Page 23 of Haunted Crowns
The fire crackled and the wind stirred while the spirits watched. With a single choice, the path sealed beneath her feet.
Eris stepped into the night, the air sharp in her lungs. It was too much, too fast. Kaelioth’s words clung to her skin. She needed space. Distance.
Beyond the fire’s glow, Varis and Taric, Kareon’s most trusted men, stood waiting. Alert. They already knew. Kareon approached them, his steps controlled, while Eris drifted a few steps away, letting the moonlight wash over her. She closed her eyes briefly, unaware of the voices rising behind her.
“You’re really doing this?” Varis asked disbelieving.
Kareon didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
“You realize what this means,” Taric said, his tone graver. “Bringing a Firstblood into the pack won’t go unnoticed.”
Kareon’s voice was flat. “I’m counting on that.”
Varis exhaled sharply. “The pack’s already on edge. Rebellion’s stirring. This will only feed it.”
Kareon’s jaw tightened. “They’ll fall in line.”
“They’ll question you,” Taric added, his gaze narrowing. “Vatryk and his men won’t stand for this.”
“Vatryk is nothing to me.”
“Not yet,” Varis said.
A tense silence followed.
Taric stepped closer, voice tightening. “They won’t see this as strategy, Kareon. They’ll see it as you bending to Kaelioth, or worse”—his eyes flicked to Eris—“that she’s manipulating you.”
Kareon’s muscles coiled. “I am the Alpha.”
The words should have felt like certainty. Tonight, they felt like a challenge. He had faced war and death, but never had he gambled his leadership on a single decision. Still, he had already chosen.
“They’ll respect my decision,” he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. “End of discussion.”
Varis held his gaze a moment, then looked away. Taric exhaled slowly.
“Fine.”
They disappeared into the shadows. Kareon caught the mutter under Varis’s breath, noted the way Taric didn’t look back. The silence that followed pressed against him, heavy with decisions already made. He turned toward her.
Eris stood a few steps away, her face tilted toward the sky, bathed in silver light. Something inside him stilled. The moon traced her skin, catching the glow in her eyes and the delicate angles of her face. Her hair shimmered like starlight in shadow. For the first time, Kareon forgot where he was. He forgot the pack, the rebellion. The war.
“Why?” The question slipped out before he could stop it. She blinked, but didn’t turn. “Why did you accept the spirits’ path?” he asked again. “You could’ve refused. Lived your life of privilege. Stayed safe.”
She let out a bitter laugh. “And know that for every mother crying over her dead child, every family destroyed, every future shattered, I could have stopped it and chose not to?”
Kareon fell silent. She turned to him slowly, her eyes glistening with something just shy of tears. She was breaking in front of him, and it split something open inside his chest. For the first time, Kareon didn’t know what to say. A whisper of cold wind curled between them. She shivered. His fingers twitched at his sides. He shouldn’t care. Couldn’t afford to. But the sight of her, small beneath the weight of the night, standing so still, so alone, unraveled something he hadn’t known was still left in him.
Before he could stop himself, he moved. His fingers brushed her shoulders as he draped his jacket over her. He lingered a second too long. She blinked, startled. And in that moment, Kareon knew he had made a mistake. Whatever this was between them, it had already begun.
Then it shattered.
“Alpha!” Varis’s voice cut through the night, sharply.
Kareon exhaled, freed from something he wasn’t ready to name.
"The pack is waiting."
He hesitated for a fraction of a second. Then he turned to Eris.
