Chapter 111

The sirens started before dawn.

At first, I thought it was another drill. The kind that gets scheduled once a month and makes everyone roll their eyes while pretending not to be rattled. The kind that makes your stomach twist and your chest lock up until someone comes in and waves it off, smirking like we were all soft for reacting at all. But the second I stepped into the hall and saw Nathan’s face, I knew this wasn’t a drill. His lips were drawn tight. His phone buzzed constantly in his hand, his eyes never leaving the screen for more than a second. When our eyes met, he nodded once and said nothing. That silence told me more than words ever could.

War had reached us.

The corridors echoed with movement: footfalls, comms chatter, the faint hiss of sealed doors disengaging. I passed a cluster of guards in armor I hadn’t seen outside ceremonial duty. The real stuff. Reinforced. Blood-ready.

By the time I reached the lower level, the council was already assembled in the war chamber. Twelve elders and all upper management. Richard at the head of the table, hands clasped, gaze fixed. I hesitated in the doorway. My heart hadn’t stopped racing since I woke, and the buzzing behind my ribs was louder than usual, like the faint memory of a howl trapped inside my bones. It was starting to feel less like nerves and more like something else, something waking up.

“Come in,” Richard said. His voice wasn’t sharp, but it wasn’t soft either. It carried the weight of a king who hadn’t slept, of someone holding up the ceiling with his bare hands. I stepped in, acutely aware that my presence here was no longer symbolic. I was expected to act like I belonged. Like I had earned the right to stand beside these people who had ruled longer than I’d been alive.

Maps covered the walls. Live feeds blinked red at three separate border points. One monitor was entirely static, the signal lost. Councilor Dean muttered, “Rogue packs have breached Watchpost Theta.”

Councilor Monroe leaned in, pointing. “And if they take the ridge above Evershade, we lose the high ground. The Pack House becomes a sitting target.”

The room buzzed with clipped voices. Murmurs of agreement, panic thinly veiled behind strategy. Even the seasoned councilors sat a little straighter, eyes darting more than usual.

Someone said the word evacuation. Then another said cowardice.

“We stayed during the Eastern Rebellion,” Elder Ramos barked. “We didn’t run when the first vampire truce fell apart. If we flee now, we tell the kingdom the Pack House is weak. That the crown can’t defend itself.”

“History isn’t armor,” Monroe snapped. “Those were different wars. Now we have civilians in the lower quarters, untrained interns, children.”

“This is our seat of power,” Ramos insisted. “We abandon it, we lose more than stone and timber. We lose legitimacy.”

I glanced at Richard. He hadn’t spoken since I entered, just watched the bickering with that unshakeable expression of his. But I saw the muscle twitch in his jaw. His hand flexed slightly on the table. When he finally stood, the room quieted without being asked.

“My father stayed,” he said, his voice low but commanding. “Even when the sky turned black and the gates splintered. He died protecting this ground, and we built a new reign on the bones of that loyalty.”

He paused, glancing toward the eastern wall monitor. “If we leave now, what are we telling the next generation? That fear dictates policy?”

It wasn’t just pride in his tone. There was grief too, buried deep, and I felt it echo in my chest. He didn’t want to run. Not just for power, but because this place meant something. Because he’d bled for it. Because his father had died here. Because everything he had ever built was rooted in the image of strength, and leaving would feel like breaking the spine of that legacy.

But I also saw the flicker in his eyes when Monroe mentioned the civilians. The way his gaze shifted to me briefly, weighted with something unspoken. I wondered if he was thinking of the night he found me drugged, helpless. If he remembered how quickly everything could fall apart.

Then, to my horror, Councilor Nari turned toward me. “Amelia. You’ve spent time in the public levels. What’s your take?”

I blinked. “My take?”

Monroe folded her hands. “You’ve seen the interns. The families. You know what a panic could do to the young ones. And you’re not bound by decades of council tradition. You might have a clearer head.”

It was a trap. Not a malicious one, but a political one. Either I stood with Richard and risked the lives of people who couldn’t defend themselves, or I stood against him and humiliated him in front of the council. There was no safe answer. No middle path.

“I…” My throat closed. Every pair of eyes on me. I looked at the red dots on the map, then at the live footage of the refugee corridor we’d just opened last month. There were toddlers down there. Mothers. People who trusted us.

“I think,” I said slowly, “symbols matter. So do legacies. But people matter more.”

No one breathed.

“I vote we relocate. If only temporarily. Get the civilians out first. Let the Pack House be defended by soldiers, not children.”

The silence after that was cavernous. I could hear the faint hum of the security system, the low mechanical whir of a drone adjusting position on one of the monitors.

Richard’s expression didn’t change. Not visibly. But I felt it, like a door closing somewhere behind his eyes. He turned away before anyone could read it, giving a clipped nod to Nathan.

“Prep the evacuation protocols. Prioritize the lower levels.”

He didn’t look at me again.

The Pack House felt like a dying animal. Guards barked orders. Staff rushed down corridors with bundles of documents and precious heirlooms. The tension in the air was thick enough to taste, metallic and bitter, like adrenaline. A pair of twins from the shelter sobbed in a stairwell until I knelt beside them and told them I’d personally make sure their mother met them at the next checkpoint.

“You’re not scared?” one of them asked me, voice quivering.

“I am,” I said honestly. “But scared doesn’t mean we give up.”

They nodded like I’d given them a sword. I helped them stand. Found their group and moved on.

Everywhere I turned, people looked to me for calm. Maybe because I wasn’t shouting. Maybe because I didn’t wear a title. Maybe because I smiled even when it felt like my chest was splitting.

I passed Richard once in the hall. He was speaking into a comm, flanked by two lieutenants, issuing orders in that clipped, assured voice of his. His eyes flicked to mine briefly. No warmth. No hatred either. Just calculation. A soldier in a storm.

We didn’t speak.

The tension between us had weight and shape. It didn’t need words to make itself known.

The transport caravan stretched for miles. Military-grade SUVs, unmarked trucks carrying supplies, even a few civilian vehicles pressed into service. Wolves ran perimeter along the flanks. The atmosphere inside the vehicle I shared with Richard was quiet, but not peaceful. The silence pulsed.

Richard sat beside me, his arms crossed, his gaze fixed on the blur of trees out the window. His expression didn’t shift, but his shoulders were tight. He looked like a statue built to hold up the sky.

I didn’t know if he was angry or just tired. I didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t make it worse.

Finally, I broke the silence. “You think I made the wrong call.”

He didn’t look at me. “I think you made the safe call.”

I winced. “You’re angry.”

“I’m not.” His tone was calm. Too calm. “I’m calculating how many people will question my authority tomorrow. How many allies David gains because the Alpha King followed an intern out of his own house.”

I wanted to defend myself. To tell him I wasn’t just an intern. That I had worked for this. That I hadn’t asked for that vote.

He finally turned. His expression softened, just for a second. “You protected them.”

I held his gaze. “Then why does it feel like I did the wrong thing?”

He didn’t answer. He just looked out the window again. A muscle twitched in his jaw. His hand flexed once on his knee.

I leaned back, staring at the ceiling of the car. The silence between us wasn’t empty. It was full of things that had nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with the fact that we had finally stood on opposite sides of something.

Out the window, the Pack House disappeared behind a bend.

And with it, the last remnants of who I thought I was becoming.