Page 119 of Shifters Reckoning

And Marcus. Marcus, who’d caught his sister’s whisper, understood what it was and said nothing to anyone except Emma because a man with the enemy’s voice in his head was a threat. If the shifters had bound and gagged Marcus the way they’d bound Salali, the chance at winning would have died, and Eli would have died. So, he’d swallowed it. He’d carried the enemy’s voice, his sister’s grief, and his own blindness in silence, played the prickly, proud cat alpha, and let the whole alliance think the worst of him. The worst they could believe about him was still safer than the truth, for a boy none of them knew was held in a darkness none of them had seen.

His concealment hadn’t been treachery. It was the longest, loneliest act of loyalty in the entire war, and he’d have carried it to his grave and let them depose him over it rather than risk losing the thread.

Emma took a shaky breath. “Have we seen enough?”

I moved closer to her.

“Yes, Multimorph,” Torbin rumbled.

“Yes, Multimorph,” Della agreed.

“For fuck’s sake, yes,” Flynn muttered.

The link broke gently.

Torbin straightened. Tears caught the gym lights and glistened in the old bear’s beard.

Emma sagged against me, and I held her up as the relic went dark, and for a long moment, nobody in that room could speak at all.

Della broke the silence. “I always knew,” she said. She crossed to Marcus and gripped his hand, pulling it through the crook of her arm. “Up we get, Alpha.”

“Thank you, Della,” he murmured, staring at the wall. “What’s the verdict?”

“You’re not a traitor,” Flynn said, “and there’s enough of us who know the truth now to beat the rest of them into line.”

“I don’t think they’ll be deposing you any time soon,” Della added.

“Good. Now let’s get on to the real work. Acheron’s at hand,” I growled. “No time to waste.”

Ville Platte sent word to their pride immediately, and the collected shifters moved out of the gym and onto the lawn between the manor and the gym. Emma waited nearby as we gathered for the final battle of the war we’d been waging for weeks.

The runner arrived, breathless and wide-eyed, as the first, upper edge of the Cold Moon cleared the trees. He delivered it to the whole camp. Some news won’t wait for privacy.

“The cats stand with the alliance, tomorrow and after,” he said, “and Ville Platte’s alpha remains Marcus Steele.”

Not despite the blindness. Not despite the sister. Because of both.

Marcus heard it standing in the middle of my compound beneath a moon he couldn’t see, and he put one hand out and let Della take it. I looked away then. Some things a man should get to feel without another alpha watching.

“You did that,” Emma said quietly, beside me, leaning into my side, spent and proud.

“No, you did that. You built a world where the truth could get a hearing.” I pulled her into my arms. “I only built the room.”

Around us, the camp settled into the strange quiet in the last hours before we confronted Acheron as one people. Wolves, cats, foxes, squirrels, ravens, bears, and a newbie horse and a youngling bunny…

We were one people at last, not because they’d stopped being different but because they’d finally all been given a reason to face the same direction. The ravens had their autonomy. The north had their honors. The raccoon had his menu. And Ville Platte had their alpha.

The alliance walked into the last night complete.

This was what I’d been all along, the one who pulled the field together long enough for the multimorph who mattered to do impossible shit in the middle of it.

The Cold Moon loomed, large and white.

Somewhere out in the Void, a tired dead wizard built his kingdom of nothing. My mate was going to build his ending for him, with her own two hands when the moon reached its zenith.

And I would be on the other end of that bond the whole time, the ground under the storm, prepared to sacrifice the most valuable thing I could.

Myself.