Chapter 44: Your Move, You Presumptuous Dog

Four wolves at the gate at midnight meant one of two things: a declaration of war, or something worse. Renwick’s steward had the sense to know the difference. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

"How many men did he bring?"

"Four, Alpha. His Beta among them."

"Send him in. And wake Cassian."

Nicholas Shadowfell entered the study with his Beta behind him. The other three remained in the corridor.

He looked worse than Renwick had ever seen him. Sweat had dried on his temples, and his skin held the grey undertone of prolonged pain. His jaw was set rigid like he had been clenching it for hours and had forgotten how to stop.

"Renwick."

"Nicholas. You look terrible. Sit."

Nicholas sat with reluctance.

"She’s in pain."

Renwick’s expression did not change. He folded his hands on the desk.

"Define pain."

"The kind that breaks a shift. The kind that travels through an unfinished matebond across six thousand miles of open ocean and hits hard enough to put me on the ground in front of my own patrol." Nicholas’s voice was measured, but the cracks were showing.

Renwick leaned back in his chair. He studied Nicholas the way he studied trade agreements: looking for the margins, the concessions, the places where a man revealed more than he intended.

"Matebond?"

"You chose Drakencrest gold over my claim. We have been through this, Renwick."

"I chose the best arrangement for Lunaris. I will choose it again. Every time."

Something dangerous moved behind Nicholas’s eyes, the kind of restraint that lived one sentence away from evaporating entirely.

The door opened, and Cassian entered. His eyes flicked to Nicholas and stayed there two seconds too long. Then he straightened an inch taller and lifted his chin.

"What is this?"

"Your sister is in danger, Cassian. King Shadowfell has come to tell us personally. Very noble of him." Renwick gestured to the empty chair beside Nicholas.

Cassian crossed the room unhurried, and sat beside Nicholas.

Nicholas exhaled through his teeth, then grunted, hunching over. One arm flew across his ribs. He lifted his head, his eyes on Renwick. The veins in his neck were standing out like cables, and his wolf pressed so close to the surface that the human face wearing it was barely holding.

"She is being hurt. Right now."

Renwick’s fingers stilled on the desk. One micro-movement. A pause so small that Cassian missed it entirely, but Nicholas did not miss it, and the look that crossed his face said he had just found the margin he was looking for.

"You already knew."

Renwick’s eyes lifted. "I knew what?"

"You let the bidding climb because you wanted to see who would offer the most for what you already suspected she was." Nicholas leaned forward. "What is she, Renwick?"

Cassian looked at his father. The question had landed in a place that made him uncomfortable, and the discomfort was visible.

Renwick stood. He moved to the fire, and placed another log on the grate.

"My daughter is a wolf with white fur and green eyes. She was kept away from the public because she was a runt until she wasn’t."

"That is a description, Renwick. I asked what she is."

Renwick turned from the fire. The light caught the planes of his face, and for one unguarded second, the mask slipped. Something that looked, from a certain angle, like fear.

It vanished so quickly that only Nicholas, who had been looking for it, saw it at all.

"Her mother was unusual," Renwick answered.

"When Drakencrest offered fire and gold, you knew there was something in her that would react to dragon flame."

"I suspected. But no, I wasn’t certain," Renwick answered. "When you have children you’ll understand. They are investments, not just company. Hers paid more than I thought."

Cassian’s face had gone very still.

Nicholas rose from his chair. "You’re going to let her suffer."

Renwick almost laughed. The sound died before it formed, but the shape of it lived in his expression for one brief second.

"I will do something better. I will send a message to Drakencrest requesting confirmation of my daughter’s status. If the response is inadequate, I will come myself. And I will bring Cassian."

Cassian looked up. "You will bring me?"

"You are her brother. Your presence communicates concern with weight that Nicholas’s claim, however sincere, does not."

Nicholas absorbed the insult without flinching, which said more about his self-control than anything he had said all night.

"And if the message goes unanswered?"

Renwick returned to his chair. "Then we will all go to Velkaris, Nicholas. Three days for the message. Two for the response. If silence follows, we sail on the sixth."

"She may be dead in six days."

Cassian stood, his chair scraping stone. "I’m not waiting six days. Give me a ship. One. I’ll go tonight. If she’s in danger, I can be there before your message clears the first relay."

