Chapter 411: Use The Bond

While the East pack were celebrating, their Alpha King was in a hot mess.

Elijah was not alone in the meeting room. Alongside him were his wife, Beatrice, and the respective Alphas of the Four Majors: Henry, Leon and Alexa, Zara and Caspian, while Aeron and Arion came in Irene’s place.

The large monitor embedded in the wall guttered for a moment, then steadied. Right now, the screen brightened with the connection to President Roy, a great tension saturating the air.

President Roy’s face appeared—the stern look and the eyes burning behind the wire rims of his glasses were evidence enough that he wasn’t calling for diplomacy. He was furious, and it was the kind that came not just from betrayal, but from knowing he now had to answer to a global cabinet that smelled blood in the water.

Behind him were the muted shadows of his advisors, but Roy didn’t need backup because his presence alone was deadly.

"Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Elijah?" Roy asked in a tight voice.

Elijah, seated at the head of the council table, leaned forward. "I’m well aware of the situation, President Roy," he answered with a voice that was calm, yet lined with irritation.

President Roy threw his head back and laughed like he had lost his damn mind.

"No, you’re not," he said. "Because if you were, you wouldn’t still be sitting down right now!" His voice rose in pitch as he banged his hand on the table. "You handpicked a madman and gave him access to both werewolf and human DNA. Patrick Vale—or should I use his real name, Elias Turner—wasn’t making any compatibility program. He built a goddamn drug lab and cooked up Ignis, a serum that turns civilians into monsters!"

Beatrice sat beside her mate, unmoving, but her nails tapped slowly against the polished wood of the table.

"Patrick is after my people," Elijah countered. "The destruction he’s wrought has been mostly on werewolves. The testing, deaths, and the loss? It’s our packs that bled, not your humans."

Roy laughed without humor. "Oh, you want sympathy now? After you gave that lunatic the keys to both our kingdoms? Let me spell it out for you: it won’t just be your people who pay the price. It never is. If the ’Ignis’ drug leaks into human hands, do you think humans won’t weaponize that? You think desperate people won’t buy it to level the playing field?"

"If it gets down to that, we will manage containment until all threats are neutralized," Elijah said tightly.

"Containment? You really think you can contain a goddamn chemical revolution? Ignis gives strength and speed, nearly all the features your kind possesses. And you think fear, desperation, and greed won’t drive humans to swallow that poison the first chance they get? He’s about to start a global addiction, Elijah. You think I’m worried about what Patrick did to you? I’m terrified about what your screw-up will do to me."

Caspian, Zara, Leon, Henry, and Aeron, who were in the room with him, shifted uncomfortably. But no one dared speak.

Roy drew closer to the camera.

"The upper echelons already know, Elijah. We’ve kept this from the public for now. But how long do you think that lasts? One overdose on camera. One black-market batch turning a civilian into a berserker in broad daylight, and it’s over. The peace we built will be reduced to ash."

Elijah stood slowly, pushing his chair back. "You came here to scream, Roy. Are you done?"

Roy blinked. "Am I done? No. You haven’t even begun to hear me."

"I admit I made a mistake. I should have vetted Patrick. I should have checked his operations more thoroughly. But the mating compatibility project wasn’t some villainous plot to conquer humans. You knew that as well. It was about survival. Our pure-blooded female population is nothing to write home about. This was supposed to stabilize our peace treaty, and Patrick offered answers."

"And instead he built a goddamn firestarter. A synthetic miracle that’ll burn down both our houses."

"Then let me clean it up."

"You better. Or there won’t be a second chance. Because I swear to every god you wolves bow to, if Ignis becomes the spark that leads to war, the next time our species clash, it won’t just be female werewolves going extinct. It’ll be everyone."

Beatrice finally spoke. "It won’t come to that."

Roy’s eyes snapped to hers. "It better not." He looked back to Elijah. "Fix this mess quietly. I want Patrick found and every formula burned. Including that wretched hospital in Lunaris, I want you to shut it down. If you find any of his experiments or accomplices, I want them detained. Also, I want oversight, Elijah, from my people."

Elijah bristled. "You don’t get to audit my territory."

"Then watch it fall from the outside, because if your mess spills over into my cities, I will respond. And it won’t be with diplomacy."

The screen went black.

Silence stretched across the room for a moment.

Leon exhaled. "That could have gone worse."

Zara cut him a look. "Only if he’d declared war."

Beatrice turned to Elijah. "We need to find Patrick immediately."

Aeron said, "Wasn’t there one of the rescued werewolves who said he had escaped from the hideout? He could tell us the location."

Elijah lifted his head and looked at Aeron as if noticing something for the first time. He asked, "Where is Irene at this critical moment?"

"She’s busy with the pack."

"Busy with what? What could be more important than this meeting, or is she testing me right now?" Elijah grunted.

Aeron said to him through gritted teeth, "Our son, Griffin Hale, has been fate mated."

"What?!" Everyone shouted in shock.

"How did that happen? Why wasn’t I informed until now?" Elijah asked, irritated.

"Because the bond hit them during the kidnapping incident and you were busy dealing with other important issues. It didn’t seem like a big deal—"

"If my heirs are getting fate mated, it is a big deal to me. And who is he mated to? Don’t tell me it’s..."

"Violet Purple. Yes, sir."

Henry’s head jerked up so fast, it nearly cracked.

Impossible! Not that girl!

"No way," Leon said, eyes wide.

"Great," Zara said. "Another human to dilute the bloodlines. On the bright side, now she’s mated, our son Alaric will come back to his senses." She said to her husband. "We better find him a match before he falls for another schemer."

Caspian said nothing, just offered her a supportive smile.

"This is a good thing. A human mated to a cardinal alpha?!" Beatrice exclaimed. "The announcement would make good publicity and a distraction from the scandals at Lunaris."

Elijah said thoughtfully, "And it seems my meeting with this Violet Purple is inevitable."