Chapter 322: Fated, Mated, It’s Complicated

As soon as the chamber doors opened, every immortal ass left every immortal seat because some entrances transcend species and time, and this one right here had some Big Nick Energy.

Then one God began pouring tequila shots, while another rubbed his hands together and a third grabbed the remote in case anyone tried to change the channel.

Mouths shut. Drinks poured. Asses parked. Eyes glued. And then the god of fate started smiling. Every head turned to look at her, uncomfortable, because the god of fate never smiled unless something irreversible was about to happen.

✦✦✦

Dad walked in and every kid snapped to attention like they hadn’t just spent four hours the night prior drawing dicks on stepdad’s whiteboard.

The formation behind Nicholas was Shadowfell through and through. Tight. Lethal. V-shaped. Damon was at his right. Reed at his left.

In the middle of the formation, radiating the energy of a man who had been told to walk here and was thrilled about the invitation, was Brennan Pike.

Every head in the chamber turned. Mouths closed. Then, wolves stood. Every goddamn one of them. Chairs scraped. Bodies rose. Alphas. Betas. Gammas. Officers. Warriors in the upper stands. The ripple moved through the chamber like a wave, front rows first, upper tiers following, until the entire population of the council chamber was vertical.

The same men who had been treating Renwick like a substitute teacher were now standing like dad had walked through the door with the report card and a belt.

It was the most unified thing they had done in twenty-four hours.

Every wolf stood except for one.

Renwick watched from his chair with the expression of a man who had been babysitting forty-seven children and just heard the door open. Dad was home. Stepdad could clock the fuck out.

The relief on his face was so subtle that only a trained eye would have caught it. He looked at Nicholas the way a hostage looks at the extraction team. Controlled. Dignified. And absolutely, irrevocably, bone-deep fucking done.

"Welcome back, Shadowfell." Renwick’s voice was ice but his eyes were screaming ’TAKE THEM. TAKE ALL OF THEM. I WILL PAY YOU.’

Nicholas gave a single nod.

His eyes swept the chamber the way a general reads a battlefield. Left to right. Front to back. He saw the empty Stonehowl seat. He saw the standing Alphas.

He walked to his chair. The Shadowfell wolves flowed behind him and peeled off to the upper stands with the clean efficiency of a pack that could do this blindfolded.

Brennan peeled off with them. Damon guided him to stand beside him in the upper row with a nod that said ’you go here’ and meant ’you belong here.’ Brennan surveyed the chamber from his new spot with the wide-eyed wonder of a man who had never been invited to the grown-ups’ table and was determined to deserve it.

Reed stood on Damon’s other side. His eyes scanned the chamber once, then settled into the specific, relaxed vigilance of a Gamma who had been running on whiskey and stress for twelve hours.

Damon: He looks good for a dead man.

Reed: He looks better than he did alive. Death agreed with him.

Damon: The king has a post-mortem glow.

Reed: Oh shit. He’s actually glowing.

Nicholas took his seat. Every Alpha sat after he did. The hierarchy was so instinctive it was almost biological. The ones who had spent the prior night testing stepdad’s patience sat up straight in their chairs. The behavioral whiplash could have given a man spinal damage.

"Good to have you back," Ironmaw stated, seconding Renwick’s welcome.

Nicholas gave a nod of acknowledgement.

Ironmaw let the pleasantries breathe for half a second before smothering them with a pillow. "Care to explain where you’ve been?"

"I had to take care of something."

Ironmaw waited for the rest. The rest never came. Nicholas Shadowfell had delivered the most aggressively uninformative answer in the history of continental diplomacy and was already moving on.

"That’s IT?" Veilcross was on his feet because Veilcross was always on his feet. The man’s chair was decorative at this point. "You call a summit. You leave. Then you walk back in here like you went out for a stroll and the explanation is ’I had to take care of something’?"

"Correct."

"WHAT something?"

"Something that required my attention and has been resolved."

"Resolved HOW?"

"Veilcross." Nicholas’s voice could have frozen hell over three times. "I have answered your question. I will answer it once more because I respect the concern behind it. I was handling a threat to my mate. That threat has been eliminated. The specifics are Shadowfell business. Would you like me to continue running my summit or would you like to moderate it yourself?"

Every Alpha in the chamber collectively made the same calculation. The answer to that question was no, they absolutely did not want to moderate it themselves because they had experienced the alternative and the alternative was Renwick Lunaris.

"Was that threat related to Stonehowl?" Darwin asked.

Nicholas didn’t flinch. "Yes."

Darwin Blackmoor opened his mouth again. Benjamin looked at him. Darwin closed his mouth. In the heavens, a god dropped his wine glass. Another one stood up and slow-clapped.

"Good. Moving on."

"WAIT." Thornback stood. "You said your mate. Who is she married to?"

Renwick pinched the bridge of his nose.

Nicholas looked at Thornback with the patience of a king who had been answering stupid questions since the day he was crowned and had gotten very efficient at it.

"She is married to the Dragon King. She is also my fated mate."

"But she is also officially Shadowfell?" Thornback pressed.

The chamber leaned forward outside of Lunaris and Shadowfell. Brennan leaned forward unintentionally because he too was curious about the answer. Damon’s palm found his chest without looking and pushed him back into his seat like a man reshelving a book that had slid forward.

"Yes. She is Shadowfell. Any threat to her remains a threat to Shadowfell. That is unchanged from when I announced it the first time."

"You said mate. You said Shadowfell. You said any threat to her is a threat to your pack. In my territory, we call that a wife," Ironmaw said. "Do you call it something different here or are we all just too polite to say it?"