The scent of burnt flesh still lingered in the air, a metallic tang that mingled with the aroma of the alpha couple's dinner. After the women of the pack had been tested, they found the queen was not among them—a realization that brought an immense sense of relief to Carly. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to grow up in a pack living in a realm of pain and barbaric ritual, not a place to foster a queen with a mind free of poison.
The Alpha, Rend, had insisted they stay the night, considering the late hour. The large group sat around the dining table in his home, the weight of the day's rituals still heavy in the air. Marcus, ever the pragmatist, finished his meal with a speed that suggested he was more inhaling the food than tasting it. The moment the last morsel was swallowed, his notebook was open, his hand already scribbling the familiar script that occupied his days.
Marina watched Carly's quiet behavior with a sense of worry. Since they had left the Sunder Hall, Carly had barely spoken, her eyes filled with a disappointment so deep it was almost tangible. Marina prayed that Carly wasn't foolish enough to insult the alpha about his pack's way of life.
Amelia wished dinner could be more enjoyable, but her body was as stiff as a board. She had hoped the alpha's home would be a refuge, but she had been sorely mistaken. The armrests of the chairs were covered in silver, the very floorboards coated in it. She couldn't even take off her shoes, forced to mind her every movement. Earlier, she had made the mistake of resting her elbows for a moment, crying out in pain as her skin met the unforgiving silver. The scathing look Kevin gave her was warning enough not to repeat her actions.
The sound of sizzling flesh and the smell of burning skin had Maya on the verge of nausea. Councilmember Philip seemed completely at ease, his forearms resting comfortably on the silver as he ate his meal. It was as if he wasn't harming himself at all.
Maya was hungry, but she pushed her plate away, unable to eat another bite. The scene was sickening.
Rend and his mate, Mattel, shared a look of approval as they watched Philip. He had adapted to their way of life with remarkable ease. It seems the silver bite has a friend on the council, Rend spoke into his mate's mind.
"Councilmember Philip, you suit the pack well. We welcome you to come anytime," Mattel offered warmly, her eyes alight with an uncharacteristic joy.
Carly's head snapped up at Mattel's words. This was a pack within her territory. She didn't have the right to tell them who they could and couldn't welcome, but granting another territory's council member such access could be seen as a weakness. It was a slippery slope where another council member could hold more sway over your own packs.
"I have become very enlightened. I look forward to my next visit," Philip said, his voice a smooth, low rumble. He wasn't concerned with potential political benefits. The chance to play with something so unbreakable held an allure he couldn't quite explain.
"I was... interested in your methods," Carly interjected, her voice cutting through their conversation. "Since I've taken over from my mother, I wish to understand the packs in my territory." As she said my territory, her eyes flickered aggressively toward Philip. He only smirked, unaffected by her irritation.
"Are you interested in our ways? My mate could show you how—" Rend began to offer before Carly cut him off.
"A beautiful offer. I saw so much dedication among your pack. I do wonder about how you strengthen the youngest among you."
Marina muttered "Oh goddess" to herself, already hearing the trainwreck before it crashed.
"Philip," Maya began, her voice a nervous whisper. Philip's eyes sharpened into daggers, warning her of her disrespect.
"Sorry—um, Councilmember Philip. I wonder if... if you. I mean, our pack has always been a friend to the council. We have alliances so we don't—"
Philip laughed at her clumsy attempt at political maneuvering. He wasn't sure if Alpha Phoenix had sent his daughters here to schmooze or as simple bait. He might have an insatiable need to bed most women in his radius, but he wasn't stupid enough to bed an alpha's daughter. It came with ramifications he was not willing to accept.
"How old are you?" he asked, his voice laced with mocking amusement.
"Twenty-two, Councilmember Philip."
"A baby," he laughed, looking over at Kevin. The seasoned beta knew this was ridiculous. Whatever ploy they had cooked up had already failed. "Girl, you might be stupid, but your father is brilliant. And because you're stupid, if you want to impress, you might as well just allude to your father's accomplishments. It will distract from your idiocy," he said bluntly, before returning to his meal.
