone up like a live grenade.

“Should the pack of Thornfell spill the blood of Vesper Ashgrave,” he read, “the Armistice of Ash is void within its borders, and the Pale Hunt resumes lawful entry! You signed it. It’s been in the Concord’s public archive for six years. It’s got eleven million views.”

He swallowed.

There’s more. Somebody released the Rendering consent file. All eleven healer signatures, dated three weeks before the Rite. And the procurement records for the silver claim – the 2017 transfer out of the Ashgrave estate, the valuation you falsified, the Concord seat you bought with it.”

Kael lunged and ripped the phone away.

I watched his eyes go down the screen, and I watched the last of Alpha Kael Draven die inside his own body.

“The Concord convened an emergency session at 3:40,” Cassian said dully. “Your seat’s frozen. Every allied pack has withdrawn. The bank’s called the note. Trading was halted at the open in Asia. Cash position is-”

He made a small helpless gesture.

“There isn’t one. Thornfell is insolvent and unprotected. As of tonight, Alpha, we’re rogues with a postcode.”

Silence.

Then Kael screamed – a raw, ugly, animal sound – and threw the phone into the wall hard enough to leave a crater.

“IMPOSSIBLE! The valuation file is sealed! Three people alive have the vault codes! Three!”

He turned.

He looked at me.

And I watched him do the arithmetic he should have done six years ago.

“You,” he breathed, “You organized the vault. You did the filing yourself. You asked to do it. You said you wanted to be useful-”

“I did say that,” I agreed. “You said it was cute.”

I let my head rest back on the stone.

“Kael. Where did Thornfell’s founding capital come from?”

He didn’t answer.

“Say it.”

*…From you.”

Louder. There’s a valley full of microphones.”

“FROM YOU!”

“That’s right.” My voice went very soft. “I took an Alpha with no seat and no money and I built you a kingdom. And sweetheart – if I can build a thing, I can take it apart. I know where every screw is. I put them in.”

Behind him, Elara made a choking sound.

ག་

She’d gone down on one knee. Her hands were clawing at her own sternum. Gold light was leaking out from under her fingernails, and her skin had gone grey–green, and she was shaking like a woman freezing to death in a warm room.

“Kael,” she rasped. “Kael, something’s wrong, it’s fighting me-”

“A stolen wolf doesn’t set in a body that isn’t hers,” my father said, without any particular interest. “It rots. That’s why the Rite’s been illegal for ninety years everywhere except this valley.”

Elara looked up at Kael with her whole face open.

“Do something,” she begged. “Call someone. Call the healers, call the Concord, call-”

“With what,” he said.

She let go of him like he was hot.

I saw it happen. So did he. The exact second she started calculating her exit.

“Vess.” Kael’s face crumpled. He dropped and started shuffling toward the stone on his knees. “Vess. Look at me. It was

a mistake. It was ambition, it was the vote, it meant nothing, I love you, I have always-”

My sister stepped between us without looking up from her phone and kicked him in the chest.

He flew back into the wall and slid down it, coughing blood.

“One more step toward her,” Nyx said pleasantly, “and I take both legs at the hip. I’ve been practicing.”

Horns then. Faint. Getting louder. A lot of them.

And under the horns, human sirens.

Kael heard it and started to sob.

“Vess, please. Tell them it isn’t true. I’ll sign everything over them-”

the valley, the name, all of it. I’ll sleep in the yard. Just tell

“Kael.” I looked down at him. “You had your son killed on a schedule so you could win a vote. What exactly do you imagine sorry is

worth?”

Then the draught and the blood loss caught up with me at once, and the healer started shouting numbers, and my father’s arms came under my shoulders.

The last thing I heard was his voice against my ear, saying the thing he said when I was small and afraid of the dark.

“I’ve got you, little warden. Sleep. Dad’s got you.”