Theodora stopped attending morning court three months before the Seattle summit.
She didn't announce it. She simply stopped appearing. The first morning, her chair at the head of the council table sat empty. The Bloodmoon Deltas and Gammas shifted in their seats, glancing at each other. After ten minutes, Renata entered and said, quietly, "The Queen delegates authority to Regent Dakota for all operational matters. Proceed."
I was already seated at the table. I didn't move to Theodora's chair. I stayed where I was, opened the agenda, and began.
No one questioned it.
By the second week, they stopped looking at the empty chair entirely. They looked at me.
Garrett brought territorial reports directly to my office now instead of leaving them in the council archive. Petra filed correspondence under my name. When visiting Alphas requested audiences, they were told to submit formal requests to the Regent's office.
I didn't ask for the title. Theodora simply issued a court declaration on Bloodmoon letterhead, signed and sealed, naming me regent for all operational matters effective immediately. She had it delivered to every allied pack within three days.
Jonathan received his copy in Europe.
I know because two weeks later, the fourth pup arrived.
This time, the delivery came with a legal brief—twenty-three pages on Lycan Council letterhead, authored by a solicitor named Greaves who specialized in succession disputes. The argument was precise: Jonathan's succession rights had been suspended, not revoked. The pups constituted evidence of lineage. Given the Queen's declining health and the lack of a formally named heir, the brief argued that Jonathan's claim should be reinstated and the pups recognized as legitimate Bloodmoon bloodline.
I read it twice in my office. Then I walked it down to Renata's lab.
She was bent over a microscope when I entered. She looked up, saw my face, and straightened.
I set the brief on her workbench. "We need the full compound analysis. Now."
Renata picked up the brief. Scanned the first page. Her mouth tightened. "How long do I have?"
"However long it takes for Theodora to die," I said flatly. "Which could be six months. Could be six weeks."
Renata set the brief down carefully. She looked at the row of vials on her shelf—four now, amber liquid catching the afternoon light. "I'll prioritize it. But Dakota—this is Council-grade evidence. If I rush it and make a mistake, the entire case collapses."
"Then don't make a mistake."
She nodded once. I left.
I forwarded the brief to the Bloodmoon Court's legal counsel with a single line in the margin: *Prepare a counter-argument. Assume we'll need it within six months.*
Then I went upstairs to Theodora's private study.
She was sitting by the window. Not at her desk. Just sitting, looking out at the eastern courtyard. Her hands were folded in her lap. She looked smaller than I remembered.
I knocked on the doorframe. She turned her head slightly.
"The fourth pup," I said. "Jonathan sent a legal brief with it."
She nodded slowly. "I know. Renata showed me."
"He's accelerating."
"Yes."
I stepped into the room. Closed the door behind me. "If you die before we have the compound analysis—"
"He wins," Theodora said quietly. "I know."
Silence.
She looked at me. Her eyes were still sharp, but there was something underneath the sharpness now. Weariness. Or maybe just clarity.
"The Seattle summit is in two weeks," she said. "You'll represent the Bloodmoon Court."
"Alone?"
"Alone," she confirmed. "It's time the other courts see who runs Bloodmoon operations now."
I nodded. I didn't argue.
As I turned to leave, she spoke again.
"Dakota."
I stopped.
"Whatever happens in Seattle," she said, "remember that you are not packless anymore. You haven't been for a long time."
I pressed my left hand against the cold scar on my neck. Nodded once. And left.
---
The Seattle summit was held in a human convention center that had been rented under a shell corporation and warded by three separate Lycan Court healers. Two hundred wolves from fifteen packs. Alphas in the front sections. Betas and Gammas filling the middle rows. Omegas and unranked wolves pressed against the back walls.
I entered through the main hall doors at exactly nine a.m., carrying the Bloodmoon Court's delegation case. I was alone. Deliberately.
Every head in the room turned.
I walked down the center aisle. My footsteps echoed on the polished floor. I could feel the weight of their stares—some curious, some contemptuous, some calculating. The packless wolfless girl who'd been rejected on a ceremonial platform six years ago, now walking into a Pack Alliance Summit as a Lycan Court regent.
I took my seat in the front section. Bloodmoon Court's designated chair. I set the delegation case on the table in front of me, opened it, and began reviewing the agenda.
I did not look up.
The summit began twenty minutes later. Alliance treaty revisions. Territorial dispute arbitration. Resource distribution negotiations. I listened. Took notes. Spoke twice—once to clarify a clause in the eastern timber rights agreement, once to object to a proposed border adjustment that would've violated a 1987 treaty.
Both times, the room listened.
At eleven-thirty, they called a recess.
I stood. Closed my case. Turned toward the side exit where the refreshment tables were set up.
And stopped.
The scent hit me mid-stride.
Wild pine and iron. Deep. Commanding. Threaded with something that made my chest constrict and my pulse accelerate and had nothing to do with fear.
My wolf stirred. Not just pressure this time. A voice, clear and urgent: *Mate.*
I turned.
Across the hall, near the main entrance, a man stood with his back to me. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dark hair. He was speaking to someone—a Beta, by the deference in the other man's posture—but as I watched, he went still.
Then he turned.
His eyes locked onto mine across fifty feet of crowded hall.
The room didn't go silent. People were still talking, still moving. But I stopped hearing them.
He crossed the hall in three strides. The crowd parted without anyone seeming to decide to move. His aura rolled ahead of him like a pressure change before a storm—Lycan, full-blooded, stronger than anything I'd ever felt.
He stopped in front of me.
Up close, his scent was overwhelming. My wolf was howling inside my skull, clawing toward the surface, desperate and joyful and utterly certain.
He looked at me. Not at my clothes or my delegation case or the Bloodmoon insignia on my folder. At me.
"Mate," he said. Low. Certain.
The dead mark on my neck pulsed cold.
I pressed my left hand over it. Felt the hollow scar under my palm. The reminder of what happened the last time I believed in this.
I met his eyes. Steady.
"I've had a mate before," I said. My voice was flat. Precise. "It didn't hold."
I pulled my hand away from my neck. Showed him the scar.
He looked at it. His jaw tightened. But he didn't look away. Didn't offer reassurance or deflection or any of the soft words men use when they want you to stop talking about the wound.
He said: "I know what that is. And I know who did it."
The specificity of his answer hit me harder than sympathy would have.
I stared at him.
He held my gaze. Waiting.
I didn't walk away.
