All the chiefs except for Nyra were present. My mother was also sitting with them, deep in conversation. The bags under her eyes told me she hadn’t slept in days. Beside her was Roran’s wife, Eira. She sat at the end of the table, watching over the conversation like an empress observing her subjects.
As always, she had a glass of wine in her hand, swirling it as she crossed her legs elegantly. Just as I entered, I saw Kaelen whispering something in her ear. No doubt he was talking about me.
Immediately, as the door was pushed open, everyone’s gaze turned to us, standing at the doorway. Of course, the first to react was my mother, who jumped from her seat the moment she caught sight of me.
"Liam!" she practically leaped over the table to get to me. She immediately wrapped her arms around me and pulled me in for a hug. "I thought you were..." she tried to speak, but it was as if the words wouldn’t come out as she began sobbing uncontrollably.
"It’s okay, I’m fine. You don’t have to worry anymore."
I hugged my mother tightly as she continued to cry but our moment was soon interrupted.
"Ahem! My son told me you have information about my husband," Eira said, her hazel eyes scanning my every reaction. It was just an instinct, but when I looked at her, I got the feeling that I was dealing with a woman who is very intelligent.
"Is this true, Liam?" My mother suddenly lifted her head from my chest just as she heard of her brother. "Do you know what happened to Roran?"
My mother stared at me questioningly, her eyes red from all the crying.
"Yes, I do know what happened." With everyone staring at me expectantly, I began telling them the tale of what happened to Roran. A false tale of course. A tale I had specially made up to pull on their heartstrings.
I told them how I was captured by the Nyx pack and how they had planned to torture and kill me, but just before they did, Roran showed up. I described how he wanted his son Kaelen to marry the moon princess for the safety of both packs.
I made sure to emphasize how much he tried to convince Danzo of this and also how Danzo refused, and how much he wanted to slaughter our pack. I spoke of Roran bravely and how he fought Danzo. I also exaggerated a bit, describing how Roran managed to take out over a hundred werewolves and how cowardly Danzo fought until he landed a fatal blow to Roran when he was distracted.
All the exaggeration was necessary. They won’t think too deeply into my story if I described at great length how brave their alpha was. To them, doubting me would be like doubting their alpha’s bravery. It was a simple manipulation tactic that would work perfectly.
By the time I was done spinning my tale, everyone, or almost everyone in the room was in tears. The banquet hall was filled with quiet sobs and the salty smell of their tears. I wasn’t much of an actor, but I tried my best to convey as much emotion as possible.
"Danzo! That coward!" Kaelen roared, and it felt as if the entire hall shook from the impact. "I’ll kill him."
"Calm down," his mother tried to calm him down, feeling his bloodlust spread throughout the entire room. After she tried to calm her son, her eyes then turned to me as if she was sizing me up.
I also realized that even though she was his wife, she was the only person who didn’t seem sad about hearing of Roran’s death. I listened to her heart attentively, and she was perfectly calm. There wasn’t so much as a drop of sweat on her beautiful forehead.
"Why should we believe a word you say? What proof do you have of my husband’s death?"
"This is the only thing I can offer you," I said as I began unwrapping the cloth that held Roran’s severed head.
The moment the head was unwrapped, everyone gasped, clearly taken aback. The bloodlust of everyone in the room rose to its peak, but the person who made all of my hair stand on end was the warchief, my grandfather, and also Roran’s father.
He stared at Roran’s severed head intensely, and suddenly the wooden hall began to creak loudly as if it was being ripped apart from the inside out. He didn’t utter a word, but his bloodlust quickly overpowered everybody else.
Kaelen, on the other hand, clenched his fists tight and let out a loud primal roar that caused my ears to begin ringing. He then stormed out of the banquet hall, looking as if he was going to murder somebody.
Everyone seemed devastated, even my own mother was reduced to tears on the floor. Well, everyone except his own wife. Her heart was beating slightly faster, and her face had gotten a little pale, but that was it.
I studied her, wondering what was going on in her mind, but I didn’t have to wonder for too long as she suddenly asked what was plaguing her mind.
"When will Danzo attack?" she asked, but it seemed no one heard—only me.
"My guess is that he’ll attack on the next full moon, five days from now," I responded.
The two of us locked eyes, and for a second it felt as if it was only the two of us in the room, as everyone apart from Selthia and Derrick, who were standing behind me, seemed too devastated to even think that far ahead.
"We must prepare," she said.
"I’ll slaughter them," the warchief growled.
"We must prepare to run," Eira clarified. "They wouldn’t dare follow us south, so that’s where we will go."
"Are you mad, woman?" my grandfather wasn’t having any of it. "They killed my son!"
"And they’ll kill us too if we don’t leave. We can’t possibly fight back against them, Roran gone."
The warchief looked at her as if he wanted to strangle her right then and there. And for a brief second, I thought he would, but instead, he slammed his fist down on the table, breaking it in half with a single blow. The sound of the table splitting in half was loud enough to silence the entire room. The only sound was the sound of dishes and other utensils that once occupied the table clattering to the ground.
The warchief glanced at everyone present in the room before making a solid declaration.
"I’m taking every werewolf that is under my command, and I am avenging my son."
With that, he stormed out of the room, almost bumping shoulders with me.