Defy The Alpha(s)

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.

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.

were in the room with him, shifted uncomfortably.

closer to

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

"You came here to

You haven’t

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

instead he built a goddamn firestarter. A synthetic miracle that’ll

me

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

"It won’t come to

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,

don’t get to audit my

it fall from the outside, because if your mess spills over

The screen went black.

stretched across the room for a

could have

look. "Only if he’d

turned to Elijah. "We need to find Patrick

rescued werewolves who said he had escaped from the hideout? He could tell us

Aeron as if noticing something for the first time. He

with

what? What could be more important than this