Maya looked at her sister, shocked and embarrassed by his shameless disrespect. She felt tears welling in her eyes but knew she'd be scolded for showing weakness. She stifled a choked sob. Amelia reached under the table to hold her sister's hand, her face a mask of neutrality. But inside, she wanted to stab Philip in the face.
"You think we're cruel?" Mattel said, her eyebrows raised in shock. She didn't expect someone who had seen their great hall to only see torture and pain. Their home was not a chamber of screams and despair; it was a place of focused strength and determination.
"The way you are sitting before us now already shows strength. When you first got here, you kept coughing and hacking like some weak thing. Look at you now, breathing simply and easily. Your lungs are better for it," Rend said, leaning back in his chair with a look of self-satisfaction.
"We are adults. They don't choose to be here. I can survive silver poisoning. But babies... young children—"
"Our children are strong!" Mattel slammed her fist against the wooden table, the wood groaning beneath the force. Her mate was quick to pull her back into her seat. They were, after all, dealing with the council.
"The strongest. The Silver Bite pack has been known to be the fiercest warriors in all the wolf world. We owe your ancestors a debt that can never be paid. Their strength helped save the wolf world from our enemies—the other creatures—" Marina spoke up, her voice sickly sweet. Her red-painted lips curved into a polite smile, hoping to extricate Carly from her absolutely suicidal conversation.
"It has been centuries since the last war between creatures," Carly said, astonished that she was the only council member with enough backbone and insight to speak reasonably.
"You're too young! We have lived for centuries. We were children during the war. You live comfortable and safe because of our parents who died with our methods," Mattel growled fiercely. Marina couldn't believe Carly hadn't stopped. She had tried to give her a way out, and the girl still dug her own grave.
"But for every one strong child, there are five dead ones. They do not die from simple illness, but from silver poisoning. Ritualistic murder—" Carly felt her growing resentment bubbling to the surface as they laughed at her words, unable to understand how their methods were harmful.
"Murder! You dare call us murderers for walking in the steps of our ancestors," Rend added, rising to his feet. His voice was clear and strong, refusing to be ignored. To be called a murderer when all he did was protect his pack and maintain their strength the way they always had.
Carly didn't rise to his aggression, remaining in her seat, her steady, steely gaze fixed on them. "The babies here die of human illness. I'm not saying to stop your practices, but to wait to start them. This environment alone is its own trial. Why wrap them in blankets with micro-silver? The air has silver in it. How many ways must you test something so new and delicate?" She refused to back down on this point. She had a responsibility to the pack and the children being systematically tortured and killed.
"We pray every child survives. This pack has a history steeped in blood and silver. We will not rob our children of the knowledge and experience of their ancestors." Mattel unconsciously placed a hand on her flat stomach, a soul-wrenching pain hitting her as she thought of the three children of hers that had passed away. They weren't cruel dictators; every member of the pack participated in their rituals, believed in the teachings of their ancestors, and followed their words to the letter. She had given birth to seven sons and one daughter, and only her two sons and one daughter survived. She would have wished every last one of her children survived, but she wasn't the goddess. She didn't get to decide.
"I only mean—" Carly didn't know how to explain it, but she was determined to make her point.
"Stop talking," Marcus said, his voice cutting through the anger lingering at the table. He couldn't take one more irrelevant word. There was nothing Carly could say that would make them change, and he believed history was something to be studied, applied, and appreciated.
"It is not your place to come here and change how a pack operates," his cold, hard, authoritative voice demanded. "We are here to settle disagreements between packs, to relay information for our queen, and to collect data. We are observers. And you believe you have the hubris to act outside those parameters. You!" He scoffed, disbelieving that she could be so ridiculous. "A council member so new, she's barely worn in her seat cushion." He made a clicking noise with his teeth, displeased with how Carly's mother had taught her. She wasn't ready for the seat. "It isn't a crime to be lost in your emotion. But it is a sin to not understand, to speak before you have opened your eyes properly."
"I was only trying—" Carly felt like she was being scolded by her father, the way he looked down at her as if she had committed the most unforgivable act. Sitting at a table of child murderers and mutilators, she was the wrong one.
