LYSANDER
I woke to voices I couldn’t place and light that felt wrong against my eyelids. Soone had moved . The ground beneath had transford into sothing softer. A bed, probably. The scent of healing herbs hung thick in the air, mixing with the copper tang I’d carried with from that room.
My body hurt everywhere.
Not the sharp, imdiate pain of fresh wounds, but the deep ache that ca when those wounds had been partially healed and your flesh rembered the violation anyway. I forced my eyes open. The ceiling above belonged to the infirmary. Wood beams crossed overhead in patterns I’d morized during childhood.
A healer whose na escaped noticed I was awake. She moved toward with the grace of soone who’d done this a thousand tis.
"Don’t try to sit up yet," she said. "You’ve been out for six hours. Your body needs more ti."
Six hours. That ant... The council would have convened by now. They’d have seen the bodies, examined the scene , and started piecing together what happened based on evidence and testimony.
Fuck...
"The council," I managed. My throat felt like I’d swallowed broken glass. "They need my statent."
"They’ll get it when you’re strong enough to give it." She pressed a cup to my lips. "Drink."
The liquid tasted bitter. I drank anyway. The herbs would speed healing, dull pain, and probably make more coherent when the questions started. All the things I needed.
The door opened before I finished the cup.
Elder Jenson entered first. He carried his authority like a physical weight, the kind that ca from decades of guiding pack decisions. Two other council mbers followed. I recognized them both. Elder Freya, who’d known my mother, and Elder Ellis, who’d served my father loyally for longer than I’d been alive.
"Alpha Lysander." Jenson’s voice held careful neutrality. "Are you well enough to speak?"
I pushed myself upright despite the healer’s disapproving sound. Pain flared across my ribs where Father’s chains had connected. I ignored it. "I can speak."
"Good." He pulled a chair closer to the bed and sat. The others remained standing, forming a semicircle that felt uncomfortably like judgnt. "Tell us what happened. Everything you rember."
I took a breath and let it out slowly. The story had been rehearsed in my head enough tis that it ca out smoothly. Natural. Like I was recounting events rather than constructing fiction.
"I couldn’t sleep," I started. "I had taken suppressants to avoid touching Hazel Hughes... Our guest and I don’t know... She had reacted badly to it and said things. Things that seed concerning. Like, if I hated her that badly, she could have one of my brothers or even my father. Knowing her nature and her forr cris, I kept thinking about her words, and I could not help but worry for my father. The rut madness had him completely, and he always ensured he was in mother’s room, not taking a woman through his pain and suffering. So I went to check on him."
Jenson nodded. "Continue."
"The door to my mother’s old room was ssed up. That caught my attention because Father would never desecrate her mory like that. That room was an altar to him. He treated it like it held his personal god. But I heard sounds. Movent. Chains." I paused, letting the mory of real chains fill my voice with appropriate horror. "I ran inside."
"And what did you see?"
"Hazel." The na ca out harsh. "She was on top of him. I thought he was struggling. She had poisoned him with sothing which I found out to be wolfsbane and... The wolfsbane had probably weakened him. The chains my father had installed were broken. She’d sohow gotten him down and was trying to—" I cut myself off. Let disgust color my features. "She was trying to force herself on him while he was vulnerable."
Freya’s expression tightened. "You’re certain?"
"I saw it with my own eyes and she said it with her own lips." I t her eyes directly. "She’d dosed him with sothing. Probably aphrodisiac mixed with the wolfsbane she’d used. The thing was... my father... He couldn’t defend himself."
"Why? What happened next?" Ellis’s voice carried an edge I couldn’t quite read.
"I attacked her. I... I rember.. I pulled her off him. But she was stronger than she looked. We fought." I gestured to the cuts and bruises covering . "She had the chains. She used them as weapons. I managed to get one around her throat, but father..."
I let the sentence hang. Took another breath that shook more than the previous one.
"...but father..." My voice faltered, not forced this ti. I let the silence stretch just long enough to feel real, long enough for the mory I was shaping to settle into sothing believable.
I swallowed, slower now, like the words cost sothing.
"Father wasn’t fighting back."
Ellis frowned slightly. "You said he was struggling."
"He was," I said quickly, then steadied myself. "At first. I thought he was. That’s what it looked like. The chains were moving, he was... reacting. But when I pulled her off him..." I exhaled through my nose, shaking my head like I still couldn’t make sense of it. "Sothing felt wrong."
Freya’s gaze sharpened. "What do you an?"
"I an, he wasn’t resisting her," I said. "Not really. His body was moving, yes, but it wasn’t controlled. It was... instinct. Reflex. Like whatever she’d given him had taken over completely." I dragged a hand over my face, letting a trace of frustration bleed through. "At first, I thought it was just the rut, made worse by whatever she dosed him with."
