The council chamber was designed to make power look inevitable—steel, glass, a sweep of city that lay obedient beneath the windows. It worked on mortals but the
Wolves were harder
Atlas did not sit.
The Circle settled in curved ranks, voices careful. Cassian Dray's was not one of them. He spoke as if the room were his and time owed him interest.
"The Code is a leash," he said mildly, as if offering an hors d'oeuvre.
"We used it, to teach children not to bite. The children have grown."
"Some of them, at least,"
Thorne said, dry as winter bark.
Cassian's copper gaze slid past him. "Your Alpha is compromised."
The sentence didn't land. It thudded, hungry for agreement.
Elara's fingers rested lightly on a folder she hadn't opened.
"Compromised implies choice," she said. "This is biology. Myth made math."
Cassian smiled. "And math can be corrected. Laws revised. We can't afford an Alpha, whose pulse answers a human's. What happens when the Circle's will doesn't match her fear? Or her want?"
Atlas let the silence arrange itself like cutlery. He could feel the tether beneath his skin like a storm deciding where to break. "You imagine a future where my heart defines yours," he said, voice soft enough to make the glass prefer him to the weather. "You forget the old rule."
"And that is?" Cassian asked, amused.
Atlas lifted his gaze.
The room chilled a degree.
"I am the rule." He growled low, from across the table
A murmur, quickly strangled.
Marcelline Ash cleared her throat delicately. "The optics, Alpha. Whispers are already… creative."
"Then smother them," Elara said without looking away from Atlas.
"We do not govern by rumors."
Cassian steepled his fingers.
"We govern by strength."
"And restraint," Atlas said.
"The first without the second is just noise. We do not become what the world expects when it wants a monster in the headlines."
He straightened. A thread of silver pulsed along his wrist—too quick, too faint. Cassian saw it. So did Elara. Thorne's jaw tightened.
"Meeting adjourned," Atlas said.
Cassian did not move. "One last motion," he said lightly. "A vote to reaffirm the Code—and to censure any Alpha who endangers it."
Thorne's chair scraped back an inch. Elara's eyes cooled from jade to knife.
Atlas's mouth curved a fraction. "You want a vote," he said. "Very well." He held Cassian's gaze. "All in favor of keeping your heads… attached."
No one's hand rose. Not even Cassian's. The moment passed, sleek and lethal.
"We're finished," Atlas said, and the doors remembered how to open.
He didn't look back at the Circle as they filed out. He didn't need to. He could feel the fracture like a hairline crack in a blade.
It would hold—until it didn't.
At the window, the city watched him with a thousand eyes, he'd paid to keep shut. Under his skin, the tether beat once, silver and disobedient.
Compromised, Cassian had called him.
No. He was becoming something else.
And evolution was always messy.