CHAPTER 182: _ CHOOSE WISELY

"I figured this day would come," Corvin admits, voice devoid of its usual reprimanding cadence. "The day you’d cash in the biggest chip you have. What is it, Amias? What do you need from me?"

Isn’t it obvious it would? What did Corvin think? That he would witness an affair between a disciplinarian and a seventeen-year-old student—which ended bloody and just forever looked away? He kept Corvin’s secret for a reason.

He just, not in his wildest dreams, would expect a Moon Blessed to be the reason he’s collecting that favor. Well, no one expects him to be fated to one. Yet, here they are...

Amias leans closer to the man, planting his hands on his hips.

Vark is stirring within him. "’Get it done. Protect our mate. Make them pay,"

Amias pushes the wolf down, needing control, needing to sound like the calculating Alpha, not the desperate mate.

"I need a pardon," he states, the word falling into the silence like a stone into deep water.

Corvin frowns, genuinely confused. He runs a nervous hand over his coat lapel. "A pardon? Amias, you haven’t done anything that warrants my intervention at this level. If you and Darien fought again, you’ll take a few scoldings from your Father, that’s all. He won’t have the school penalize his sons."

"Not for me," Amias cuts him off, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper that commands attention more than a scream ever could. "It’s for Heidi and her situation with the NAY boys’ sisters."

Corvin’s eyebrows shoot up, disappearing beneath his hairline. The man looks like he’s been slapped with a wet fish. He sputters, momentarily losing all composure. Amias knows it’ll be hard to believe that he’s going through all this trouble for a Moon Blessed.

"The—The striker machine girl? The one who went with the other Moon Blessed to the labyrinth? The one who lost the Top Girl position because of..." Corvin stops at that, as though realizing he’s just about to have a slip of the tongue.

Amias dims his eyes. Heidi won the Top Girl position and lost it? WHY?

That’s it. That’s the beginning of the ranks he wants her to climb. That’s the first step to proving herself. The first step to making the idea of them being together a reality and she lost it?

They could have been together faster than predicted. But even that’s not possible anymore, is it? After all, she’s already been marked by Morgan and Grayson.

Corvin takes the sadness falling over Amias’s face as a ’Yes’. "Amias, are you insane? The incident reports are already filed. The girls... they are daughters of powerful families! They’ll want blood for their humiliation. They’ll want her expelled, possibly stripped of her wolf status for attacking them!"

Corvin gestures frantically, his composed movements replaced by jittery anxiety. "This is not a petty squabble over a curfew, boy. This is pack politics. If I try to cover up this case, if I make it disappear, they’ll come for me. They will not stop. I could go down! They’ll strip me of my position, my rank, everything!"

The sudden panic in Corvin’s voice, the sheer naked fear, should be satisfying. But it only serves to irritate Amias further. The thought of Heidi—his mate, his destined anchor, the only thing that smells sweet in his ruined life being chewed up and spat out by venomous girls and the bureaucracy of the Academy makes the blood rush to his ears.

"He tries to prioritize his life over hers. Kill him. End this now," Vark hisses with deadly intent that makes Amias’s teeth ache.

Amias doesn’t reach for a weapon, but the action he takes is far more chilling. He steps forward, his shoes crunching lightly on the cobblestones. He doesn’t move fast, but the movement is so sudden and definitive that Corvin shrinks back, hitting the cold stone of the sundial with a dull thud.

Amias stands over him, his face split with rage.

"You’re worried about going down, Corvin?" Amias’s voice is soft, too soft. It’s the voice of a man reciting a lullaby before a massacre. He raises a hand and gently, almost delicately, taps a finger against the stone base of the sundial, exactly where Corvin is leaning.

"I know the spot where she is buried," He whispers a statement that has two years of secrets hidden behind it.

Oh, he knows just how to bring down each and every one of these corrupted motherfuckers in Duskwind parading as people of rank and authority.

That’s the difference between him and Darien. While his annoying half-brother chases after the bad guys in real time while turning a blind eye to the REAL bad guys hiding behind titles, Amias watches. He observes and hell, does he see?

A LOT. A whole fucking lot. The secrets of Duskwind pack are stored in his brain and if he has to utilize one of them in favor of his mate, so be it.

The effect of his words on Corvin is instant. The man doesn’t just look scared now; he looks sick. All the blood drains from his face, leaving his skin the color of damp, rotting parchment. He stares at the ground, his eyes wide and unfocused, as if seeing through the cobblestones, through the earth, to a grave six feet below.

The mention of ’she’, the secret he has guarded for over two years, the reason he is bound by Amias’s silence... has crippled him.

"All it takes is a simple exhumation," Amias continues, his voice never rising above that chilling murmur. "A simple phone call to the authorities, mentioning a two-year-old missing person’s report and a discreet burial plot near the old faculty living quarters. And your secret, Corvin? It’s not just out in the open. It’s on the news. It’s in the hands of the belligerent Pack Members who already hate you."

Amias lets the magnitude of the threat settle. He allows Corvin to imagine the rotting reality of his past being ripped into the light.

"So," Amias finishes, drawing his head back slightly, forcing Corvin to meet his icy gaze. "Choose wisely the way you wish to go down, Corvin. Them... or me?"