Chapter 323: Do You Love Her, Shadowfell?

Nicholas’s response time was so long that Brennan started mouthing possible answers like a prompter backstage trying to help an actor who had forgotten his lines.

"Politeness has nothing to do with it. Relevance does. And your question isn’t relevant to the agenda."

Damon: That’s my Alpha. Trained him myself.

Reed: And I trained you. It’s the circle of life.

"Is she married to you?" Thornback tried.

"She is my mate."

"Mate as in Luna or mate as in you’re being vague on purpose?" Thornback pressed.

"Mate as in mate."

"That’s not a clarification. That’s a circle."

"Circles are efficient. No loose ends."

"Is she your consort?" Veilcross attempted from a standing position.

"She is my mate," Nicholas repeated.

In the stands, Brennan mouthed the words along with Nicholas this time like he had memorized the scripture.

Damon: Don’t.

Reed: He’s doing it again.

"Hypothetically," Ironmaw began.

"No."

"I haven’t asked yet."

"You were going to ask hypothetically if she were unmarried, would I call her Luna. The answer is this isn’t a hypothetical and I don’t entertain them."

"How did you know what I was going to—"

"Because Thornback tried it from the left and you’re trying it from the right. Same question. Different door. Both locked."

"Just say it, Shadowfell. Wife. Luna. Yes or no." Ironmaw’s fingers were on his token like a man who might start the hokey pokey again if he didn’t get an answer from dad.

"My relationship with her is not a vote before this table."

"Nobody asked for a vote. We asked for a word." Darwin’s hand was already on the table in the pre-launch position of a man about to stand and demonstrate something nobody asked for.

Damon: Three. Two. One.

Reed: He’s up.

Ashfang looked at Darwin the way a grandfather looks at a toddler eating dirt. If four wives and fourteen pups taught him anything, it was you can’t fix stupid so you might as well let them die. You’ll have another.

"You have several," Nicholas replied. "Mate. Shadowfell. Protected. Under my authority." His eyes landed on Darwin and stayed there long enough for Darwin to sit down.

"Those are adjectives," Darwin stated.

"Shadowfell is a proper noun."

Renwick Lunaris looked at the empty Stonehowl seat with fondness for the one chair in this chamber that had the good sense to shut the fuck up. Next to him, Redmoon looked at the ceiling the way a man looks at the sky during a flood, asking gods who are not listening why he came to this summit voluntarily.

"You know what I MEAN."

"I know exactly what you mean. I’m choosing not to give it to you."

"Let me try." Duskwin volunteered with the confidence of an Alpha who thought his approach was the smartest and would work on a wall that had already beaten nine other Alphas.

Renwick looked at Duskwin with pure exhaustion. Even the boys club was joining in.

"Oh good. Fresh meat," Ironmaw muttered.

"Shadowfell. Simple yes or no. If she walked into this chamber right now, where does she sit?"

Nicholas looked at him for two full seconds. "Next to me. At this table."

Surprisingly, no one reacted to this.

"In throne rooms, that’s where the Luna sits."

"We are in a council chamber. Moving on."

Redmoon, against every instinct he had, caved. His defection from neutrality was so quiet it barely registered, but Renwick felt it the way a captain feels the first crack in the hull. Another one of the boys club was gone.

"Alpha Shadowfell, if I may," Redmoon began. "Nobody at this table is trying to challenge your claim. We are trying to understand the political structure so we can plan accordingly. Is she Luna of Shadowfell? A simple confirmation would suffice."

"I appreciate the framing, Redmoon. She is my mate and Shadowfell."

The chamber had one second to marinate in that before Benjamin Blackmoor decided to take a stab at it.

"Deny it then. Say she’s not your Luna and the table moves on."

"She’s married to the Dragon King," Nicholas stated. "What part of that is unclear?"

"Quick show of hands," Benjamin called. "Everyone who thinks she’s his Luna."

Every hand went up in the chamber outside of Renwick, Nicholas, Lunaris’s eight, and Shadowfell’s twelve. Brennan started to raise his unintentionally. Damon caught it without looking. Reed caught the other one. Brennan sat between them with both arms pinned.

Darwin stood and scanned the room because of course he wanted out of his seat. "That is the majority of the chamber. Deny it and we stand corrected."

"This isn’t a court, Darwin. And your hand is up."

"Damn right it is. I was the first one to say double-dipping and I stand by it."

"You also drew on her," Benjamin stated, purely to fuck with him.

It worked.

"I did NOT draw on— do you want me to go back to the floor and—"

"NO," the chamber roared.

"Fine, but can we all admit she IS double-dipping."

"Last try from me," Ashfang announced, standing with the creaking authority of the oldest man in the room. "Son. Alpha to Alpha. Do you love this woman?"

He skipped the politics, the semantics, and the procedural grandstanding, and went straight for the jugular with a question that had nothing to do with titles and everything to do with the answer Nicholas had been hiding behind vocabulary.

Nicholas looked at Ashfang and didn’t hesitate. "Yes."

Renwick’s jaw tightened. Four seconds. That’s how long the room held its breath. Four seconds where every Alpha heard what Nicholas had been saying the entire time, underneath the deflection, underneath the vocabulary, underneath the circles. He loved her. He had loved her since the moment he laid eyes on her. And the man across the table had given her to someone else.

"Shadowfell. Mate. Luna. Wife," Veilcross said. "Pick a word and commit to it because the rest of us are running out of ways to not say ’double-dipping’ and Lunaris over there looks like he’s about to stroke out."

"Fine," Nicholas said. "She’s mine. I love her. She’s my mate. She’s my luna. Shadowfell recognizes her as that, so by extension, she is the future queen. A threat to her is a threat to me. Is that clear enough or should I draw a diagram? Darwin can help. He loves those."

The chamber exploded.