After His Mistress Returned, I Exposed the Pack

The ruins looked smaller at night.

I had not been back since the funeral. Six years, four months, and the blackened skeleton of my parents' home still stood at the edge of what used to be Ironveil territory — contested land now, technically, since the petition made everything complicated. The Council had not formally ruled on jurisdiction. That meant no one could stop me from being here. It also meant no one would help me if Cannon decided to enforce his own interpretation of the borders.

I moved carefully. Buster stayed close, his breath visible in the cold air, his body a warm shadow at my hip. I had my mother's field kit — the leather case she used for pack medical runs, still intact, still organized the way she left it. Glass vials in padded sleeves. Tweezers. Sample bags. A small notebook with her handwriting on the first page: *Document everything. Evidence degrades. Memory lies.*

I started at the east wing foundation.

The burn patterns were still visible if you knew what to look for. Charred timber at the load-bearing beams, blackened in a way that spoke to accelerant rather than natural spread. I knelt and scraped a sample from the deepest char — the kind of residue that only wolfsbane left, a faint greenish tint under the soot that caught the moonlight wrong.

"Multiple ignition points," I said quietly, sealing the sample. Buster's ear twitched. "See how the burn goes inward here, and outward there? That's not one fire spreading. That's two fires set deliberately."

I moved to the next beam. Scraped. Sealed. Photographed the angle with the small camera I had borrowed from Maren years ago and never returned. My hands were steady. My mother had taught me to work like this — methodical, precise, no wasted motion. She used to say that panic was just unorganized information, and if you could name the problem you could solve it.

I named every sample. Labeled every vial. By the time I reached the fourth structural point, the pattern was undeniable. The wolfsbane concentration was too uniform for accident. The accelerant distribution followed a grid — deliberate, calculated, the kind of thing you only got when someone knew exactly what they were doing and had time to do it right.

Eloise had time.

I sealed the last vial and stood, brushing soot from my knees. The kit felt heavier now. Not because of the samples — because of what they meant. This was not grief evidence anymore. This was prosecution evidence. The kind that would stand up in a Council hearing and force people to look at what they had spent six years pretending not to see.

I turned toward the memorial grove.

---

The stones were small. Plain. My mother's pack friends had placed them a month after the funeral, when it became clear that Elder Duncan was not going to authorize a formal memorial on pack land. The inscriptions were simple: *Iona Watkins, Healer. Marek Watkins, Healer.* No dates. No flowery language. Just their names and what they were.

I knelt between the stones.

Buster sat beside me, his weight warm against my shoulder. I pressed my palm flat against my mother's stone. The granite was cold. Smooth. I traced the carved letters with two fingers — the way I used to trace the veins on the inside of my wrist when I needed to remember I was still alive.

"I have the evidence," I told her. My voice was quiet. "Wolfsbane accelerant. Multiple ignition points. Arson pattern consistent with deliberate intent. It's enough to force an investigation. Maybe enough to prove it."

The wind moved through the trees. Buster's breathing was steady.

"Cannon threatened to raze this place if I don't withdraw the petition." I did not look up. "He thinks it will make me stop. He thinks you are leverage."

I pulled my hand back and stood.

"He's wrong."

I picked up the kit. Buster rose with me, shaking soot from his coat. We walked back through the ruins, past the blackened beams and the evidence I had just catalogued, and I did not look back.

By the time we reached the road, the sky was turning from black to gray.

---

The bond-echo hit me in the cabin three hours later.

I was labeling the last vial when Cannon's voice arrived — cold, certain, threaded through the fading ghost-link of the dead mark like poison through a vein.

*Withdraw the petition before the full moon, or I raze the grove.*

My hand went to my wrist. Two fingers pressed against the pulse. Beat. Beat. Beat.

Buster lifted his head from the rug, watching me.

The voice was not loud. It did not have to be. The Alpha tone carried its own weight, even through a dying bond, and my body remembered how to respond — the faint tremor in my hands, the tightness in my chest, the way my wolf would have submitted if I had one.

But I did not submit.

I sat very still. I counted my pulse. I waited for the echo to fade.

Then I stood, walked to the desk, and pulled out a sheet of clean parchment.

*To: Wes Aldrich, Lycan Prince. From: Saoirse Watkins, petitioner under Luna Accord Section Nine.*

I wrote carefully. Formally. The kind of language you used when you were proposing an alliance between equals rather than begging for protection.

*I am writing to request a meeting at your earliest convenience to discuss strategic mutual interests regarding my pending Lycan Council petition and documented institutional corruption within the Ironveil Pack. I believe our goals may align in ways that would benefit both your office's oversight authority and my case's evidentiary strength. I have prepared a comprehensive dossier and am available to meet at a location of your choosing.*

I signed it. Sealed it. Addressed it to the Lycan Council's northern seat, where I knew Wes maintained his primary residence.

Then I walked to the road and left it in the courier drop before dawn.

I did not withdraw the petition.

I accelerated.

Buster walked beside me the whole way back, his shoulder warm against my leg, and when we reached the cabin I fed him from my own plate and told him we were going to win.

He believed me.

I was starting to believe it too.