Claimed By Three Rival Alphas

Chapter 38: Ari’s Attempt

~KAEL’S POV~

The report reached me before it reached Ryland or so I thought.

One of my contacts along the eastern border had eyes on the Silverclaw supply route, not for any hostile purpose, just the kind of informal intelligence that came with having people in multiple territories who trusted you enough to send word.

Three men. Shadowfang colours, which was the part that told me immediately something was wrong, because I hadn’t authorised any movement in that direction.

Two Silverclaw packmen injured badly enough to require a healer. One of Moonveil’s scouts, travelling with the supply group on Eren’s business, barely made it out.

I read the account twice and then I set it down and sat with the specific quality of cold that came with recognising something you’d been hoping wouldn’t happen.

The armour. The insignia. The deliberate choice of route and timing, during a supply run when guards would be distributed and focused outward rather than inward.

This wasn’t a miscommunication. This wasn’t a border misreading. Someone had sent those men with specific intent, and the Shadowfang insignia was either genuine or chosen for exactly what it implied.

I knew which one it was before I’d finished the sentence in my own head.

Ari.

I went to Ryland myself.

That was the part I’d been quietly avoiding for a long time, walking into a room and asking to be heard without Lyra as the topic between us, without the distance that came from both of us pulling in different directions over the same person. It was harder than it should have been. I’d been operating in Silverclaw for weeks and we’d managed civility and occasional function, but this required something closer to genuine cooperation and neither of us had gotten there cleanly yet.

I knocked on his study door and waited.

"Come in."

He was at the desk, reading. He looked up when I entered and his expression didn’t change much, which I’d learned was how Ryland reacted to most things, processing behind a face that gave nothing away prematurely.

"I need to talk to you about the border incident," I said.

He gestured toward the chair across from him. "Sit down."

I sat. He set the document aside and gave me his full attention, which was its own kind of pressure.

"I know who sent them," I said.

"I was going to ask you that, Your pack’s insignia was on their armour."

"I’m aware,"

"So either you sanctioned an attack on my supply route, or someone is using your insignia without your authorisation."

"The second one," I said.

He looked at me steadily. Not hostile, not immediately accepting. Just waiting.

"She’s acting on her own... Ari. This isn’t Shadowfang’s directive, it’s not mine, it’s not the council’s, it’s not anything that came from any sanctioned body within the pack."

I held his eye.

"She has men who swore loyalty to her personally."

"So they answer to her."

"Yeah... She’s been operating that way for a while."

Ryland was quiet for a moment. "She used your insignia deliberately."

"Yes, To implicate Shadowfang, or to implicate me, or both. She’s not subtle when she’s angry and she’s been angry for a while."

I paused.

"She knows if this looks like a pack action, it puts you and me against each other and takes the focus off her."

"And if I’d heard this from anyone other than you," Ryland said, "that’s exactly what would have happened."

"Yes,"

The room was quiet. Not the hostile quiet of two men who wanted to be done with the conversation, the functional quiet of two men who were actually thinking about the same problem from different angles.

"One of Moonveil’s scouts was injured," Ryland said.

"I know. I’ll be sending a formal communication to Eren."

"He already knows," Ryland said. "He contacted me this morning."

I absorbed that. "What did he say?"

"That he wanted to know what Silverclaw was doing about it. I told him I was looking into it."

He looked at me. "Now I have something to tell him."

"I’ll handle my pack, Ari is my responsibility. The men who follow her personally, the steps she’s taking, I’ll deal with all of it." I said it plainly, because there wasn’t a version of this where I softened it. She’d been my chosen mate for years before any of this happened.

Whatever she’d become, whatever she was doing now, the line traced back to decisions I’d made and things I hadn’t handled and I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.

"But she needs to know there are consequences that go beyond anything I can manage internally. She needs to understand that what she did today crossed a line that has your response behind it, not just mine."

Ryland leaned back slightly, not in relaxation, in the way of a man reconsidering the shape of something.

"You’re asking me to respond formally."

"I’m telling you that if you do, I won’t obstruct it," I said. "And that my cooperation in that response is available if it’s useful."

He looked at me for a long moment. Neither of us spoke.

Then the door opened.

Lyra came in with the ease of someone who had been in this study enough times that the threshold didn’t give her pause anymore. She was halfway to the desk before she registered both of us, which made her stop. She looked at me. She looked at Ryland. She looked at the general arrangement of two Alphas sitting in the same room around the same table in the absence of conflict.

"This is new," she said.

"Sit down," Ryland said.

She sat, which surprised me slightly, she looked like she was deciding whether to ask questions first. She chose not to and I filed that away, because Lyra choosing not to ask questions immediately was Lyra reading a room and deciding to trust it.

"What happened?" she said.

Ryland walked her through it. Concise, complete, no editorialising. The border incident, the insignia, my confirmation of Ari’s involvement. Lyra listened the way she always listened to information, still, with the particular quality of attention that meant she was organising what she heard as it arrived.

When he finished, she was quiet for a moment.

"She sent men into Silverclaw territory," she said. "Three of them. During a supply run."

"Yes,"

"While wearing Shadowfang armour."

"Yes."

"So if this had gone differently, if the investigation had moved faster than your communication, or if you hadn’t come to Ryland directly.."

"Silverclaw and Shadowfang would be looking at a border incident with pack insignia involved... Yes."

She looked at the table for a moment. I watched her face move through something.

"She’s escalating," Lyra said. "Each time. Now the attacks on the border, wearing your insignia to cause a misunderstanding, to implicate Shadowfang pack." She looked at both of us. "She’s not going to stop."

Neither of us argued that point.

"I want in on this," she said.