"To change what you do not understand." Of all the disparaging voices in the room, Philip's burned her the most. He gave her a look of disappointment, as if he wasn't a monster. His hands were comfortably wrapped around the silver of his chair, the searing burn on his skin now reduced to a reddening irritation, a pooling of blood beneath the skin—easily forgotten. A display of understanding that she did not try to achieve.
Lowering her head, she looked to the alpha couple. "I have let my opinion go too far. Excuse me, I'm a bit tired." She quickly fled the embarrassing scene. She knew Marcus was right. She wasn't supposed to judge or make changes based on those judgments. She had gotten so caught up in wanting to do the right thing, to help packs and be better, that she had forgotten a lesson her mother had explained to her: what it really means to be better. No two people had the same outlook. It was a reminder not to think that she would know everything just because her seat was so high up.
Noticing that dinner was officially over, Marcus rose to his feet, heading to his own room. He was glad to go back to focusing on his goals for the next three years with their new queen. He would soon be able to move on to his five-year plan. If the goddess truly smiled on him, the new queen would be unmated, and he could pick her chosen one. He delighted in his musings, trying not to get swept away in his own imaginings.
Marcus rounded the corner of the long, dark hallway that led to his temporary bedroom, his footsteps a quiet echo on the silver-coated floor. He saw Carly's defensive form, blocking his entrance. She stood with her arms crossed over her chest, a silent sentinel holding him hostage.
He was a man who had seen centuries pass, and he no longer held the same whimsical ideals as a girl of her age. He wished she would save whatever she had to say for Marina, who seemed to love engaging with Carly's emotional arguments.
Carly refused to be ashamed of her heart, to be denied the value of her thoughts and opinions. It wasn't simply her emotions that had swept her away; she deserved to be heard. Her voice, though shaky, was firm. "Do you really agree with what's happening here? You of all people—the one who bases their thoughts on logic and statistics. Knowing what we know, that 40% of the children here will die, how can you be so detached? These children are more than numbers, and I don't know why you refuse to see it." What she had witnessed today would be forever etched in her mind: children being tortured in plain sight, babies swaddled in silver-laced fabric as if it were a replacement for true love and care, and a pack clinic riddled with simple human diseases. To her, this pack was poison.
Marcus sighed, pulling his glasses from his face. He folded the frames and tucked them into his breast pocket, his movements slow and deliberate. He really looked at Carly, maybe for the first time. Her inexperience was palpable. She had no business on the council, a seat given to her through blood and nepotism—an old, outdated rule that every firstborn child would be a council head without measuring their aptitude or intelligence. Birth order was all that was needed to have a hand in ruling their world.
"Are you familiar with the War of 1502?" he asked, his voice low and even. He watched her shake her head, her chin still held just as high as it was at the dinner table. Brushing past her, he pulled open the door to his room and waved her inside. He sat on the small couch, gesturing for her to take a seat on the coffee table in front of him.
He closed his notebook, placing it carefully on the couch beside him. "It was a war that nearly wiped out the wolf population. At that time, we fought against the Fae folk to determine who owned the forests in this realm."
"I know about the Fae War. It was a bloody battle. What does that have to do with—" she began, but Marcus cut her off with a sharp, pointed finger.
"This is your problem, Carly. You do not know." He leaned forward, his voice taking on a new, hard edge. "The 'Fae War,' as you call it, is more widely known as the War of Extinction. The Fae discovered our weakness for silver." His blood boiled at the mere thought of those creatures. "That war lasted for over 250 years. And in that time, this pack that you so callously disregard saved us all. You want numbers and logic? Forty percent of the children of this pack will die. A tragic, undeniable fact. But what is the survival rate of our world without them? Their strengths are on display. Without them, 60% of all wolves would die." He leaned back, the anger in his voice settling into a cold, hard finality. "You look around and you see barbarism. I want you to look around and tell me: How can I afford not to be detached when the lives of countless others rest on the strength of a few?"
Author's note
Does Marcus feel more human now? Is Carly not as clever she thinks she is? Philip is just fun. I love writing his scenes. He's such an asswhole! Power stones, golden tickets, and comments are all welcome.
Quick side note. This author note is exceptionally long sorry. I keep changing my clipart for this book. Because I'm just trying to find what I feel like is best. Eventually I will stop changing it.