Lily tugged my hand. "Mama, my shoe."

"Hold on, baby." I crouched, slipped the shoe back on, tied it. My fingers were steady. I could feel Kieran watching me — this tiny domestic act, lacing a child's shoe while talking siege logistics. "And the justification?" I asked without looking up.

"Security concerns regarding an unregulated territory housing a significant rogue population." His voice had the flat quality of someone quoting language he found disgusting. "They're calling it protective oversight."

"Siege." I stood up. "Call it what it is."

"It's not — "

"If you put soldiers around someone's home and control who comes and goes, it's a siege. Dress it up however you want."

He didn't argue. That was the thing about Kieran — he wouldn't insult me with spin when the truth was already standing between us.

"The vote wasn't even close," I said.

"No."

"Who were your two?"

"Elder Yara. Alpha Grant of the Lowlands." He paused. "Grant voted against because he's afraid it'll happen to him next. Not exactly a principled stand."

"I'll take pragmatic self-interest. It still counts."

The ghost of a bitter smile crossed his face and disappeared. "The others — Rhea, you should know. They aren't just afraid of you. They're using you. Half that chamber has border disputes and territory claims they've been wanting to resolve by force for years. Passing a military deployment against you sets a precedent. Next time it'll be someone else. A small pack that stepped out of line. An Alpha who didn't vote the right way."

I heard what he wasn't saying. They'd use this precedent against him, too, eventually. The Alpha King who sided with a rogue.

"I voted against it," he said again. Quieter.

"I know."

"Three of us tried to — "

"Kieran." I met his eyes. Held them. "I know you tried. I watched you try for weeks. You got me the tribunal. You got me the evidence protocols. You sat in that room and fought for a rogue you had no political reason to protect."

Something moved behind his eyes. Pain, maybe. Or the particular exhaustion that comes from doing the right thing and watching it not be enough.

"It wasn't enough," he said.

"It was never going to be enough. I knew that before I walked in."

Lily had found a crack in the marble floor and was tracing it with her shoe. Oblivious. Good. Let her be oblivious for five more minutes. Let her live in the world where the gavel fixed everything.

"What will you do?" he asked.

I ran the calculations in my head. Thirty, maybe forty military wolves on my borders. Not enough to take my territory by force — they knew that, which was why they weren't trying. Enough to control movement, squeeze supply lines, make life uncomfortable. Make my people feel watched. Make the free wolves who'd been considering joining me think twice.

It was a smart play. Patient. The kind of slow strangulation that doesn't leave bruises.

"Go home," I said. "Fortify. Feed my people." I picked Lily up. She wrapped her arms around my neck, automatic, like she'd been doing it her whole life instead of three weeks. I shifted her weight on my hip. "Same thing I was doing before you showed up."

He almost smiled. Almost.

"I have supply lines they don't know about. Three tunnels and a river route. They can watch my front door all they want." I wasn't going to tell him the details. I trusted him — more than I should — but not with the specific architecture of my survival. Not yet. "My people have been living under threat since before we had a name for this place. A few Council soldiers sitting on our lawn isn't going to break us."

"And if they provoke an incident?"

"My people know not to engage. We've trained for this." I looked at him steadily. "The first person who fires a shot won't be one of mine."

He nodded. He believed me. That, more than anything he'd said or done in that chamber, told me something.

Across the corridor, a door opened. Elder Matthias stepped out, saw us standing together, and his expression curdled into something careful and political. His eyes went to Lily in my arms, then to Kieran, and I watched him file the image away — Alpha King in close conversation with the rogue, the child between them. Ammunition for later.