# Chapter 2: The Tyrant's Court
Kael had never believed in fate.
Fate was the excuse of the weak, the desperate lie Omegas told themselves when strength failed them. Fate was what his father had believed in, right up until a challenger's claws had torn out his throat and proven that only power mattered.
From his throne of black iron, Kael watched the tribute parade with the cold detachment of a man inspecting livestock. The Omegas trembled in their chains, their fear-scent thick enough to choke on. Pathetic. Every single one of them.
"You should show mercy," Marcus murmured at his left, voice pitched low enough that only Kael could hear. "A token gesture. The minor packs are watching."
Kael didn't bother to look at his Second. "Mercy is weakness."
"Mercy is politics." Marcus shifted his weight, the only sign of his discomfort. "Half these tributes are from packs we need as allies. If you—"
"If I what?" Kael's voice dropped to a lethal whisper. "If I pretend their offerings of broken Omegas are anything but an insult? They send us their dregs and expect gratitude."
At his right hand, Lady Seraphina laughed—a crystalline sound that cut through the crowd's jeering. She leaned close, her hand possessive on his armrest, her Alpha presence deliberately pressed against his space. "Perhaps we should cull them," she said, loud enough for the nearest Alphas to hear. "Put them out of their misery. It would be kinder than letting them live as what they are."
The surrounding Alphas chuckled their approval. Seraphina's smile widened, her fingers trailing along the throne's edge in a gesture that spoke of ownership.
Kael allowed it. She was useful—beautiful, ruthless, and from a bloodline that would strengthen his rule. Their eventual bonding was a political inevitability he'd accepted years ago. Her presence at his side today was a message to every pack on the continent: the Red Moon King would choose strength, always.
He'd never need a fated mate. He'd never want one.
From the military section, General Vorlag caught his eye and nodded approvingly. The grizzled Alpha's expression was one of grim satisfaction as each Omega was paraded past in chains. Vorlag had been his father's general, and the old warrior still preached the same doctrine: Alphas ruled, Betas served, and Omegas existed only to be used or discarded.
Kael had built an empire on that foundation.
"I'll inspect them myself," he announced, rising from his throne.
The crowd's jeering intensified. Marcus made a strangled sound of protest, but Kael ignored him, descending the dais steps with predatory grace. His presence alone was enough—Omegas collapsed to their knees before he even reached them, their wolves utterly submissive to his dominance.
He walked the line slowly, deliberately. Each Omega he passed flinched from his proximity, their scent souring with terror. He inhaled at each one, a clinical assessment of their worth.
Nothing. Every single one reeked of weakness and desperation.
He dismissed them with a wave, one after another. The crowd chanted his pack's motto with each rejection: "Strength is Absolute. Strength is Absolute."
Marcus followed two steps behind, silent now but radiating disapproval. Kael could feel his Second's guilt like a physical weight. It was Marcus's only weakness—that bleeding heart that still saw Omegas as people instead of tools.
Seraphina remained on the throne, watching with predatory satisfaction. She knew what this display meant. Every rejection brought them closer to their inevitable bonding, to the alliance that would cement his power for generations.
Kael reached the last Omega in line and paused.
She was small, even for her designation. Malnourished. Her hair was a tangled mess of dark auburn, and her skin bore the scars of a hard life. The white shift they'd dressed her in hung on her frame like a burial shroud.
A packless dreg from the Scablands. The lowest of the low.
But something made him pause. Not her appearance—she was as broken as the rest. It was the set of her jaw. The way her shoulders held tension despite her submission. Her head was bowed, but there was no surrender in the line of her spine.
Defiance. Buried deep, but present.
It irritated him.
Kael reached out and grabbed her chin, forcing her head up with deliberate roughness. She needed to learn her place. They all did. He would break that last spark of resistance and—
Their eyes met.
The world exploded.
Something slammed into Kael's chest with the force of a physical blow. Not pain—worse than pain. A sensation of everything snapping into place, of a void he'd never known existed suddenly, violently filling. The air between them ignited with invisible fire.
His wolf, dormant and controlled for thirty years, roared to the surface.
Mate.
No.
MATE.
No. No. This wasn't possible. This wasn't—
The Omega gasped, her eyes going wide with shock and something that looked dangerously like hope. Her scent exploded outward, changing in an instant from weak Omega to something that made every Alpha within fifty feet freeze mid-breath.
Moonlight and power and his.
Kael staggered backward, his hand dropping from her face as if burned. His chest heaved. The bond pulled taut between them, an invisible rope trying to drag him back to her, screaming at him to claim, to protect, to—
He looked at her. Really looked. At the chains. The scars. The hollow cheeks and the threadbare shift. At everything she represented: weakness, helplessness, a liability he could never afford.
The fated mate bond had chosen this? This broken dreg?
"Kael." Marcus's voice cut through his shock, urgent and warning. "Kael, don't—"
But Kael's rage was already rising, hot and vicious, burning away the bond's pull with sheer force of will. He would not be shackled. Would not be made weak by the Goddess's mistake.
He turned to face the assembled thousands, every eye locked on him, every breath held in anticipation. Seraphina had risen from the throne, her hand on the dagger at her waist, her expression hovering between shock and fury.
Kael's Alpha Voice resonated across the sudden silence, filling every corner of the Conclave grounds with absolute authority.
"The Goddess has made an error."
The Omega—his mate, the bond screamed uselessly—tried to pull away. Her chains rattled. The sound was deafening in the quiet.
Kael grabbed her throat and hauled her upright, displaying her to the crowd like the broken thing she was.
"This weak, packless dreg," he continued, his voice carrying to the furthest edges of the gathered packs, "is not fit to stand at my side."
He felt her pulse hammering against his palm. Felt the bond writhing between them, howling in protest.
He ignored it all.
"I, King Kael of the Red Moon Pack," he declared, pouring every ounce of his power into the formal rejection, "reject this weak, packless dreg as my fated mate and my Queen. I will not be shackled to weakness."
The words hit her like a physical blow. She convulsed in his grip, a broken sound escaping her throat. Something inside Kael's chest tore—a sharp, vicious pain that he ruthlessly suppressed.
Temporary. It would pass.
The crowd erupted in thunderous approval, their chanting shaking the very stones of the fortress. "Strength is Absolute! Strength is Absolute!"
Kael released her. She crumpled to the marble, her body wracking with silent sobs.
He turned his back on her and strode toward his throne, his expression carved from ice despite the growing wrongness in his chest. Seraphina moved to his side immediately, her hand sliding possessively through his arm.
"You have chosen strength over sentiment," she proclaimed loudly, for all to hear. "The Red Moon Pack is blessed."
Behind him, servants moved to drag the broken Omega away. Kael didn't watch. Didn't look back.
He had made his choice.
The pain in his chest would fade. It had to.
He was King Kael, and he bowed to no one—not even fate itself.