"Elowen! Always Elowen!" she shouted. "Are you really willing to tie your entire future to that woman? She's a disaster, Jarek! She has enough baggage to fill a fleet of cargo ships. You're risking everything on the hope that one day, she—someone who hates us—will accept you because you saved their precious little heir?"
"Watch your tone," I warned.
"Why? Because I'm telling the truth? You're obsessed with a ghost and a girl who doesn't even know who she is yet."
"You know nothing about family, Hera," I spat.
The silence that followed was deafening. Hera's face went pale, her expression freezing into a mask of pure hurt. She didn't have a family—they had been slaughtered by pureblood wolves years ago before the treaty—leaving her to be raised in the very system she now helped me run.
My words would hit her like a low blow. An unforgivable one.
"Cruel," Liric whispered. "We are cruel when we are hungry."
She turned to storm off, her heels clicking toward the door.
