The seer's gnarled digit trembled, casting a crooked shadow across Tilla’s cheek as it pointed to the faint luminescence pulsing beneath her tunic. “The Moon Tear,” he rasped, dry skin scraping on silver rings. “No, something far fouler. It reeks of the Blood-Pearl! An ancient blight nested within this defective creature!” His gaze, rheumy and venomous, fixed on Tilla. “By the Sacred Oath of the First Pack, I accuse Tilla Vokaris of harboring a forbidden artifact of the sun-starved, a weapon of ultimate discord!” The chamber exploded in a cacophony of gasps and shocked murmurs. A massive grizzled wolf, High Judge Raskan, adjusted a mantle woven from winter-furred pelts. Slit pupils the color of bruised slate narrowed on Tilla, then flicked to Tarkis, who stood motionless beside her in the shattered doorway. Cold iron tightened in Tilla’s ribs. This was it. No more hiding. No more pretending. The tribunal drew curved silver flensing knives. Running was out of the question—not while tethered to the vampire lord at her elbow. Tarkis didn't flinch; he simply tilted his head, watching her squirm with cool amusement. She possessed exactly one dependable weapon: weaponized stupidity. Her bottom lip quivered, and tears welled up on cue. A pathetic wail scraped her throat, thick and syrupy, aimed directly past Karnok's sneer toward the front rank. “Oh, my wolves!” she wailed, clutching her stomach as the swallowed stone flared against her ribs. “He means my shiny rock! It was sitting right there in the cellar gravel, looking just like lemon spun-sugar! I thought it was peppermint!” She blinked damp lashes up at the pelts on Raskan’s shoulders. “A girl gets hungry! How was I supposed to know glowing rocks weren't food? It smelled sweet, and now you have giant knives! Am I going to be sick?!” Murmurs broke down the line. Two judges lowered their blades, glancing between each other in plain bafflement. Karnok stepped forward, spit flying from his bared canines. “She lies! It is the stolen pearl! She swallowed our doom!” “It was crunchy!” Tilla shrieked, clutching her collar. “And tasted like cold pennies! Is it poison? Is that why he's yelling? Will my coat shed?!” Before Raskan could bark an order, a brassy, deafening *HONK* split the stone corridor. A cyclone of white down exploded through the splintered threshold, wings thrashing like leather sails. The frantic goose launched straight for the high judge's snout. Raskan tripped backward over his own stool with an undignified squawk. Orange webbed feet kicked his nose, orange jaws snapped, and Gilly tore the ermine pelts straight off his scalp before banking hard toward the tapestry. Guards collided in a tangle of plate armor. Gilly rocketed between the sentries' boots, wing-slapping a bronze brazier until hot coals skittered across the tiles, driving two spearmen into a shrieking retreat. Across the room, Tarkis didn't look at the bird. He flicked two fingers toward the old diviner. A hair-thin needle of black frost struck the seer's obsidian scrying dish. With a crisp *clink*, the volcanic glass fractured into a spray of glittering black grit across the flagstones. The old man screamed, dropping the remnants. “The bowl! The scrying glass shattered under the backlash! A false omen—the magic fractured!” Raskan hauled himself upright, clutching his drool-soaked winter fur, veins corded along his throat. “A false omen? You dragged the tribunal here, brandished charges of high treason, and your glass cracked under its own dust?” He swung on Karnok. “And you, Val-Tir! Parading a dotard with broken trinkets to settle a private grudge?” Karnok stammered, his ears flattening, but the judge barked over him. “Save your excuses for Council assembly. As for you, girl—” Raskan's gaze raked over the fading dimness behind Tilla's belt, smothered by Tarkis’s nearby chill. “You swallow relics, you breed bedlam. You want to prove you are pack rather than pest? You enter the morning lists. The Blood-Pit, solo. No bloodsucker shadow-tricks. That is Council law.” Tilla’s sniffling smile froze. The Blood-Pit was an arena ringed in iron pikes, stocked with starved manticores and rogue wargs to cull weak pack claimants. When she cut her gaze sideways, Tarkis merely adjusted his cuffs, his mouth curved in icy satisfaction. He had broken the scrying dish to protect his prize, only to throw her straight to the slaughterhouse. A knot of venom hardened in her chest: if he thought he was watching her die tomorrow, he was going to be sorely disappointed.

Honk If You Hate Alphas