Chapter 291: Council Of Beasts

Kessa’s voice cut in from the bed, low and sharp.

"You’re asking him to murder the emperor who just publicly declared coalition talks because of him. In the middle of his own palace. With every major faction watching."

Marisa finally glanced toward the bed, then back to Kane.

"I am asking him to finish the path the visions require. The Measures bought legitimacy. They didn’t buy safety. My brother is entertained now. He is also still a tyrant who keeps breeding pens under his own halls and who has waited two hundred years for me to accept a tradition I will never accept. The longer he lives, the more time he has to decide the barbarian who wounded the Guardian’s fragment is a threat that needs removing after the talks serve their purpose."

Kane studied her.

The political mask was fully in place again, but underneath it he could still see the woman who had come apart on his cock and tongue only hours earlier.

The two versions didn’t cancel each other.

They existed in the same body.

"You want it public," he said.

"Or quiet?"

"Public is cleaner for the packs. Quiet is safer for the transition. I can work with either, provided the result is the same."

Marisa’s voice stayed level.

"You told me on the road you would breed me inside his palace after he fell. You told me in this very chamber you would leave the Third Measure on your feet and then start the real work. The real work includes the kill, Kane. Everything else is preparation."

Griselda spoke for the first time since Marisa entered, quiet and precise.

"Killing him the day after he opened formal talks risks turning half the banners that just arrived against us. The pure-bloods would call it treachery. Even the southern packs might hesitate. Timing matters as much as the act itself."

Marisa inclined her head a fraction, acknowledging the point without conceding it.

"Then we shape the timing. The talks begin at dawn. They will not conclude in a single session. There will be days of argument, of posturing, of factions testing how much strength the outsider actually holds. Somewhere in that window a moment will open, an insult, a challenge, a private audience that becomes something else. When it does, you finish it. I will handle the succession. The packs respect strength above blood. You have already shown them strength. Use it."

Kane leaned back against the table, arms loosely crossed, the broken one still held carefully.

"And if I decide the coalition is more useful with him still breathing long enough to bind the deeper packs?"

Marisa’s gaze cooled.

"Then the visions return to the endings where this empire burns from the inside while the sky breaks. I didn’t bring you here, walk the road with you, or let you put your mouth and cock on me so you could leave my brother on the throne out of convenience. You needed support. You have it. Now I need the kill."

Silence stretched across the chamber.

Kessa’s tail flicked once against the sheets.

Griselda watched without expression. Kane held Marisa’s amber stare and felt the weight of the seventy-day clock settle more heavily across his shoulders.

Outside the guarded door, the palace was already stirring toward dawn and the first formal session of the talks he had forced into existence.

Inside the room, the scent of sex and healing still hung thick; the two women who had just finished claiming him waited on the bed, and the emperor’s sister stood waiting for an answer that would decide how much blood the next days would demand.

Kane exhaled slowly.

"I’ll hear the first day of talks. I’ll measure how solid the support actually is. After that, we revisit the method and the moment. I’m not refusing the kill. I’m refusing to rush it into a mistake that costs us the packs we just spent three Measures buying."

Marisa studied him for a long moment.

Then she gave a single, sharp nod.

"One day. No more. After the first session, we speak again, privately. And Kane..." Her eyes flicked once more over his naked, still-healing body and the two women on the bed.

"Next time you decide to heal like this, remember that every scent you carry becomes part of the board. The pure-bloods are already talking about what they smelled on you after the Second Measure. Do not give them more than you must."

She turned, opened the door, and left without waiting for a reply. The latch clicked softly behind her.

Kessa’s voice came from the bed, dry and edged.

"She’s going to be a problem."

Kane looked at the closed door, then back at the two women still naked and marked with him on the sheets.

"She already is. But she’s also the reason we have a table to sit at tomorrow. We use the day. Then we decide how much of her price we’re actually willing to pay."

Kane didn’t sleep properly.

The system’s recovery continued in the background, knitting the last stubborn edges of the Guardian’s wounds while Kessa and Griselda slept on either side of him, but his mind refused to quiet.

The Three Measures were finished. The packs that mattered had watched him force a manifestation of the forest’s old power to withdraw.

Coalition talks would open at dawn.

On paper it was already a major victory; an outsider had walked into Berakamon, bled on its floors, and earned a seat at the table where the empire’s strength would be discussed.

Yet the larger clock still ticked.

Sixty days, more or less.

The Supreme Devils.

Menual and Milfheim still needed binding.

The other empires and scattered forces still needed to be brought into some kind of line.

Leaving Grathak alive might keep the deeper packs from fracturing in the short term. It might also leave a tyrant on the throne who had never pointed his empire’s full strength at anything except his own pleasure and the breeding pens beneath his halls.

Marisa insisted the visions showed only ruin if her brother remained.

Kane couldn’t decide whether that was truth or the cleanest lever she had to get the kill she had wanted from the first night she walked into his rented room.

He rose before the true light, dressed quietly, and left the two women sleeping.

Mjoldr settled across his back out of habit more than immediate need.

The guards outside the door nodded as he passed, more respect in the gesture than there had been two days earlier.

He walked the upper corridors and then the outer terraces of the palace as the sky began to pale.

The change was visible everywhere.