Aiden's POV

Three weeks since the ceremony and Ashen Hollow Pack went back to normal.

Or that was what I told myself every morning when I woke up and the first thing my wolf did was reach for something that was no longer there.

I ignored him. I was good at that.

The bond did not disappear completely, which was the part nobody warned us about. It sat in the background, present enough to remind you it existed, too faint to do much else. Jayden felt it too. We did not talk about it, there was nothing to say.

Pack business filled the space well enough. Meetings, disputes, territory checks, the endless administrative weight of running Ashen Hollow at the level our bloodline demanded.

I threw myself into it and Jayden did the same and by the end of most days we were too tired to think about anything else.

That worked fine until Jace showed up.

He came into the study on a Tuesday afternoon without knocking, dropped into the chair across from my desk and looked at me with that expression he wore for three weeks. The one that said he was sitting on something and deciding how to say it.

"Go ahead," I said without looking up from the report in front of me.

"You know what I'm going to say."

"I know. Say it anyway so we can move past it."

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "She was good, Aiden. Whatever you've convinced yourself about the bloodline, Celeste Reed was good for this pack and you know it. Everyone knows it."

Jayden looked up from the sofa where he was going through his phone. "The Fourfold Bond would have required us to share authority with Ulfsang Pack. That is not something we were ever going to agree to."

"That's not what I asked."

"It's the answer," I said. "The bond was a trap dressed up as an honour. We were expected to split our mate, our pack's future Luna, between four men from two different bloodlines. Tell me how that preserves anything we have built here."

Jace was quiet for a moment. "I'm not talking about politics. I'm talking about her."

"They're the same thing." I set the report down and looked at him properly. "She carries a bond that divides her between us and the Wood twins. There is no version of that which doesn't compromise this pack's standing. We made the right call."

"Did you." It was not a question, he said it flat and let it sit there.

Jayden's jaw tightened slightly. "Watch yourself, Jace."

"I'm watching both of you." He stood, straightening his jacket. "I've been Beta of this pack for six years. I've never once questioned a decision you two made. I'm questioning this one." He moved toward the door and stopped with his hand on the frame. "She didn't deserve what happened to her in front of everyone. Whatever the politics are, that part was wrong."

He left without waiting for a response.

The study was quiet after that. Jayden set his phone down and I leaned back in my chair and we let the silence sit for a moment.

"He'll come around," Jayden said.

"He will," I agreed.

But Jace's words lingered in the room longer than either of us acknowledged.

***

Jayden poured the drinks an hour later, two glasses of something old and expensive from the cabinet by the window, and handed me one without a word. We stood at the glass looking out over the pack grounds, the way we always did when something needed settling between us.

"He's not wrong that she was good," Jayden said. He said it carefully, the way he did with things he turned over several times before speaking.

"No," I said. "She was."

"But good wasn't the point."

"No. It wasn't."

We drank. Outside the grounds were quiet, the pack going about its evening, everything exactly as it should be, as it always was under our authority.

"Vivian called it early," Jayden said, swirling his glass slowly. "Weeks before the ceremony she was telling us something felt wrong about the whole arrangement. The way it was structured, what it would cost us. She saw it before we did."

I nodded. Our stepsister came to us quietly, no dramatics, just a careful conversation about what she read in the old records.

The Fourfold Bond was not the sacred honour the elders presented it as. It was a mechanism that diluted alpha authority, split a Luna's loyalty between two packs, and left both bloodlines compromised. Vivian laid it out clearly and we listened.

"We owe her for that," I said.

"We do," Jayden agreed. "She saved us from walking into something we couldn't have undone."

I raised my glass slightly and Jayden touched his to it and that was the end of it. The decision was made and it was right and Jace's doubts were his to manage.

My wolf disagreed, quietly and persistently, the way he always did when I was not telling myself the full truth. I ignored him the way I always did.

We moved back to the desk an hour later, papers spread between us, the evening settling into the familiar rhythm of pack administration.

Jayden was mid-sentence about the eastern border arrangement when the study door opened.

Vivian stood in the doorway.

I noticed it immediately. The colour in her face, or the absence of it. She was pale, not from the light, her hands at her sides and not quite steady. She looked like she came straight from somewhere without planning to stop here and her eyes moved between us with an expression I could not name.

Jayden straightened. "Vivian."

She did not answer right away. She stepped fully into the room and the door swung shut behind her and she looked at both of us and something about the way she was standing made my wolf lift his head for the first time in weeks.

"What's wrong?" I said.

Her mouth opened. Closed. She pressed her lips together and when she looked at me again her eyes were steady in the forced way of someone holding themselves together by sheer effort.

"I need to tell you something," she said quietly. "Both of you."

The room went completely still.

"It's important." Her voice did not waver but her hands did. "I should have said it sooner. I don't know how to say it now but I have to."

Neither Jayden nor I spoke.

Vivian stood in the middle of our study looking like someone who carried something heavy for a very long time and finally ran out of the strength to keep it to herself.

Vivian's POV

I kept my face steady when they looked at me. That was the most important thing.

I rehearsed this on the drive over, practiced the right amount of concern in my voice, the right amount of uncertainty in my face. Nothing too dramatic. Aiden and Jayden could smell performance from a mile away.

"I overheard something today," I said. "Pack members talking. About the rejection."

Jayden's expression did not change but his eyes sharpened. "What were they saying?"

"That it damaged the pack's reputation." I let that land before continuing. "Some of them are saying that breaking a bond like the Fourfold Bond brings a bad omen. That severing something that ancient doesn't just go away quietly."

Jayden leaned back in his chair. "Let them talk."

"I just thought you should know."

