Chapter 9

The Truth They Buried.

Two guards hauled Tomas down to a holding room below the war chambers. Stone walls, one lantern, no window worth escaping through. Marcus circled him once before dragging a chair in front of the man and sitting.

“Talk,” Marcus said. “Or I hand you to a council that won’t ask as politely as I’m asking.”

Tomas stared at the floor a while. Something cracked in his face when he finally looked up.

“He didn’t send me to steal anything.” His voice came out rough. “He sent me to find out how much you’d already dug up. Taking the folder was my own idea, once I saw it sitting there unguarded.”

“The transfer, then.” I stepped closer. “You left his pack a year ago. That was before any of this happened to me.”

“Because he was already planning it.” Tomas dragged a hand down his face. “Not the accusations specifically. Something bigger. He’s been talking to three other territories for close to two years now. Building toward a regional council that doesn’t exist yet, one he’d sit at the head of. Real authority over every pack in this stretch of land.”

Marcus went still. “That kind of council needs every territory’s agreement. Nobody consolidates power like that without opposition.”

“Which is exactly why he needed her gone.” Tomas nodded my way without meeting my eyes. “Six years on his council. She watched every negotiation. I remembered every promise he made and broke after. If she’d stayed his Luna, she would have figured out what he was planning long before he was ready for anyone to see it. She would have started asking questions, and that was the last thing he wanted.

My stomach dropped, slow, the pieces locking into place with weight I hadn’t braced for.

“So it wasn’t only about replacing me with somebody politically useful.”

“That too. Mostly it was about silence.” His jaw tightened. “Accuse a Luna of treason and her credibility’s gone. Nobody listens to a woman half the region already thinks betrayed her own pack. Even if she figures out the truth after.”

“And the marriage,” Marcus said. “The Alpha’s daughter.”

“Her father controls two of the territories he needs. That’s not politics as usual. That’s the last piece locking the whole thing together.”

“What happens to the packs who refuse him,” Marcus asked. “Assuming there are any.”

Tomas hesitated. “There’s a list. Territories he considers unreliable, ones he thinks would vote against the council if given the chance. He’s been quietly cutting off trade routes to two of them already, small things, nothing anyone’s traced back to him yet. Making sure they’re too weak to matter by the time he calls the vote.”

“Which territories,” Marcus said, his voice gone flat.

“Yours is one of them.”

The room went quiet. I watched something pass behind Marcus’s eyes, calculation replacing whatever anger had been sitting there a moment before.

I sat down across from Tomas. My legs had stopped wanting to hold me up. I spent six years believing my worth to him lived somewhere in loyalty, in patience, in becoming whatever he needed from week to week. None of it mattered. I’d been an obstacle standing between him and a throne that didn’t exist yet.

“Who else knows,” Marcus asked. “Beyond the three territories he’s approached.”

“Nobody, as far as I know. Kept it small on purpose.”

“Somebody just talked anyway,” Marcus said, something close to satisfaction under the words.

“What happens to you now,” I asked Tomas. “If he finds out you told us.”

He looked up at me for the first time since he’d started talking. “Then I stay here. I’m not going back to a pack that would kill me for confirming what you already suspected.”

Marcus didn’t answer that directly, just nodded once to the guards standing near the door before walking out, and I understood without being told that Tomas would remain locked in that room, alive, for now, until Marcus decided what to do with him.

The guards took Tomas back deeper into the cell. Marcus and I walked out into the corridor without talking for a while. My mind kept circling the same thought, refusing to settle anywhere near calm.

“I have to go back,” I said eventually. “Somebody has to stand in front of that council and say what he’s actually building.”

“It’s not a decision to rush.” Marcus stopped, turned to face me. “Walking into his territory means walking into a place that already thinks you’re a traitor. He’ll have you arrested before you finish a sentence. No trial that gives you a fair shot at explaining any of it.”

“Then what. I stay here forever and wait for somebody else to expose him?”

“I’d stand beside you.” Plain. No hesitation in it. “Whatever you decide. Not letting you walk in there alone.”

Something in my chest eased at that, though the fear underneath stayed exactly where it was. Six years I’d waited for someone to choose me without needing convincing first. Here he was, offering it, and I hadn’t even asked yet.

But something else moved through me too. Something new.

“I don’t want you to save me.” I held his eyes. “I want to stand there myself and tell them what I know, on my own terms. Six years I let other people decide what happened to my life. Not doing that again. Not even with somebody who means well.”

He studied my face a long moment. Whatever he found there seemed to settle something in him.

“Then we go together,” he said. “Not because you need saving. Because I want to be there.”

“There’s something else,” I said. “If Tomas is right about the trade routes, we need proof of that too. Not just the council plan. If I stand up and accuse him with nothing but one guard’s word, they’ll dismiss it before I finish speaking.”

Marcus considered that. “I have contacts in two of the territories he’s been squeezing. I can send word tonight, quietly, see what they’ve noticed on their end.”

“Then we’re not just walking in with a story. We’re walking in with evidence.”

“That’s the only way you walk in at all,” he said. “I won’t let you stand in front of that council with nothing behind you.”

I nodded. Something steadier than I’d felt in weeks settled into my spine.

We hadn’t worked out how to approach the council yet when a guard came jogging down the corridor, sealed letter in hand, his face already grim before he said a word.

“Alpha. Just arrived from the regional courier.”

Marcus broke the seal. Read it without a word, his face hardening line by line.

“What does it say?”

“He’s requested a formal hearing.” Marcus looked up, jaw tight. “He wants the whole region to declare you an enemy, and give full authority to hunt you down on sight.”