"Do you hear that?" hollered one of the devastated sub-alphas, pointing at Elijah with a shaky finger, his tone filled with utter disbelief. "Do you hear the arrogance in his voice? He doesn’t fucking care about us!"

Another said from the side,

"He would rather let us die than surrender to his brother, who is the rightful heir! This is no king of ours!"

"Yes, he’s not our Alpha King! Angus is!" another shouted.

"Give us our true king, Angus!" they began to chant in protest.

Griffin shared a troubled look with Cheetah Roman. This was not good.

Just one meeting and Angus had already managed to sway the Alphas to his side.

Then again, it wasn’t hard to see why. Elijah had lied to their faces for years and shattered whatever confidence they once had in him.

Alpha Will lifted his head and looked directly at Irene, his Alpha and Warden of the East.

"Would you stay still and allow this to happen?" he demanded.

Irene stared back at him, her face impossible to read.

Will pressed on.

"He’s a selfish prick and would let us all bleed if it meant keeping his position."

"Wow," Elijah drawled dryly. "You pretty much summarized me, Alpha Will. You should get an applause for a job well done."

It was Leon who hissed.

"Don’t tempt me to throw you to the ravenous wolves right now and let them snuff the life out of you. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re quickly losing credibility, Alpha King." He said that last title with obvious distaste.

Whatever respect he had for Elijah was long gone.

Elijah said nothing. Not because he had no comeback, but because he wasn’t stupid.

Right now, Leon and Irene were the ones holding this room together. Sure, his guards would protect him if the wolves attacked—but at what cost?

These were Alphas of various packs, no matter how small their territories might be.

They still held things together. And what would the news say?

Alpha King Elijah kills his own subjects?

That alone would be enough to set the territories on fire. There was already enough unrest in the kingdom with the zombie virus on the rise. The last thing he needed was civil conflict on top of it.

More importantly, if he harmed them now, no one else would stand with him against Angus. At that point, they wouldn’t just want him off the throne. They would want him dead.

So no. For all his arrogance, Elijah knew he still needed them. Almost as much as they needed him.

Irene spoke to Will in a clear, steady voice,

"And you think putting Angus on the throne is the right choice?"

Will lifted his chin proudly.

"At least he’s not a liar."

His words were aimed directly at Elijah, clearly meant to provoke him. But Elijah had been King for years. And one thing smaller leaders like Will often failed to understand was that men like Elijah had weathered too many storms to be rattled by a single insult.

It took far more than that to shake a man who had spent years surviving the throne.

"You’re right, he’s not a liar," Irene agreed.

A small light entered Will’s eyes at her words, only for it to die the very next second.

Her expression hardened. "Because he’s far worse."

Will’s face fell instantly.

Before he could recover, Irene kept going.

"I do not, in any way, condone what Alpha King Elijah has done. But perhaps, I can sympathize with it in part."

That got everyone’s attention.

"Or have you all forgotten that Angus used black magic and summoned a demon?"

That landed hard.

"That alone disqualifies him from the throne under our laws!"

The once-confident Alphas were murmuring now, Irene’s reminder dragging them back to the truth they had conveniently overlooked in their haste to tear Elijah down.

Irene moved then, stepping away from the line of defense the guards had built between them and the angry sub-alphas.

The room quieted slightly as she approached. She stopped directly in front of Will.

She spat out coldly, "Elijah is only a liar and an asshole. But since when do we welcome back an Alpha King who doomed his own heir from birth?"

Her eyes sharpened.

"Whose deal with a demon rendered his own brother sterile?"

That one hit differently.

Elijah felt the room’s gaze shift back onto him, but this time, it was less hostile and with a hint of sympathy — an emotion he didn’t like.

This was an old wound. One that had quietly influenced nearly every decision he had made since, and somehow, still refused to heal.

Almost immediately, there was the smallest crack of bones, and in the next second Roman was back in his human form. Naked.

"That is the least of it," he said, picking up where Irene left off. "Angus has been building an army of witches and apparently owns a whole colony of brainwashed daughters."

Shock rippled through the Alphas. Angus didn’t tell them that part.

Griffin added,

"Dark hair. Ruthless gleam in the eyes. Twisted smirk. His psychopathic daughter was probably the one who attacked you all and harmed Ezra’s mate."

Then, as if they were simply discussing weather and not the crimes of a lunatic, Roman scoffed.

"Bro, you didn’t even tell them he...." Roman made a slicing gesture with his hand, "deleted his daughter after she tried to run from his tyranny with her lover." He added, "And yes, she was pregnant."

The uproar this time was visceral. The pain raw and gut-deep. Because wolf or not, no father should be capable of such a thing.

And the fact that Angus had once worn their crown made it all the more revolting.

Irene took advantage of the fresh commotion. "Is that the kind of Alpha you want?" she asked.

That question cut through the room like a blade. And while everyone was still reeling, one person seemed to take the blow the hardest.

Alpha Will.

After all, he had been the loudest in Angus’s defense. The most eager to believe there was some better alternative waiting on the other side of Elijah’s fall. Now he just looked completely bamboozled.

"How can you be sure of that?" Will asked.

Irene lifted a brow. Then slowly narrowed her eyes.

"You think they would lie about this?"

Will opened his mouth and suddenly couldn’t speak.

It was Irene who looked him straight in the eyes and said, "I don’t know what light you think you saw..." Her voice dropped colder. "But let me make this very clear to you."

She held his gaze.

"Angus is not our salvation. He is our damnation."