"And now we know." His voice was even, unbothered. "People speculate. That's what people do. As long as they keep it out of our faces it doesn't concern us."

I nodded slowly. "No one said it to my face of course. I only caught it because I was passing. Nobody would dare say it directly to the sister of their alphas."

"Exactly." Aiden stood from behind the desk and when he looked at me there was nothing unsettled in him, nothing that suggested Jace's words earlier left any mark at all. "People will talk. Let them. Claiming Celeste Reed was a direct insult to everything this bloodline stands for. We don't regret it."

"Not for a second," Jayden added.

"And if she walked through that door right now," Aiden continued, his voice completely level, "we would reject her all over again."

I held his gaze and smiled. "You made the right decision. Both of you. Don't let anyone make you feel otherwise."

Aiden gave a single nod and looked back at his desk. Jayden reached for his glass. Neither of them was losing sleep over this and that was exactly what I needed to see.

"Get some rest," Jayden said without looking up. "It's late."

I said goodnight and left.

***

Rogan's apartment sat on the other side of the city, far enough from pack territory that nobody would think twice about a car parked outside.

He opened the door before I knocked. I stopped being surprised by that a long time ago.

"Well?" He stepped aside to let me in.

"They don't suspect anything." I dropped my bag on the chair by the door and turned to face him.

"I told them there were rumours circulating among pack members. Gave them just enough to confirm they made the right call without making them question anything."

Rogan smiled. It was the kind of smile that never quite reached his eyes. "And they believed you."

"They always believe me. I'm their stepsister." I said it without warmth. "That's the whole point, isn't it."

"It is." He moved to the drinks cabinet and poured two glasses, unhurried, like we were just two people having a regular evening. "You are the perfect instrument for this, Vivian. They would never look at you and see what's actually there."

"A weapon," I said flatly.

He glanced back at me. "I was going to say someone they underestimated. But yes."

I took the glass he offered. "They still don't feel any guilt. About any of it. Sitting in that study with their drinks talking about their bloodline like they're untouchable." My jaw tightened.

"My mother is gone because of them. She died because of choices they made when they were too young and too reckless to care about consequences and they never once sat with me in that. Never mourned. Never apologised.

They treated her like she was the problem, the mistress who broke their precious family, not a woman who deserved to be grieved."

"I know," Rogan said.

"They don't even remember her face."

"They will remember everything when it's over." He set his glass down and looked at me, steady and certain. "When they turn thirty and lose their wolves, they lose the right to lead this pack.

Everything they built, everything they are so proud of, gone. And since I am next in line for succession, Ashen Hollow falls to me."

"And me?" I looked at him.

He crossed the room slowly. "You stand beside me as my Luna. Chosen. Elevated. Everything you should have always been."

Whatever doubts I carried to this apartment dissolved the way they always did when he said the right things.

"They're going to lose everything," I said quietly.

"Everything," he confirmed. He was close now, close enough that I could see the certainty in his eyes. "And you made that possible."

He kissed me before I could answer. And I let him.

I kissed him back hard, my hands fisting in his shirt as the familiar wild scent of him flooded my senses, that deep commanding musk that always made my wolf stir with raw hunger for what he would become.

"You will have that throne," I whispered against his mouth between kisses. "I promise you. Ashen Hollow will be yours."

Rogan growled low, the sound vibrating through his chest. He slid a hand under my gown, fingers pushing inside me without warning, stroking deep and sure while his thumb circled my clit.

"Can't wait to make you my Luna," he murmured, voice rough with need. "My mate. My queen. You'll wear my mark for everyone to see."

I moaned into his next kiss, hips rocking against his hand. He pulled his fingers free, brought them to his mouth, and licked them clean with a hungry groan. "Fuck," I breathed, the sight sending fresh heat rushing through me.

He kissed me again, deeper this time, tasting of me. His hands worked fast, tugging my gown up and over my head until it pooled on the floor.

Cool air hit my skin, then his hot mouth closed over one nipple, sucking hard while his tongue flicked and his teeth grazed just enough to make me arch. I was so turned on, slick and aching, my wolf pressing close to the surface.

Between kisses I gasped, "I can't wait for you to be Ashen Hollow's alpha. I want to watch my stepbrothers suffer, stripped of everything while we rise."

Rogan lifted me easily and laid me back across his wide desk, papers scattering. He dropped to his knees, spread my thighs wide, and buried his face between them.

His tongue licked long and firm through my folds, then sucked my clit into his mouth. "Soon you'll be my bride," he said between slow, filthy strokes, his voice muffled against my pussy. "My claimed mate. They'll bow to you while I fuck you every night in the alpha's bed."

I cried out, fingers tangling in his hair as pleasure coiled tight. He ate me like a starving wolf, licking and sucking until my legs shook.

Then he rose, freed his cock, and spread my legs even wider. He pushed into me in one thick stroke, filling me completely, knot already starting to swell at the base.

"Fuck, you're so wet for your future alpha," he growled, thrusting hard. "This tight little cunt is going to take my knot so well. Gonna fill you with my seed until it drips down your thighs."

"Yes," I moaned, meeting every thrust. "Fuck me harder. Claim what's yours. I want them broken while you breed your Luna."

He pounded into me, desk creaking beneath us, one hand pinning my hip while the other pinched my nipple. "That's my dirty girl. Say it again. Tell me how bad you need your stepbrothers ruined."

"I need it," I panted, nails digging into his back. "I need you to take everything from them while you take me like this. Knot me, Rogan. Make me yours."

He drove deeper, the growing knot stretching me perfectly as filthy promises spilled from his lips and I answered every one with my own hungry moans.