The Elder Hall smelled of judgment—old wood soaked in centuries of verdicts, stone that had absorbed more condemnations than absolutions. We stood at its threshold, Ashara quiet in my arms, while the great doors groaned open to reveal what awaited us.
Not punishment. Something worse.
Assessment.
"Aria Nightbloom." Elder Theron's voice rolled through the vaulted chamber like thunder seeking ground. "You return to us changed. The question before this Circle is simple: do you still belong?"
The seven Elders sat in their crescent formation, white robes pristine despite the chaos our world had endured. Behind them, in the shadows where tradition placed the Alpha King during formal proceedings, Lucien watched. His face was stone, but his eyes—his eyes remembered everything.
"The Rite of Rejoining has been invoked," Elder Mara announced, her ancient hands folded over the ritual staff. "You will answer truly, or the Hall itself will know."
I stepped forward, feeling the weight of their scrutiny. Beside me, Dorian tensed, ready to defend what shouldn't need defending. But this wasn't a battle won with swords or silver flame. This was older, deeper—a reckoning with the very concept of belonging.
"Ask your questions," I said.
Elder Theron leaned forward. "Do you submit to pack law?"
"I submit to what's just."
A ripple of displeasure through the Circle. That wasn't the answer they wanted—the simple 'yes' that would slot me back into their ordered world. But I was done pretending their order hadn't tried to kill me.
"Do you honor the blood bonds of your birth pack?" Elder Mara asked.
"My birth pack cast me out. I honor the bonds I've forged in exile."
Ashara stirred in my arms, a small sound escaping her lips. The torches along the walls flared in response, shadows dancing wild before settling. The Elders exchanged glances—they'd felt it too, the way reality bent slightly around my daughter.
"The child," Elder Kassian spoke for the first time, his voice thin with age and suspicion. "What is she?"
"My daughter."
"That is not an answer."
"It's the only answer that matters."
He stood, grey beard trembling with indignation. "You brought an unfinished soul into this world. A vessel still in flux. She responds to names that haven't been spoken, cries at the mention of gods who shouldn't exist. What have you birthed, Aria Nightbloom?"
Before I could respond, Elder Lysandra cut in: "Look how the flames bend toward her. See how her very presence disturbs the wards. She's not fully here, not fully formed. She exists between states."
"She exists," I said firmly. "She breathes, she dreams, she chooses. That's more than your laws ever allowed me."
"Our laws—" Theron began, but I was done being silent.
"Your laws would have seen me die in exile. Would have let Lucien's rejection fester until it killed me from the inside. Your laws said I was worthless the moment I presented as Omega, said I deserved casting out for the crime of being chosen by the wrong mate."
My voice rose, and with it came the silver flame—not threatening, just present. Proof of what I'd become despite their system.
"I survived your laws. Survived the trials you said would break me. Survived birthing a child while gods tried to wear her skin. And you sit there, in your clean robes and untested certainty, and ask if I belong?"
"You speak of survival," Elder Mara said carefully. "Tell us, then. Tell us what you survived. Let the Hall judge the truth of it."
So I did.
I told them about the exile, the rogues, the awakening of power they'd said Omegas couldn't possess. I spoke of the prophecies that tried to claim me, the mirrors that reflected what I might have been, the birth that nearly unmade reality itself. I laid bare every moment of choosing Ashara's humanity over divine purpose, every battle against forces that wanted to use her as a vessel.
The Hall listened—not just the Elders but the very stones, the ancient magic woven into the foundation. Truth resonated here in ways that couldn't be faked or softened.
When I finished, silence stretched like a held breath.
Ashara broke it.
She looked directly at Elder Kassian and spoke a single word in a language none of us recognized. The shadows in the corners of the Hall shifted, reaching toward her before retreating. The torches dimmed, then blazed higher than before.
"You see?" Kassian pointed with a shaking finger. "The child speaks in tongues that predate our kind. She's dangerous."
"She's learning," I countered. "Learning to exist in a world that didn't expect her to choose her own shape."
Lucien moved then, stepping from the shadows into the light of judgment. The Elders straightened—even here, the Alpha King commanded attention.
"You've changed the rules," he said, and I couldn't tell if it was accusation or acknowledgment. "The law will remember this. Will adapt or break, but it will remember."
"Good," I said, meeting his gaze without flinching. "Maybe it's time for laws that don't require people to die to prove them wrong."
Elder Theron struck his staff against stone, the sound ringing with finality. "The Rite of Rejoining is... inconclusive. You are changed beyond our measures, Aria Nightbloom. Whether you belong is no longer for us to decide."
"It never was," I said quietly.
As we turned to leave, Elder Lysandra's voice stopped us: "She still carries an echo. The child. Something unfinished lives in her shadows. If it wakes fully, none of us are safe."
Ashara looked back at the Elder, her silver eyes glowing faintly in the torchlight. She smiled—an expression too knowing for her months—and spoke again in that impossible language. This time, I almost understood it. Almost grasped the meaning dancing at the edge of comprehension.
The shadows didn't just shift this time. They reached. Toward her. Toward us. Toward something beyond the Hall's ancient walls.
We left quickly after that, the weight of divided opinion heavy on our backs. Some Elders nodded as we passed—small gestures of recognition if not acceptance. Others turned away, fear or disgust written in the lines of their faces.
"They're split," Dorian murmured once we were clear of the Hall.
"Good," I said, adjusting Ashara in my arms. "Unity in wrong thinking is more dangerous than division in growth."
But as we walked into the uncertain night, I couldn't shake Lysandra's warning. The echo she spoke of—I felt it sometimes, in the space between Ashara's heartbeats. Something waiting. Something patient.
Something that had chosen to be born incomplete, so it could finish becoming whatever the world needed—or feared—most.
The moon above was whole again, but its light felt different. Watchful. As if it too was waiting to see what my daughter would choose to become.
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