"Sit down, Cassian."

"I’m not asking, Father."

"No. You are performing. There is a difference," Renwick said. "You want to rescue a sister you backhanded in front of fifteen warriors after she just saved their mates. Bold. A sister whose wrists you bound, and you threatened silver on. The same one who you ordered the warriors to drag home by the ropes because she fell unconscious, which would have killed her. Our Beta’s son carried her after you kneed him in the ribs for putting his foot down. The one you called a bitch at my table in front of a room full of kings with Alpha hearing."

The room went very still. "That sister, Cassian?"

Nicholas’s head turned slowly.

"You did what?"

Cassian’s mouth opened. Nothing useful came out.

"He hit her?" Nicholas asked Renwick, and the question was quiet in the way that wildfires are quiet before the wind shifts.

"Oh yes," Renwick answered. "His dislike of his sister is well known in Lunaris. The most recent time was when she escaped Stonehowl."

Nicholas looked at Cassian. The amber hadn’t left his eyes and now it burned brighter. His wolf was right there. Right behind the teeth.

"You hit your sister."

"I..." Cassian’s hand went to the pommel of his sword. Reflex. Comfort object. "It was before I knew."

"Before you knew what?"

"Before I knew she was..." He couldn’t finish. Every ending to that sentence made him sound worse than the beginning.

Nicholas moved with the efficiency of a wolf who had stopped negotiating with his human half, crossed the distance in one stride, and drove Cassian into the stone wall so hard the mortar cracked behind his skull.

One hand. Throat. Lifted until Cassian’s boots scraped the floor. Nicholas’s fangs were fully dropped, his jaw distended past the human range, and the sound that came out of him wasn’t language. It was territory.

"You put your hands on my mate."

Cassian clawed at the wrist pinning him.

"You are standing in this room alive because nobody told me until now." Nicholas’s voice was so low the words vibrated through Cassian’s sternum. "Give me one reason. One. Make it good."

Cassian’s mouth opened. His face was turning colors.

"Nicholas." Renwick hadn’t moved from his chair. Hadn’t raised his voice. "Release my son. You can kill him after we’ve resolved the logistics."

The casualness of it was worse than a command. Cassian heard it and something behind his eyes broke.

Nicholas held for two more seconds. Then he opened his hand, and Cassian hit the floor on his knees, gasping, hands on his throat, in front of the man who now owned every inch of moral high ground in the room and the kingdom attached to it.

Nicholas straightened his coat ,then sat back down. He picked up the conversation where the violence had interrupted it as if Cassian were furniture that had fallen over.

"I stand by what I say, father," Cassian said, coughing. "Give me a ship, and I’ll go tonight."

Nicholas laughed. The sound was short, cracked down the center. "You want to save her."

He reached into his coat and produced a folded piece of parchment. He placed it on Renwick’s desk the way a man places a winning hand on a card table: face down, unhurried, with the patience of someone who has already won and is deciding how much to enjoy it.

"What is this?"

Nicholas turned to Renwick. "A manifest. Forty wolves. Three warships. My fastest captains. They left Shadowfell port two hours before I arrived at your gate."

Renwick did not touch the parchment. His eyes stayed on Nicholas.

The fire popped in the grate. It was the loudest sound in the room.

"You came to inform me. Not to ask."

"I came to offer you the courtesy of knowing. The ships are past the reef by now. There is no recall signal that will reach them."

Renwick’s fingers pressed flat against the desk.

"Drakencrest will interpret this as an act of war."

"Drakencrest can interpret it however he likes. I will interpret his failure to protect my mate as the same."

Renwick picked up the parchment. He unfolded it. His eyes moved down the manifest with the efficiency of a king who had read ten thousand documents and could extract the relevant data from any of them in under four seconds.

He refolded it. Set it down.

"You staffed this to arrive. Winning on that continent requires fire, and you brought teeth."

"I brought enough teeth to hold a position until someone with fire decides his daughter is worth showing up for." Nicholas held Renwick’s eyes. "That’s you, Renwick. In case the subtext was too subtle."

Renwick almost smiled. "You presumptuous dog."

"Your move."

"Noted. Close the door on your way out."