Chapter 712: The Draken Forces Were Engaged Elsewhere

Alpha Bloodmoon’s charm was absent when he spoke, replaced by the cold clarity of a king whose kingdom had been hit somewhere it couldn’t heal with stitches.

"Bloodmoon was hit with a ground assault accompanied by Red Death and a small Dark Fae strike force. The barrier held and the Red Death never reached our wolves. But the strike force was different from what the others have described. They weren’t targeting our people. They were targeting infrastructure. Aqueducts. Granaries. Storage. They came to starve us, not fight us."

A few Alphas exchanged glances at Bloodmoon’s report. Then Valegrave took the floor.

"Valegrave. Ground assault. Conventional. Red Death blocked. We held."

Alpha Nightspire went next. His voice was measured, professional, carrying zero evidence of anything personal that had occurred in this chamber tonight.

"Nightspire received a ground and aerial assault with Dark Fae and Fae support. Red Death was neutralized at the barrier. Two incursions breached the outer perimeter and reached the inner wall before my forces repelled them." He paused, letting the pause do work that most kings used volume for. "We sustained casualties. The number is manageable. The fact that they reached the inner wall is not."

The pattern was forming across the table. Ground assaults. Red Death as an opening gambit. Land invasions with Dark Fae forces. The barrier enchantment from the war summit, the one Serena had proposed and Archibald had confirmed a first-year mage could cast, had saved every kingdom that deployed it. Red Death had been neutralized across the board because the countermeasure existed and because the countermeasure had been shared.

Then Tiberon spoke, and the table went still, because when Drakenfell reported, the continent listened.

"Drakenfell was hit with a fleet of fifty corrupted dragons and a simultaneous ground assault. Red Death was deployed but the barrier enchantment was already in place from the prior siege, preventing aerial chemical dispersal. The corrupted dragon fleet was engaged by the Draken Forces at full strength. We sustained casualties."

The word ’casualties’ landed on the table the way it had landed in Serena’s chest in the war room. Heavy. Final. Carrying the weight of names that Tiberon knew and that this table would learn and that Serena was hearing confirmed for the second time today and the second time was worse. The first time she heard it was from Aeron who had said "I don’t have numbers." Tiberon’s report confirmed the numbers were real.

Her face gave nothing. Her composure held. But in the pews behind Tiberon, Dexmon’s eyes flicked to Serena and stayed there, because his matebond had just registered a spike so brief and so controlled it was almost invisible. Almost. He caught it because he had been watching for it since she walked through the doors with a bruise on her face.

Gavriel caught it too. His green magic pulsed once and he crushed it before it reached his fingertips.

Both men clocked the same thing at the same time: Serena had not been surprised by Tiberon’s report. The lack of surprise at that restructured the last twelve hours of both men’s assumptions. She had known about the siege. She had known about the dragons. She had known about the casualties. She had walked into this chamber carrying all of it behind a face that gave the room nothing and a matebond that gave them almost nothing.

And that meant the order to keep her in the dark had failed, and the failure raised questions neither of them was ready to ask in a room full of kings.

The entire chain of command designed to keep one woman uninformed had been defeated by one woman becoming informed anyway, and the method of her becoming informed was going to produce a conversation that several men in this room were not looking forward to.

Every head turned to Serena next. Shadowclaw’s turn.

"Shadowclaw was attacked by a fleet of one hundred corrupted dragons supported by Dark Fae riders and spotters. Red Death was deployed. The barrier enchantment was cast at our perimeter prior to engagement, neutralizing the chemical threat. All Dark Fae combatants were eliminated. All one hundred dragons were cleansed and recovered. Zero casualties."

Somewhere in the Shadowclaw pews, Beta Sharpe’s spine straightened by a degree that was visible from across the chamber. His Luna had just delivered impossible results to the continent and the delivering had been flawless and the results had been better than every king at this table combined and the pride was structural.

The silence that followed was the silence of every Alpha processing a result that did not match the inputs. One hundred corrupted dragons. Zero casualties. The equation was broken and the room knew it and the room was waiting for the variable that made it balance.

Every head turned to Tiberon. The turning was instinctive. Drakenfell had dragons. Drakenfell had the Draken Forces. The logical assumption was that Drakenfell had deployed its forces to Shadowclaw.

Tiberon met the room’s gaze. "The Draken Forces were engaged at Drakenfell during the full duration of the Shadowclaw attack. We were not aware Shadowclaw was under siege. We did not deploy forces to aid them."

The variable was missing. One hundred dragons cleansed without the Draken Forces. The equation still did not balance and the room’s need for balance was producing a silence so complete the torches were audible again.

"Shadowclaw called upon the army of another kingdom," Serena said. "A kingdom on another continent whose oath to me was established through a blood pact with their ancestral flame. They deployed one hundred frost dragons, riders, and spotters within one hour of my request."

She paused, choosing her words carefully.

"I am not at liberty to disclose the identity of the kingdom. That is protected under the terms of our alliance and I will honor those terms at this table as I would honor any other oath."

In the Drakenfell pew, Dexmon’s brain was doing something that resembled a controlled demolition. She had called another kingdom. She had mobilized a dragon army. She had done this without telling him, without asking him, without involving Drakenfell at all. His mate had conducted foreign military diplomacy in the middle of the night while he was fighting a battle and nobody had told him and she had apparently not considered telling him and the not-considering was a conversation they were going to have and the conversation was going to be long.