Chapter 96
Mar 27, 2026
POV: Draven
She was laughing, and the sound of it moved through me the way her presence always moved through me: before I had braced for it.
The sound of it cut through the hall’s noise the way her presence cut through every room she entered: without effort, without announcement, simply there.
The lanterns threw gold across her silver hair. I held her through the dance with the specific, quiet intention of a man who understood what he was holding and was not going to let go of it for a ballroom full of reasons.
“You’re smiling.” I leaned close enough to feel her warmth, close enough that the words were just for her.
“You’re dancing.” Her cheeks flushed with the specific warmth of a woman who was pleased and trying not to show it. “Once again.”
“With you.” I took her through the turn, held the spin a beat longer than the music required. “I’d hate nothing.”
The pack watched us with the specific, warm attention of wolves who had fought to put us here and were taking the occasion to confirm it had been worth it.
I gave them the dance. I gave Isla the rest of it: my full attention, the weight of both hands on her, the specific quality of presence I reserved for the things that actually mattered.
The song ended. Her hand came to rest on my arm as we moved back toward the table, and the ease of that gesture, the complete, unconsidered naturalness of it, was the thing I had never expected to have and had somehow ended up with.
She froze in the specific, total way that bodies froze when they had processed a threat before the mind had finished catching up.
The wolf was near the edge of the feast, sprawled on the ground, his body convulsing with the kind of violence that had nothing to do with choice.
Foam at the corners of his mouth. The crowd rippling back with the instinctive retreat of wolves who had recognized poison before their minds had caught up to the recognition.
“Get Micah!” The order cut through the room before I had consciously formed it, aimed at the guards nearest the door with the specific register that moved people without giving them time to decide whether to move.
The register that said the decision had already been made and the only question was execution.
Isla’s hand had left my arm. I tracked her peripherally while keeping my eyes on the hall, reading the crowd’s movement, reading the exits. Her gaze was on the table. Her goblet was overturned, the liquid pooled dark on the stone.
The connection struck blade-sharp in the chest. Isla had been holding that goblet. She was pregnant with my children. The arithmetic completed in under one second and left no remainder.
Micah arrived fast, dropped beside the wolf without ceremony, her hands moving with the efficiency I had relied on for a decade.
She sniffed the liquid at the wolf’s mouth, then the pooled remnants from the goblet, and the specific way her face went still was the confirmation I had already reached on my own.
“Poison.” Her voice was flat and clear and carried to every corner of the room. “And strong enough to kill.”
The crowd’s unease became audible, whispers spreading in the specific pattern of a pack receiving information that directly challenged its sense of safety inside its own walls.
I looked at Isla, and in the single second before she registered my attention she was already doing what she always did: reading the room, cataloguing threats, standing with her chin level.
She had been holding that goblet. Someone in this room had known both those things when they made their move. That was not random. That was targeted. That was personal.
My hand closed into a fist. The rage that moved through me was cold, which was the version of it that was useful, not the hot, immediate fury of a man who has been surprised, but the cold, total fury of a man who has understood exactly what was attempted and exactly what it means.
“Someone tried to kill my mate.” My voice dropped to the dangerous register, each word precise, aimed at the room. “My children.” I turned to my guards, and I did not raise my voice because I did not need to. “Find them. Now.”
The hall moved. The guards moved. The pack moved with the coordinated urgency of wolves given a clear directive by an Alpha who did not give unclear ones.
Isla’s fingers touched my arm. Her voice was steady, steadier than it had any reason to be, which was the specific, infuriating, irreplaceable quality of her that I had long since stopped being surprised by. “Whoever did this won’t get away with it.”
My gaze found hers for one moment and held. The softness that arrived when I looked at her had always been involuntary, and I no longer tried to manage it. I let it exist for exactly one full second, and then I turned back to the room.
“No one leaves this territory until we have answers.” The words went into the hall with the full weight of Alpha authority, the weight of law rather than preference. “Lock it down.”
The doors sealed with the heavy finality of iron on stone, the sound of a territory closing around itself and every wolf still inside it.
Someone had reached through our walls, into our hall, into the specific moment of ease we had built out of two years of war, and had tried to take Isla and the children in a single move.
They had failed. They had also revealed that they were present, or had access, or had someone inside who was willing to act.
That was information, and I intended to use every piece of it, and whoever had moved tonight had not yet understood that the distinction between failing to kill an Alpha’s mate and surviving the attempt was considerably narrower than anything they had calculated for.
