Chapter 13 - Fire and Silk

                The echoes of the slamming door hadn’t even died down before the heavy oak portals shuddered again. This time, they didn't just open, they practically flew off the hinges.

                Romani stormed in but he wasn't alone.

                Eric and Elara were trailing in his wake like two shadows trying to hide behind a storm. They had clearly run straight to him the moment they left the room, their faces twisted into masks of exaggerated trauma.

                Romani didn’t look like the ‘charming prince’ anymore, he looked like a predator that had caught a scent of blood from three floors away. His eyes scanned the wreckage, the shattered crystal by the hearth and me, still standing on the dais with my knuckles throbbing with a dull, savage heat from the impact.

                “What the hell happened in here?” he demanded.

Eric and Elara hovered just behind him, looking like a pair of kids who’d played with matches and accidentally leveled the house. Elara was leaning against her brother, her hand clamped over the blooming red welt on her face. Her violet eyes were swimming in tears of pure, unadulterated humiliation.

                “Romani!” she wailed as she pushed past his shoulder to make sure he saw the damage. “Look at what she did! Your… your mate attacked me! She’s feral! She’s a danger to the Palace!”

                Romani didn’t even look at her.

                He walked straight over to me, his gaze locked on my hand. He reached out, his fingers surprisingly gentle as he took my wrist to inspect the reddened skin of my palm.

                “Ana?” he asked, his voice softening just a fraction, though the steel was still there. “Did they touch you?”

                “They touched my patience,” I declared, meeting his gaze without blinking. “Which turned out to be a lot more fragile than your Secretary expected.”

                Romani turned his head slowly toward the siblings. The temperature in the room seemed to plummet. “Eric. Explain. Now.”

Eric stammered, his spectacles still hanging crookedly on his face.

                “Your Highness, we were merely… attempting to begin the protocol briefings. Elara was offering some much-needed perspective on the expectations of the Crown, and the girl simply snapped. She struck the Royal Administrator! The disrespect to the office—”

                “I don’t give a damn about the Palace right now,” Romani interrupted, his voice cutting like a falling axe. “I asked what was said. Do you think I’m deaf? I can smell the malice you both brought in here. It’s thick enough to choke on.”

                “She called me a mongrel, Romani,” I pressed my grievance, withdrawing my hand from his. “And your Secretary here was busy mourning the ‘administrative crime’ of my existence. They seemed to think I was a stray dog you brought home to show off. So, I showed them I have teeth. If that’s a problem for your ‘lineage,’ you should have left me in the woods.”

                My drama seemed to be working.

                Romani’s eyes flared a brilliant, molten gold. He turned fully toward his childhood friends. The air became so heavy with his Alpha authority that Eric actually buckled at the knees, catching himself against the doorframe.

                “Elara,” Romani said, terrifyingly calm. “You were brought here to assist. Not to judge. If I ever hear you speak to my mate with that tone again, if you ever use the word ‘hybrid’ as a slur in this Palace, I will strip you of your duties and send you away. Do I make myself clear?”

                Elara’s jaw dropped.

                “Romani, you can’t be serious! We’ve known each other our whole lives! She’s a stranger, a—”

                “She is your future Queen,” Romani roared, the sound making the crystal on the bar ring. “And you will treat her with the reverence that title demands, or you will not be part of this Palace. Eric, get her out of my sight. Now. Before my wolf decides to handle this personally.”

                Eric didn't wait for a second invitation.

                He practically dragged the sobbing Elara away, their retreating footsteps sounding a lot more like a scramble than a royal exit.

                The silence that followed was different— softer but still charged. Romani turned back to me, the gold in his eyes fading back to that deep, stormy blue. He stepped closer, closing the gap until I was forced to look up at him.

                “You’ve got a hell of a right hook,” he murmured, a faint, lopsided smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

                “I’ve had practice,” I muttered, trying to keep my distance, but he wasn't having it.

                He reached out, sliding a hand around my waist and pulling me into his heat.

It was frustrating how much my body wanted to lean into him.

                “I’m sorry they got to you,” he whispered into my hair. “The Palace is full of vipers. I should have stayed.”

                “I can handle vipers, Romani. I just didn't expect you to take my side so… publicly.”

                “You’re mine, Ana,” he said, his voice vibrating against my temple. “In two days, at the ceremony, the whole world will know that. No one will ever dare speak to you like that again. I’ll make sure of it.”

                He stayed for a moment, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw in a way that felt far too much like a promise.

                “I’m starting to think you might be the most dangerous thing in this Palace, Ana,” he murmured with a final, searching look.

                “I’ll be back before you miss me,” he added as he turned toward the door. “I have to go smooth things over with the King before the news of our slapped administrator reaches the throne room.”

As the door clicked shut, the Palace's oppressive quiet rushed back in. I leaned back against the dressing dais, my heart still racing.

                ‘He’s good,’ Era, my wolf, whispered in the back of my mind. Her voice was uncharacteristically focused. ‘The Alpha protects. He claims.’

                ‘He’s a jailer with a nice smile, Era,’ I argued silently. ‘Don't get soft on me.’

                ‘It doesn’t matter if he’s a jailer or a king,’ Era countered, her tone growing heavy. ‘The moon is coming, Ana. Can’t you feel the pull in your marrow? Two days. The full moon. The Great Heat.’

                I froze.

                My mind shifted through the calendar I’d been trying to ignore.

                She was right. The timing was a disaster.

                The full moon was in forty-eight hours—the exact day Romani had scheduled our ceremony.

                In the Lycan world, the first full moon after finding a fated mate was a biological hurricane. It was the Heat, a period of intense transition where the wolf took over, demanding the bond be sealed. If I was here, in this Palace, when it hit… I’d be marked and anchored to him forever.

But there was a complication. I wasn't just a wolf.

‘The Witch’s Flight,’ I whispered to the empty room.

                In my mother’s culture, the same moon that brought the Lycan Heat triggered the Solstice Flight. Every witch of my lineage was required by ancient law to take to the sky, to leave on a broomstick and commune with the elements for three days. It was a cleansing, a way to balance the power that otherwise would burn us from the inside out. But those days we would also be highly fertile.

                To miss it was to risk being marked and mated by the Lycan Crown Prince and grounded in this Palace with wolves despising me. I’d be a flightless bird in a den of monsters, my magic suffocated by a bond I wasn't ready to accept.

                ‘We have to go,’ Era agreed, surprisingly. ‘The wolf wants him, but the witch must fly. If we stay, the Heat will make us his slave. If we fly, we remain whole.’

                I looked toward the balcony, where the arctic stars were beginning to pierce through the twilight. My broom was something I could summon to appear whenever I like, relic of a life I wasn't ready to give up.

                ‘If I told Romani, he’d never let me go. He’d see the heat as his right and the flight as a threat to his control. He’d lock the doors, guard the windows, and wait for the moon to do his work for him.’

After some minutes my decision was final.

                “I’m not telling him,” I stated loud with resolve.

I would play the part for the next two days. I would let them dress me up, let them teach me their protocols and let Romani believe he had finally tamed his hybrid prize.

                But when that moon hit its zenith, I wouldn't be standing at an altar in a white dress.

I’d be three thousand feet in the air, leaving this gilded prison and its Prince far behind.