Finally Found it 70

POV: Draven

The council had reconvened before dawn, and the silence in the chamber was a different quality than the one we had left the night before. Less performance. More verdict.

The charred relic sat at the center of the table where the seers had left it, its surface still dusted with Micah’s powder, the shimmer of it catching the torchlight in a way that told the room everything before anyone spoke.

Tobias knew it. I could see it in the particular stillness of his hands — the stillness of a man who has run his calculations and found them short.

He rose anyway, because men like Tobias performed until the floor gave way beneath them. His dark robes settled. His smirk sharpened.

“The council has had its night,” he said, his voice carrying the richness of a man still betting on an hand he had already lost. “I trust the seers have confirmed what I presented.”

I rose slowly. “They have confirmed something,” I said. “Just not what you were hoping for.”

I gestured toward the back of the hall. Micah stepped forward, moving through the space with the calm of a woman who had no theater to perform. Her healer’s robes did not catch the firelight the way Tobias’s did. She did not want them to.

“Micah is Crimson Fang’s healer and an expert in magical forensics. She will present her findings to the council directly.”

Tobias’s eyes darkened, but he stepped aside with a gesture of mock politeness. “By all means. Let the healer speak.”

Micah did not acknowledge him. She set her tools on the table, lifted the relic, and began.

Her fingers moved through the fine powder she dusted across its surface, and the shimmer that followed in the firelight confirmed what I had already suspected.

Every Alpha in the hall leaned imperceptibly forward. The silence stretched the room’s attention to its limit.

After several moments of absolute quiet, Micah straightened. “This is a forgery,” she announced, her voice carrying no pleasure in it, only precision.

Tobias froze. For the first time in three days, the mask cracked along a visible line. He turned toward her slowly. “A forgery?”

Micah held up the relic. “The runes are copied sloppily, likely from an old text, but they do not align with authentic dark magic sigils.

The residue here is not magic at all — it is charcoal and animal blood, mixed to mimic enchantment marks.”

She placed the relic back on the table. The sound of it rang through the hall with finality. “Whatever this is, it did not come from Crimson Fang. It is a fabrication.”

Several Alphas leaned toward one another. I could see the collective recalibration moving across the room in real time.

I held Tobias’s gaze and let the silence do what words would only dilute. “Care to explain, Tobias?” I asked, my voice cold and precise. “Or will you admit to this pathetic attempt at deception?”

His composure reassembled itself quickly, though the seams showed under pressure now. “A mistake, perhaps,” he said, his tone still smooth. “I was given this artifact by someone claiming to have found it near your borders. I only sought the truth.”

Then Isla stepped forward. The hall shifted around her entry into the space the way a room shifts when a fire is lit in a cold grate.

I had felt her beside me through the entire exchange, a presence as steady as my own pulse. She moved past me with her silver eyes fixed on Tobias, and her directness required nothing from me to reinforce it.

“You sought to undermine us,” she said, her voice cutting clean through the space. “And you failed. How many more lies do you plan to spin before the council sees you for what you are?”

The murmurs grew louder. The ease left Tobias’s posture, and the performance he had been sustaining began to cost him visibly.

An elder Alpha rose, his expression stern and deliberate, and addressed Tobias without ceremony. “This is a grave accusation to make without evidence. Fabricated or not, you have cast doubt on this council’s process. Be cautious, Tobias, or you will find yourself under scrutiny.”

I kept my face neutral and nodded once. “The truth always comes to light,” I said. “Crimson Fang has nothing to hide.”

Tobias’s composure held, barely. His gaze fixed on me across the table, and his voice dropped to the register men use when they want words to land without witnesses. “Enjoy this little victory, Draven. It will not last.”

He was not worth an answer, and I did not give him one. Some men interpret silence as weakness. Tobias would not be the first to make that error.

As the council adjourned, Isla fell into step beside me. The noise of the hall dissolving around us was still loud enough that our voices would not carry. She turned her face toward mine, her voice low. “We have won this round.”

My eyes tracked Tobias through the dispersing Alphas, his stride controlled, his shoulders already recalibrating for whatever came next. I watched him until he passed through the doors and the torchlight lost him entirely.

“Yes,” I said. The word came quiet and cold. “Now we return home.” I paused, because what followed needed to be heard clearly, not quickly. “But Tobias will not stop until he has broken our defenses. And next time, he will be more dangerous.”

Isla was quiet beside me. Not shaken — absorbing. I had long since learned to read the difference between the two.

She had stood before this council without flinching. She had stepped forward when it mattered and said the precise thing the room needed to hear, not because I asked her to, not because her title demanded it. Because it was in her, the way iron sits in stone long before the stone is cut open.

I had known wolves who carried the title of Luna the way one carries a borrowed coat. Isla carried nothing borrowed. She never had.

The hall emptied around us, and the silence settled. For one moment longer than I needed to, I stayed close beside her in the quiet of the emptying room. Then I turned toward the door, and we walked out together into the cold of the corridor beyond.