"And then?" Jenson prompted, voice quieter now.
I looked down at my hands, flexed them slowly as if I could still feel it.
"I got the chain around her throat," I continued. "I tightened it. She fought back, clawed at , tried to reach him again. That’s when I saw it."
The room stilled.
"Saw what?" Freya asked.
I lifted my head, eting her eyes again.
"That I had been wrong. And... His chest."
Another pause ca.
"There was blood," I said. "Too much of it. Not from the chains. Not from the struggle. It was... open." My voice dropped, rougher now. "His heart was gone."
No one spoke.
I let that settle. Let the weight of it press into the space between us.
"I didn’t understand at first," I went on, quieter now. "My mind kept trying to catch up with what I was seeing. He was still moving, still... reacting, but there was nothing in his chest. Nothing. And she—" My jaw tightened. "She was using that."
Ellis shifted slightly. "Explain."
"She knew he was dying," I said. "Or already dead. The wolfsbane, the damage, whatever she did to him... His heart... it had already been taken from him. But the rut was still driving his body. That instinct hadn’t faded yet. And she..." I let disgust creep fully into my expression now, unfiltered. "She was trying to take advantage of that. Trying to use those last monts to... bind herself to his bloodline.. To my bloodline."
Freya inhaled sharply, her face paling.
"You’re saying," she began slowly, "that she intended to conceive his child... while he was—"
"Yes." I cut in, firm. "That’s exactly what she was doing."
Silence fell again, thicker this ti.
Jenson leaned back slightly in his chair, studying with an intensity that would have unsettled if I hadn’t prepared for it.
"And you’re certain," he said carefully, "that his heart was already gone when you intervened?"
"Yes," I said without hesitation. "I didn’t realize it imdiately, but once I did..." I shook my head again, like the mory still disturbed . "There was no saving him at that point. She’d already killed him."
A new silence enveloped the room.
"And Hazel?" Ellis finally broke the silence. "How did you..."
He never did finish his statent. But I knew exactly what he was talking about. So I went for the kill.
"After I realized that father had been murdered," I forced my gaze back up to et theirs. "Rage took over. She’d orchestrated this. Put my father in a demasculinizing position while she took his life for her own... That bitch... She’d manipulated everything to get what she wanted, and it cost him his life."
"So you killed her," Jenson said it flatly. Not a question.
"I did." There was no hesitation or justification. I was allowed. "I broke both her legs so she couldn’t run. Then I smothered her with a pillow."
Freya inhaled sharply. "Lysander."
"I know." I t her eyes. "I know what I did. I know it wasn’t justice. It was murder. But in that mont, with my father’s blood soaking into my clothes and his heart sowhere on the floor, I couldn’t think past making her pay for what she’d done."
The truth of those words settled into my bones even as I spoke them. The context was fiction, but the guilt was real. I’d killed two people. That fact wouldn’t change no matter how I dressed it up.
Jenson stood. He walked to the window and stared out at sothing I couldn’t see from the bed. The other elders waited. Nobody spoke.
"The evidence supports your account," he said finally. "Hazel’s body showed signs of wolfsbane exposure. There was no aphrodisiac compound in what we found. We believe that is why she had to hurt Alpha Wenzel. She must have been sold a fake. Regardless, it showed her intent and it aligns with your description of events."
Relief started to unfurl in my chest. I pushed it down.
"The council has deliberated," Jenson continued. "We find Hazel Hughes guilty of attempting to sexually assault Alpha Wenzel while he was incapacitated by rut madness and wolfsbane poisoning. This assault directly led to the events that caused his death."
Ellis stepped forward. "We also find that your actions, while extre, were driven by justifiable rage at witnessing your father’s murder. The circumstances surrounding Hazel’s death will be ruled as execution for her cris rather than murder."
"There will be consequences," Freya added. "You’ll need to address the pack. Explain what happened. So will question your judgnt."
"I understand."
Jenson turned back from the window. "There’s one more matter to discuss. Silvercreek sent Hazel here as a guest and she caused a death on our territory. That will require response."
"War." Ellis’s voice carried grim certainty. "we will demand blood for blood."
"No." The word ca out harder than I intended. All three elders looked at . "We’re not going to war over this."
"Alpha Lysander," Jenson started.
"Listen to what that would an." I pushed through the interruption. "An Oga killed an Alpha. If we go to war, we broadcast that fact to every pack within a thousand miles. We tell them that a single Oga woman infiltrated our territory, manipulated our leader, and brought him down."
Understanding flickered across Freya’s face.
"It would embolden every rogue," I continued. "Every ambitious wolf looking for weakness. They’d see us as vulnerable. Easy targets. My father spent decades building this pack’s reputation. I won’t dismantle that by advertising how he died."
"Then what do you propose?" Jenson asked.
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