Chapter 320 Shall we get back to work on it?

Chapter 320: Chapter 320 Shall we get back to work on it?

Damian’s POV

I don’t forgive.

That’s a lesson people tend to learn too late where I’m concerned. The Silver Creek pack had spent two years grinding my mate down into something small enough to sit in the corner of their table, and they thought the world would just keep letting them.

They were wrong. My wolf had wanted their throats the moment I understood what they’d done to her. Instead, I did something colder. Colder always cuts deeper.

I sent Rick.

"Go to Silver Creek," I told him that morning, not bothering to look up from the reports on my desk. "Announce it publicly. The pack passes to Aria. And inform them that the Holt bloodline will answer to the Council for the offense given to the Crown."

Rick’s brow lifted a fraction. He’d been my Beta long enough to know exactly what that sentence meant when it left my mouth. "You want the whole pack to hear it."

"Every last one of them." I finally looked at him. "Let them watch the ground go out from under the Holts. That’s the point."

My wolf paced under my skin, satisfied and hungry all at once.

*Good,* he rumbled. *Let them feel it. Let every wolf on this continent see the price of insulting their King’s mate—and let them count it out to the last coin.*

So Rick went.

He told me later how it played out. He’d stood in the center of the Silver Creek pack hall and read the decree in front of every wolf in the room. You could hear the change move through the crowd like wind bending a field of grass. And it didn’t take long—it never does—for the rats to start jumping ship.

The Silver Creek Beta was the first. He stepped out of the ranks before Rick had even finished speaking, hands open, head dipped in that instinctive way a lower wolf submits to a stronger presence.

"With respect," the Beta said, loud enough for the room, "the pack made no move against the Crown. Whatever the Holts did, they did it alone. This pack won’t shield them."

Just like that. Two years of loyalty, gone in the space of a breath. That’s the thing about weak Alphas. Their people can smell the rot long before the end, and the moment there’s a stronger scent in the room, they follow it.

Rick said the hall was already splitting down the middle when Ethan walked in.

He came through the doors grey-faced, hollowed out, moving like a man who’d been carved thin from the inside. And he brought news of his own.

The old woman was dead. Rose Holt. His grandmother.

Rick told me the room went silent then—not out of respect, but out of that raw animal awareness that death had walked in with him.

Even the wolves already turning their backs went still. And Rick, being Rick, decided there was nothing left to accomplish in a room like that.

You don’t press a killing blow on a man kneeling in his own ruin. Not because it’s cruel. Because it’s beneath us.

He left.

He came back and reported all of it to me, standing in my study with that flat, careful voice he uses when he’s watching to see which way I’ll turn.

"The old woman passed before dawn," he finished. "Ethan brought word himself."

I leaned back in my chair. My wolf didn’t so much as flick an ear. "It changes nothing," I said. "The Council still takes them. Strip the bloodline. Let them fall the way they built it—slowly, in front of everyone."

Rick nodded. He’d expected that.

What neither of us expected was Aria.

She’d come to the door of the study without a sound, and when I turned, she was standing there in one of my shirts with the sleeves shoved up to her elbows, her hair loose, those green eyes fixed on me. She’d heard all of it.

"Damian." She crossed the room, and she didn’t sit. "You don’t need to break them down to nothing."

I studied her. My mate. The woman who had every reason on earth to want the Holts scattered to the wind, standing here asking me to pull the blade back.

"They earned it," I said.

"I know they did." She stopped in front of me, and there it was—that stubborn softness that she’ll deny to her grave.

""But I don’t want to start our child’s life this way. Not with a body count. Just exile them. Send them out of the territory. That’s enough."

My wolf lifted his head at that. He’d wanted blood. But he wanted her more, always her, and something in her voice smoothed his hackles flat. *

She’s too soft for this world,* he murmured. *Good thing she has us.*

"Fine," I said.

She blinked, like she’d braced for a fight. "Fine?"

"Exile." I let the corner of my mouth curl. "We’ll call it a blessing on our own pup, then. Bad luck to spill too much blood with a litter on the way."

She stared at me. Then she made a small disgusted noise in the back of her throat. "You’re shameless. You know that? Truly shameless."

"So I’ve been told." I caught her wrist and drew her a step closer. My voice dropped. "Though I don’t recall you complaining last night. What was it you said, exactly, when you were—"

"Damian—"

"When you had your legs wrapped around me and you told me—"

She lunged forward and clamped her hand over my mouth, her whole face going scarlet. "Don’t you dare. Don’t you *dare* say it out loud."

I held her gaze. And then, slowly, deliberately, I dragged my tongue across her palm.

She yanked her hand back with a shriek, staring at it, then at me, her cheeks burning so hot I could feel the heat coming off her. "You—you’re an absolute animal. There’s something *wrong* with you."

"Only with you." I caught her by the hips and pulled her flush against me, watching her breath hitch. "Everywhere else I’m a perfect gentleman. It’s only you who does this to me."

My wolf pressed close beneath my skin, warm and possessive, the way he only ever is with her. The scent of her—that heat blooming under her skin—wound through me like smoke, and it was over. It’s always over the moment she blushes like that.

She felt it against her, of course. She always does. Her eyes went wide.

"You’ve got to be kidding me."

"You made me a promise, sweetheart." I leaned down until my mouth brushed the shell of her ear. "You told me you’d give me a pup. And I’m a very patient wolf, but not that patient." I felt her shiver, and I smiled against her skin. "So. Shall we get back to work on it?"