"Now, if that would be all on the political agenda..." Elijah said, in a tone of finality. "Then I’ll say we lock up and call it a day. We need time to discuss District One, strategize, and estimate the number of werewolves needed for this battle."

For once, he sounded every bit the Alpha King serious about his duties.

Almost immediately, Nancy and Ezra King raised their hands at the same time. The timing was so exact it made several heads turn. They both paused and looked at each other, eyes locking.

And for a brief second, it looked almost comical — a completely silent marital battle happening right in front of a hall full of powerful wolves. But if one looked carefully, it was obvious Ezra wasn’t amused in the slightest, if anything, there was a very clear, feral warning in his stare.

He was trying to will his mate into backing down but Nancy did not back down. Her hand remained lifted, unapologetically high for everyone to see.

Elijah’s brows drew together, his surprise thinly veiled now as he studied the pair. Whatever antics they were up to now, he was very much interested. So he indulged her.

With a lazy flick of his fingers, he gestured for her to speak.

Though Elijah knew perfectly well who she was, he still asked in a falsely polite tone,

"And you are?"

The insult was on purpose. A calculated attempt to belittle her. To reduce her to nothing more than an irrelevant human in a hall dominated by wolves.

Of course, Nancy saw straight through it and remained unmoved. She had dealt with men like Elijah all her life back in District One. Men with too much power, ego, and just enough cruelty to think they were untouchable.

The dog of an Alpha King did not intimidate her.

So she rose gracefully to her feet and answered with a smile so sweet it bordered on insulting.

"Your Majesty, Nancy King. Mate to Ezra King, acting Alpha of the West Pack and former occupant of District One." She went all the way in, since apparently they were playing games.

"Nancy, you don’t have to do this," Ezra warned under his breath, tension rolling off him in waves. A low growl rumbled in his chest, controlled but dangerous.

Do what? Elijah watched the exchange with growing interest. What exactly were they up to?

He pressed further.

"And what seems to be the problem, Nancy King?" Elijah asked. "Is this about District One? Well, do not worry, my dear. We will try our best to save it before it becomes overwhelmed by those creatures."

Then he added with a patronizing softness that made the insult even uglier, "You should sit down and focus on taking care of the pup in your belly. We wouldn’t want anything happening to Ezra’s heir. After all, humans are rather fragile, aren’t they?"

The insult was wrapped in concern, but it landed exactly as intended.

This time, Ezra’s dangerous growl came not in Nancy’s direction but in Elijah’s. But Nancy had been fighting her own battles long before Ezra King ever crashed into her life like a beautiful, violent disaster. She did not need permission to start another one.

She rose so abruptly her chair scraped back with a violent screech across the floor, the jarring sound cutting through the room and stunning the nearby Alphas into silence.

Several heads snapped toward her, mostly with surprise and curiosity.

"Now listen to me, you overgrown, barely leashed dog!" Nancy snapped.

The room froze.

"Oh no, she didn’t," Aeron muttered, staring wide-eyed.

"Oh yes, she did," Irene murmured, her gaze fixed on Nancy with open pride.

Though they planned this, it still took a terrifying amount of courage for a human woman to stand up in a room full of werewolves and publicly insult the Alpha King to his face.

Elijah in question stood frozen with utter disbelief. He had not seen that coming.

Nancy continued as if her first insult had not already detonated through the room.

"Why don’t your pathetic, lying ass open up and tell everyone the truth? About your brother, Angus, being alive all this while, and you hiding it."

For one long second, the room held nothing but stunned silence. Then everything exploded.

"What is the human talking about?!"

"Angus? Former Alpha King Angus?"

"Isn’t he dead?"

"What kind of joke is this?"

"Is this true?"

Voices rose all at once with questions flying in every direction. Confusion tore through the hall like wildfire, swallowing what little order had remained.

And through it all, Elijah did not move.

He simply stood there, terrifyingly still. Predatory still. The kind of stillness a cobra held right before it struck.

Then he moved quickly but not fast enough. Ezra was already in front of Nancy,

placing himself between his pregnant mate and the most dangerous man in the room.

When Elijah got close, Ezra’s claws flashed out, striking him making him stagger back. The Alpha king looked down to see five long claw marks had torn clean across his chest, slicing through his clothes and skin alike. His lip curled back instantly in a snarl, challenge blazing in his eyes.

Now the entire room had descended into complete chaos. Every Alpha was on their feet, voices piling on top of each other until the sound became one giant, ugly cacophony. No one knew what side to take or that was true anymore.

Ezra pushed Nancy behind him without ever taking his eyes off Elijah.

His entire body was wound so tight it looked painful, his wolf practically clawing beneath his skin. His eyes flashed dangerously, every inch of him ready to tear the room apart if Elijah so much as breathed wrong in Nancy’s direction.

Then Irene stepped out too. She shifted just enough to cover Nancy’s flank with her own body and said loudly, clearly, for everyone to hear, 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

"Why don’t you stop trying to intimidate everyone and tell us the truth about your brother, Angus?"

Elijah’s head snapped toward her.

"And who told you that?" he snarled.

"It doesn’t matter how we found out," Leon shot back immediately. "What matters is the fact that you’ve been lying to all of us this entire time."

And yes. He was in too.

After the mirror call with the boys, Nancy and Ezra had made sure to tell their parents everything. And together, they had all agreed on one thing: this meeting would be the perfect place to expose Elijah. In front of this many witnesses, there would be no easy way for him to slither out of it.

And then it dawned on Elijah. His eyes swept across the room, narrowing as realization sank in like poison.

"You all knew," he said slowly. Then more darkly, "You all planned this."