CHAPTER 80: NOT MERCY, BUT CONTROL

"I heard from Raye that you were in the Sixth District," I said, trying to keep my voice even. "She said you were building houses for people from Rayvehill pack... after they were ruined by a pack war."

My eyes flicked toward his wound again. What could have happened there?

If those people were only refugees, starving and broken, what danger could they have posed to him? What could have carved into his flesh deeply enough to bleed a man like him?

He leaned back in his chair, crimson eyes gleaming with quiet amusement. "I see that you are quite a curious little thing."

I bristled at the way he said it, as if my curiosity were some secret he had already known I would never keep hidden.

"Yes," he continued, his tone settling into something more serious. "Rayvehill was destroyed. The survivors weren’t many. Most of them were women and children. They wouldn’t last the winter in the west or north, and no neighboring packs were willing to take them in. Not with all of them seeing Rayvehill wolves as dirty sinners unworthy of any mercy."

At the mention of that pack name, my breath caught.

Astero. The word alone was enough to twist my stomach. I had known that pack, everyone who bothered to educate themselves did.

They were the blade of the Unified Alliance, the enforcers sent out to punish those who defied the laws. Wherever Astero was sent, ruin followed.

But punishment was not always just.

Whispers had long circulated aboveground that the packs Astero destroyed weren’t guilty at all, but victims. Framed by Astero, accused falsely, condemned so that Astero could sink its claws into their lands and strip them bare of resources.

Blood, war, territory—Astero thrived on them all. And the Unified Alliance? Some said they benefitted from it too, or that they were too busy, their interests too divided, or perhaps too indifferent to care.

My chest tightened as the thought dug deeper, a sickness curling in my throat.

It made me want to vomit.

How many packs had fallen that way? How many families had been scattered to the wind because of false judgments disguised as law?

I pressed the last loop of gauze into place and took a breath that tasted faintly of iron and medicine.

The rooftop wind tugged at my hair, lifting a dark strand across my face.

"Why, though?" I asked, and the question was thin with something sharper than curiosity. Raye had told me pieces, but I wanted it from him. I wanted to hear the reason come out of his mouth. "Why did you take them in? Why bother?"

He watched me with that impossible, unreadable expression. For an instant his smirk was a ghost and there were shadows in his eyes, small ravines where light couldn’t reach.

"Do you find it so unbelievable," he said, his voice low and husky, "that I would give shelter to people who have nowhere else to go?"

My hands stopped working on his wound, the gauze in my hand stilled.

The movement no longer mattered. I lifted my eyes to him instead. His wound was already knitting itself together in stubborn lines, his body refusing weakness even when torn open. His breath came steady, his face calm. Too calm.

"You burned my people’s homes," I said at last. The words tasted like acid on my tongue. "I don’t even know how many were killed in that fire, but I know it was many."

His smirk faltered, then hardened into something sharper.

"Your people?" His tone was almost a sneer. "You call them yours when they did nothing but scorn you? When they forced you into chains, treated you as a vessel for their pathetic Alpha’s heir?" His mouth curved, but there was no humor in it. "Twisted minds, every one of them. And still you defend them? You are foolishly generous."

A flush of heat surged up my neck, hot and choking. My wolf stirred inside me, in response to my untamed emotions, restless, snapping against my ribs like it wanted blood. For one perilous moment I thought I would let it spill—the fury from everything that happened to me, the fire that had simmered for months.

I wanted to scorch him with it. To make him understand.

But I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted iron.

"Yes, they had children. Women. The elderly," I said, louder than I intended. My fingers clenched hard around the gauze, twisting it tight until it cut into my palm. "I didn’t like them. I hated them, maybe. But I didn’t kill anyone unjustly."

The gauze slipped from my hand and hit the floor. I froze, chest heaving, embarrassed by the way my voice had bounced against the tiles, too sharp in the silence.

I didn’t finish wrapping his wound. Instead I shoved my chair back, the scrape loud, and rose to my feet.

He didn’t move. Just stared. His face was unmoving, impassive, as if my words couldn’t touch him.

Something in me snapped. The restraint I had clung to was gone, and the words tumbled out faster than I could stop them.

"I’m sure this little heroic act of yours benefits you somehow," I spat. "Don’t pretend it doesn’t. Your mind works differently—always calculating, always scheming. You see too much."

The rooftop stretched wide around us, but it suddenly felt too small.

"Is this just about growing your pack? Adding more warriors bound to you? I’d wager this is how you keep their loyalty. Make them believe you’re their savior. Rescue them after the war so they owe you everything. So they bleed for you without question." I stopped, meeting his gaze, my hands trembling at my sides. "That’s not mercy. That’s control."

He said nothing. His bloodred eyes were unreadable, reflecting starlight but giving nothing away.

"Why else?" My throat tightened, but I forced the words out anyway. "Why else would you offer help after the war? If you truly cared, you would have done it when the fighting raged. You could have saved their homes, their families, their lands. But you didn’t. You let them lose everything, and only then did you step in."