Crowned by Fate Chapter 87

Skye's POV

The council room was deathly silent as Venus and I delivered our report. I had never seen Adrian so still, so utterly motionless, as he absorbed every detail of what we had discovered.

Adrian looked terribly haggard, his face drawn and worn. His eyes, which had once held such intensity and purpose, now appeared aged and dim, devoid of their usual light.

Venus described Nadia's injuries with clinical precision, her voice breaking only when she reached the evidence of sexual assault. She used terms like "physical violation" and "intimate trauma," her language deliberately measured as she outlined our findings.

A low growl built in Adrian's chest as Venus spoke, the sound growing in volume until it seemed to vibrate through the entire room. When she finished, he remained silent for a long moment, his breathing unnaturally even.

Then, with a roar that shook the walls, he surged to his feet, flipping the heavy oak table as if it weighed nothing. The massive piece of furniture crashed against the far wall, splintering into jagged fragments.

"I'LL KILL HIM!" he bellowed, his voice barely human as his wolf pushed against the surface. The partial shift distorted his features, amber eyes burning red, teeth lengthening into fangs. "I'LL TEAR OUT HIS THROAT WITH MY TEETH!"

Garrett had gone frighteningly pale, his hands visibly trembling as Venus's words registered. Then his expression contorted with a hatred so pure, so absolute, that I barely recognized him.

"We attack tonight," he said, his usually quiet voice carrying a deadly calm. "All of us. No mercy, no prisoners. Kane dies screaming for what he did to her."

Lydia remained seated, seemingly unmoved amidst the chaos—but I noticed her fingers methodically shredding a piece of paper into increasingly tiny fragments, betraying the depth of her distress.

"I have enough concentrated wolf poison to paralyze every member of Gravestone Pack," she offered, her melodic voice at odds with the violence of her words. "They will feel every cut, every burn, while completely unable to shift or defend themselves."

Marcus, who had joined us via video call from the border outpost, spoke with lethal precision. "I've memorized their patrol patterns. I know when they're most vulnerable, where their defenses are weakest. We can be inside their compound before they realize what's happening."

Ryder remained uncharacteristically silent, tears streaming unchecked down his youthful face. When he finally spoke, his voice was raw with grief and fury. "She asked us not to seek revenge," he reminded us, though the tremor in his voice suggested he wasn't convinced by his own words. "She wanted us to build something better instead."

"AND LOOK WHAT IT COST HER!" Adrian roared, rounding on the younger wolf. "Look what mercy cost Nadia! Look what diplomacy and restraint brought us!"

I had never seen him like this—primal, untethered, stripped of the careful control that defined him as Alpha. This was Adrian laid bare, the civilized leader giving way to the predator beneath.

"We've been playing by rules that Kane ignored from the start," Venus added, her eyes hard as flint. "We extended courtesy while he plotted our destruction. We showed restraint while he..." She couldn't finish, her voice breaking.

Adrian turned to me, his eyes still burning with that terrible red light. "Skye," he said, my name sounding strange in his distorted voice. "You were her friend. You were with her at the end. What would Nadia want us to do?"

The weight of his question settled on my shoulders like a physical burden. I thought of Nadia's sacrifice, her quiet courage as she drank poison meant for me. I remembered her last words, her plea for peace rather than vengeance.

But I also remembered her body, broken and violated on that sterile table. I thought of Kane's smug confidence, his certainty that he would face no consequences for his actions.

"Nadia wanted peace," I acknowledged, my voice steady despite the storm raging inside me. "But not at any price. Not at the cost of her dignity, or the safety of those she loved." I met Adrian's gaze unflinchingly. "Kane didn't just kill her. He tortured her. He humiliated her. And he'll do the same to others if we don't stop him."

Adrian nodded, something in my words seeming to help him regain a measure of control. The red glow in his eyes dimmed slightly, his features shifting back toward human, though the wolf remained close to the surface.

"There will be no more negotiations," he declared, his voice resonating with Alpha authority. "No more diplomacy. Kane chose war the moment he took Nadia and Skye." He looked around the room, meeting each council member's gaze in turn. "We will give him exactly what he asked for."

"What's the plan, Alpha?" Marcus asked, his blind eyes somehow focused despite the video call's limitations.

"Lydia," Adrian turned to the masked woman, "preserve Nadia's body. Keep it safe until we return." His expression hardened into something terrible and beautiful in its ferocity. "When we bury her, Kane's head will lie at her feet—an offering to accompany her into the next life."

No one objected. No one suggested caution or restraint. In that moment, we were unified in our grief and rage, bound by a shared determination that Kane would pay for what he had done to our Beta.

Oasisborn had been founded as a sanctuary, a place of peace for the broken and rejected. But as I looked at the faces around me—Venus's cold fury, Marcus's deadly focus, Lydia's quiet lethality, Garrett's technological brilliance now turned toward destruction—I realized that peace extracted through submission was no peace at all.

Sometimes, to protect what you love, you must become the very thing you fear.