Chapter 192: Come For My Wife & Find Out

Alpha Thunderfang walked into the Bolt Council Hall to address the situation on Celeste Starborne and prevent a war. It became about Nova before the second agenda item. It always became about Nova.

"My brother is awake, Grand Chancellor. The Crown Prince woke yesterday. He can testify that she did not harm him. My chief of police can testify that charge was filed on baseless claims that were a misunderstanding. If the obstacle to the title and pack membership is the fact that I stood in for my brother yesterday, then that is no longer an issue. It can be performed with him today."

"Alpha Thunderfang." Grand Chancellor Edwards’s tone cooled by several degrees. "If you proceed with a second ritual after the spectacle Thunderfang has already made of this process, this council will hold your house in direct defiance of its authority, with every sanction that carries. That ruling is final."

Head Elder Matias of Thunderfang rose. He sat on the Helix Council himself, and the chamber quieted to hear one of their own.

"Grand Chancellor Edwards. Since the decision has been rendered, certain events have transpired that my office submitted to yours, I will state it out loud. The Alpha entered the initiation intending to perform the ritual in his brother’s place, as a formality. But Nova absorbed the Alpha’s aura. In front of every elder and high-ranking officer in Thunderfang. Without the priestess ever ordaining it." Head Elder Matias let that sit. "That occurs for fated mates. It occurs for no one else."

Every person who was at the pack initiation ceremony witnessed gold aura surging into Nova. That was an elephant that no one touched this morning in the War Room because Celeste was the more pressing matter.

"I reviewed the materials your office submitted, Elder Matias." Grand Chancellor Edwards did not budge. "And respectfully, I, along with the remainder of the Helix Elders’ Council, find it difficult to credit. The woman has no wolf. Aura transfers through a wolf and through nothing else. She is neither marked nor mated. The title does not hold. And an aura will not survive a court of law unless she can somehow produce a shift, and even then—"

The High Luna was looking at her grandson.

He felt the weight of her stare and, under it, the weight of the entire chamber. Every captain. Every elder. Every hologram in the ringed tier. His pack was watching him, and the woman who had raised him was watching him hardest of all.

"Grand Chancellor Edwards." Alpha Thunderfang’s voice carried clean across the chamber. "I am uncertain which elders were present for it. So I will state it for the record myself. I marked Nova after the ceremony. She bears the Thunderfang mark. She is mated." He did not look away from the dais. "If this council will not accept her as Crown Princess, then it will accept her as Luna of Thunderfang, because the ritual was performed with me. The mark is visible. I invite you to confirm it."

Grand Chancellor Edwards pressed two fingers to his temple, and for the first time in the memory of anyone in that chamber, the ice cracked.

"You did what, son?"

"I marked Nova." Alpha Thunderfang said it without a flicker of hesitation. "My officers and the elders who witnessed it have kept it quiet out of respect for her, and for my brother, until the matter could be sorted. She is my fated mate. I have felt it since she entered into the arena fully cloaked before I saw her face. I was able to feel her emotions before marking her. Before the elimination results were revealed, I felt her pain and followed her scent, out of thousands present, and I found her bleeding in the slave tunnel. I carried her into Thunderfang’s clubhouse to have my Head Healer treat her. My Gamma was present and saw me carry her in. Both would be able to testify on that."

The chamber heard it and the chamber went quiet because the man standing in the lower tier had just admitted, on the continental record, that he had known before the cloak came down. Before her face. Before her name. Before any of it. His wolf had walked into an arena and found her by something older than sight and he had spent every day since pretending he wasn’t on fire.

Holograms opened their mouths, fully loaded. Alpha Thunderfang cut them off before they could get a word out.

"I have remained silent out of respect to my brother and to the situation with the Starborne Princess. But, again, whether this council accepts my claim as her fated mate or not, does not matter because I marked her yesterday before witnesses."

"You marked her." Grand Chancellor Edwards repeated it slowly.

"Yes, Grand Chancellor. I marked her and mated her. She carries my aura and bears my mark."

Edwards stared down from the dais, and for a long moment produced nothing at all.

Alpha Thunderfang went in for the kill shot, in case there was any flicker of doubt in any of the other holograms.

"By Helix law, she is my wife as Nova Thunderfang and was always protected by the Thunderfang pack due to her status as my fated mate. By wolf law, she is my wife because she absorbed my aura, bears my mark, and we have mated. By this council’s own laws, she performed the pack initiation, rank, and title ritual with me. My rank is Alpha. That makes her rank Luna. There is no discrepancy."

The hologram elders were not pleased. Unfortunately for them, the Alpha of Thunderfang did not care.

"There is nothing left to discuss, and nothing left to negotiate, concerning Nova Thunderfang. She is Luna Queen of Thunderfang under this council’s law. There will be no returning her to Starborne. There will be no disrespect on her name. And if there is one more threat of sterilization on her, I will treat it as an act of war, Grand Chancellor Edwards."