Chapter 293: Chapter 293: The Military Faction
Eve’s POV
The wards chimed at half past ten in the morning.
Not the war horn sound they had made the first time Katerina arrived, that full-throated alarm that had sent every wolf on the estate scrambling for the perimeter. This was the polite diplomatic chime. The one that said someone with credentials had arrived and was waiting to be received.
Eve was in the kitchen with Maya when she felt it.
She set down her coffee.
"What is it?" Maya said, watching her face.
"Someone’s at the ward boundary," Eve said. "Diplomatic arrival." She paused, feeling the energy signature pressing against the wards. It was familiar in a way that made the back of her neck prickle. "Someone powerful."
Maya put down her toast. "Good powerful or bad powerful?"
"Neither," Eve said. "Known powerful."
She stood up.
Damian was already in the entrance hall when she came downstairs.
He looked at her and she looked at him and they both knew without saying it.
"Katerina," he said.
"Yes," she said.
Silas appeared from the library. Damon came down the stairs two at a time, still pulling his jacket on, and looked between them with the expression he wore when he’d missed the beginning of something important.
"Who’s here?" he said.
"Katerina," Damian said.
Damon stopped fixing his jacket. "The Military faction commander."
"Yes," Eve said.
"The woman who threw you across an arena six months ago," he said.
"She also endorsed me publicly afterward," Eve said.
"After throwing you across an arena," Damon said.
"Damon," Silas said.
Damon finished with his jacket. "I’m just noting the history," he said. "For context."
Eve looked at Damian.
"Let her in," she said.
Katerina walked through the estate gates like she owned them.
She looked the same as she had at the Meridian Estate....combat leathers, dark red hair in those intricate functional braids, pale grey eyes moving over everything with the focused assessment of someone who catalogued threats automatically. Her energy was controlled this time. Present but not weaponized. The difference between a sword in a scabbard and a sword at your throat.
Four guards behind her. Same as before.
She stopped in the entrance hall and looked at Eve.
For a moment neither of them said anything.
Then Katerina said, "You completed the ascension."
"Two days ago," Eve said.
"I felt it," Katerina said. "The binding completing. It went through every supernatural territory on the continent." She paused. "I was in a meeting with my senior commanders when it happened. Everyone stopped talking. And what one of them said what was that, that’s the Seraphim heir taking her throne." She looked at Eve steadily. "I was right."
"You were right," Eve said.
Katerina nodded once. "May I come in?"
They sat in the formal sitting room.
Eve had chosen it deliberately....not the kitchen, not the informal space where she and her mates spent their evenings. The formal sitting room said this is a meeting and I know it’s a meeting.
Katerina sat with the ease of someone who was comfortable in any chair in any room. Her guards remained outside. That was either trust or confidence. Probably both.
Damian sat to Eve’s right. Silas near the window. Damon on the sofa across from Katerina with his arms crossed and his expression carefully neutral, which for Damon required visible effort.
Katerina looked at him.
"You’re still angry about the arena," she said.
"I’m not angry," Damon said.
"You watched me throw your mate across a dirt floor in front of several hundred people," Katerina said. "You’d have to be made of stone not to be angry."
"I’m fine," Damon said.
"He’s fine," Eve said.
Katerina looked between them and something crossed her face that might have been amusement. "You have good mates," she said to Eve. "Loyal. Protective. The kind that make you stronger rather than weaker." She paused. "Your mother had the same."
The room was quiet for a moment.
"Why are you here, Katerina," Eve said.
Katerina looked at her directly.
"The Military faction wants to formally declare support for your ascension," she said. "Not the careful neutral statement we put out after your claim hearing. A full declaration. Publicly, on record, with Military faction resources behind it."
Eve looked at her.
"Why now," she said.
"Because now there’s something concrete to support," Katerina said. "Before the ascension there was a claim. A petition. A legal process. My commanders don’t rally behind legal processes." She paused. "They rally behind people who sit on thrones that ancient entities have been circling for twenty years and come out the other side still standing."
"You know about Varek," Eve said.
"I told you I felt the binding complete," Katerina said. "I know what that means. I know what it costs." She looked at the pendant at Eve’s collar. "I know what you walked into that throne room carrying." Her voice was level. "And I know you didn’t walk out of it differently than you walked in. You didn’t break. You didn’t let it change what you were doing or why you were doing it."
She leaned forward slightly.
"That’s what my commanders needed to see," she said. "Not a legal victory. Not political maneuvering. A person doing something real and hard and coming out the other side intact." She held Eve’s gaze. "They’ve seen it now. They’re ready to declare."
Eve looked at her.
At the pale grey eyes and the combat leathers and the woman who had thrown her across an arena and then raised her hand to the crowd and called her worthy.
"What does a formal Military faction declaration mean practically," Eve said. "For what I’m trying to build."
Katerina sat back.
"It means the Conclave reform your father was working toward when he died," she said, "has military backing. Which means anyone who wants to block it now has to be willing to stand against the Military faction." She paused. "Most people aren’t willing to do that."
