Claimed By Three Rival Alphas

Chapter 18: The Council

~RYLAND’S POV~

A full day of investigation and we had nothing.

No confirmed trail on the vial. No witness who could place anyone in Lyra’s room during the relevant window. The two dismissed guards had been questioned again and gave the same account, they’d been reassigned to the outer wing, they hadn’t gone near the residential corridor. Whether that was true or a rehearsed story, we couldn’t yet prove either way.

I walked into the council chamber with that weight sitting squarely on my chest and nowhere to put it.

The room was already tense before I reached my seat. Eight council members around the long table. Half of them I trusted. The other half I was about to have a significant problem with.

Lord Bren spoke first. He was a heavyset man with a grey beard and the permanent expression of someone who’d decided the world had been going wrong for decades and wasn’t shy about saying so.

"We’ve given this a day," he said. "One day.

And we have nothing. No leads, no witnesses, no explanation for how that vial got into her room except the obvious one."

"The obvious one being?" I said.

"That she put it there herself."

"She was on bed rest," I said. "Recovering from wolfsbane poisoning. Someone put wolfsbane in her tea two days before this, and now you’re suggesting she got up from that sickbed and..."

"I’m suggesting," Bren interrupted, "that you’re looking for facts that don’t exist, Alpha Ryland. Sometimes the simplest explanation is the correct one."

"The girl is guilty," said Lord Prentis from the far end of the table, without preamble or qualification. He said it the way people say things they’ve already decided and are simply reporting.

"The evidence is in her room. The man who opposed her most vocally on this council is dead. I don’t know what more you need."

"She’s not just a girl." That was Councillor Mave, one of the three who’d been consistent in her support.

"She’s your Luna. She was brought here as Alpha Ryland’s mate and..."

"Luna?" Prentis turned to look at Mave with an expression that barely qualified as respectful.

"Whose Luna, exactly? From where I’m standing, she doesn’t fit to rule. She has no wolf, no bloodline, no..."

"And you think you fit?" Councillor Dorin cut in, leaning forward. He was younger than most of the others, sharp-tongued and not particularly interested in softening it.

"You’ve been on this council for three years, Prentis. Tell me one thing. Name one measurable thing you’ve done that’s benefited this pack since you joined."

"That’s completely irrelevant..."

"Is it? Because you’re questioning whether someone is fit to contribute, and I’m genuinely curious about your own record on that front."

"My record," Prentis said, voice rising "is not the subject of this meeting."

"Neither is Lyra’s fitness to rule," Dorin shot back.

"The subject is a murder investigation that you seem very eager to close before it’s been properly run."

"I’m not eager to close anything, I’m being realistic..."

"You’re being convenient."

"How dare you..."

Three people were talking at once. Bren was pointing across the table at Mave. Prentis was out of his seat. Dorin was giving as good as he got with his arms folded and the particular calm expression of someone who was genuinely unbothered by the noise he’d caused.

The room was loud and getting louder and none of it was moving toward anything useful.

"Enough."

I didn’t shout it. I didn’t need to. The register I used was the one that carried, the one that had been trained into me since before I understood what it meant to lead, and the room responded to it the way the room always responded to that particular tone.

I looked at each of them. Let the quiet sit for a moment.

"You’re the council," I said.

"You have the right and the responsibility to speak on matters concerning the wellbeing of this pack. I’m not disputing that. That’s why you’re in this room." I paused.

"But don’t forget that I also have the right to speak and to make decisions. If nothing else, you should respect the position I hold, even when you disagree with what I’m doing with it."

Bren started to say something.

"We’re working to get to the end of this," I said, cutting across him before he could gain momentum. "That’s what the investigation is."

"Give us time," Cade said from his position near the wall. "We’re asking for time to do this properly."

"Time," said Prentis, sitting back down slowly, "is unfortunately not something we have in abundance. Harlan is dead. The pack is watching. Every day this remains unresolved is a day the situation deteriorates further."

The room was quiet for a moment.

"The gathering is over," I said.

I pushed back from the table and walked toward the door.

I turned back.

"Be clear about one thing," I said. "Lyra is the Luna of this pack. All of you should know exactly what that means, and all of you should be conducting yourselves accordingly."

—

Cade fell into step beside me in the corridor without a word. We walked for a moment in the particular silence of two people who’ve just come out of a difficult room and need a beat before they can usefully think again.

"What else can we do? To actually get to the bottom of this. What haven’t we tried?"

"Honestly, I don’t know."

"That’s not helpful."

"I know. I’m working on it." A few more steps.

"There is one thing, actually. That I think might be worth trying."

"I’m listening."

"The pack healer," Cade said.

"Mira?"

"Yes Alpha... Mira. She has abilities beyond standard medicine. Diagnostics, healing work. I don’t know the full range of what she can do, but..."

He paused.

"Is there a chance she could identify who last held the vial? Some kind of trace? A reading?"

I looked at him. "Is that even possible?"

"I have no idea," he said. "But there’s no harm in asking."

I thought about it for exactly three seconds.

"Get her."

Cade had Mira in my quarters within ten minutes, which told me he’d already been thinking about this before he brought it up, which was very Cade.

She came in with the careful, professional composure she brought to everything, looked between me and Cade, and waited.

I explained what we needed. Mira was quiet for a moment after I finished. The particular quiet of someone working through something internally.

"It’s actually possible, Alpha," she said.

I looked at her. "You could have mentioned that earlier."

"My specialty is healing, without any particular defensiveness. "It genuinely didn’t occur to me that the same methods could be applied to object tracing. The question reframed it."

"When can you do it?" Cade said.

"As soon as you’re ready."

"Would right now be too soon?" I said.

"No, It wouldn’t." She looked between us.

"But I’ll need the vial."