Amias pulls back, wiping his tear-stained face with the back of his hand. His chest is heaving. The air is difficult to draw. He looks at his mother, truly looks at her. She’s frail, beautiful, and utterly ruined.
He reaches out and takes her trembling hands in his own. His hands are rough, calloused from training and the recent self-inflicted wounds; hers are delicate, cold, and unnaturally still.
"Mother, I—I-I am so sorry. For everything. For my arrogance. For never seeing... for not understanding. I was a terrible son."
He squeezes her hands, the pressure ant not to hurt. "You sought comfort. You sought your mate. That was not sin; it was survival. The sin belongs to Father."
Clarissa simply shakes her head. Tears still stream silently down her cheeks. "Oh, my darling boy. You were just a child. A loyal son."
"No," Amias insists, "I was a loyal fool." He looks around the wrecked room. He looks at the scattered feathers and the shattered glass. "I need to fix this. I need to make it right. How? Tell how to make it up to you. I will do anything. Anything at all. Just tell ."
Clarissa’s watery gaze focuses on his. The weakness in her posture is suddenly tempered by a faint, hard flicker of the old ambition, the sa fire that had driven her for years. It’s the last flicker of her will to fight.
"There is nothing you can do for now, Amias. The cure... died on the Pack grounds years ago." She ans her mate.
She pauses as the silence amplifies her words. "But there is one thing I want from you. The one thing that will give my wolf peace, the one thing that will prove to that brute, Tobias, that viper, Ines, and that wannabe, Rayne, that we were never useless. That we still hold the ultimate honor."
Amias ets her gaze, making the silent vow absolute. "Tell . I will do it. I promise you, Mother. I will do anything."
Clarissa closes her fingers tightly around his, drawing him closer. The scent of gardenias and death is overpowering.
"I want you to prove them all wrong," she whispers, the words ringing with decades of suppressed fury and resentnt. "I want you to show them that Clarissa and her son are not disposable. I want you to show Tobias that you are better than all of his other sons."
She delivers the final blow and the ultimate demand, with a chilling calmness:
"I want you to beco the Alpha."
Amias reels back. The demand lands with the force of a physical mandate. He stares at the destruction around him, then back at his frail, dying mother who just handed him the most impossible political challenge of their ti.
"Alpha," he mouths, tasting the title like a foreign, dangerous object.
Vark imdiately rebels. "She’s right. It is the ultimate revenge. The ultimate justice. Moreover, it’s our birthright."
But Amias is a man of logic, and his logical mind imdiately catalogs the overwhelming odds.
"Mother, you know that’s not possible. Yes, I am the firstborn. The position should naturally be mine, by tradition. But tradition is dead in this Pack. Father will never choose when Darien and the twins still draw breath."
He stands up, pacing two steps through the chaos, kicking a pile of feathers. "He favors Darien the most. He’s the legitimate son of themost powerful Luna. Not to ntion he’s publicly proved himself more than once. Then the twins... the closest pair and father’s pampered kids, born of a mate bond. And then, maybe, maybe he thinks of . He dislikes because I remind him of your infidelity. He sees your sha in my face. He will never hand the title to ."
He stops pacing, turning back to her, his movents jerky and desperate. "I might be the first son, but I’m the tainted one. I don’t have the support."
Clarissa sighs before giving a genuine small, sad smile this ti. It’s a smile of fierce, maternal loyalty.
"Ah, Amias, my fierce, principled idiot," she says softly. "You are so busy looking at the political debris in this room that you forget the one card you hold that none of your brothers can claim. The one card I gave you years ago."
She reaches out a hand toward the door. "You have Lira."
Amias stares at the na, dumbfounded. Lira, the girl he had just scorned for being a "burden," the girl he had just used as a temporary weapon against the entire family.
"Lira is a Beta’s daughter," Clarissa continues, her voice gaining the cool, tactical edge of an old strategist. "And not just any Beta. Her father commands the largest loyalty bloc in the Alpha Council, the one that traditionally balances the power of the pack. His support is the key that unlocks the electoral college, the one thing your father and Luna Ines fear most."
She fixes him with a look of terrifying certainty. "If you marry Lira, form a sanctioned, powerful alliance with a major Beta house, you solidify a strong alliance in the Pack that would guarantee you the Alpha position, even without Tobias’s full favor. He cannot afford to reject a Beta-backed Alpha candidate. Not with the chaos of the Moon Blessed scandal still bubbling."
Clarissa’s vision is chillingly clear, ruthless, and absolutely logical. It bypasses sentint, mate bonds, and personal feelings entirely, focusing only on the cold, hard currency of Pack politics.
"You need a Luna, Amias," she concludes, her eyes already glazing with fatigue. "Not just any girl, but the girl who guarantees your power. Lira is the antidote to your sha. She is your throne."
Amias stands frozen in the ruins, staring at his dying mother. The cost of vengeance is clear: sacrifice the tiny, hopeful spark of love he found with Heidi, and instead, embrace the very political machinations he has always despised, marrying a girl he views as a burden for the ultimate prize—the throne. The throne that is the only way to avenge the mother he finally loves.
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