CHAPTER 79

JARRETT'S POV

The cell door didn’t open until the sky turned gray.

Just that thin, bruised color that comes before dawn when you haven’t slept and your body doesn’t know if it’s supposed to fight or break.

No one spoke to me as they marched me out. Not the guards. My ribs still ached where Lucian’s blade went in, a hot line under the bandages. But the pain was nothing compared to the silence.

The silence was worse. Because silence meant they’d already decided what I was.

Helena was waiting at the mouth of the tunnel.

No Crown showing. No gold in her eyes. No guards behind her. Just her, in old training leathers, the ones with the patch from our youth league stitched on the shoulder. A hockey stick in her hand. And mine tucked under her arm like she’d been carrying it for me.

She didn’t look at me. “Walk,” she said.

We didn’t go to the Council hall. We didn’t go to the trial grounds where they were already building the pyre for Lucian’s sentencing.

We went up to the ridge.

The wind hit us as soon as we cleared the tunnel. Cold enough to burn. The shrine was half-buried in snow. Stone pillars older than the Council. Older than the Blood Crown. Moss and claw marks and old blood frozen into the cracks.

And below it, stretched out like a scar, was the lake.

Frozen solid, white and perfect.

The pack’s rink.

That’s what we call it now; Hockey. But 26 years ago it wasn’t a sport. It was a treaty.

The only way the two royal houses were allowed to meet without drawing blood. One game a year without any magic or claws, just wood and ice and will.

The winner got Council protection for a year while the loser gave up territory, favors and blood.

“My father was captain,” I said before she could ask. My breath fogged and vanished. “Your mother was a goalie. That’s how they met.”

Helena stopped at the edge of the rink. She dragged the toe of her boot across the ice. It didn’t crack. The lake remembered her.

“So this was part of it too,” she said in a flat and careful voice. “The plan.”

The word hit like a check to the chest.

“No.” I stepped onto the ice. It held me. It always had. “The plan was for me to be on your team in the youth league. To report back after every practice. To make sure that when the Crown woke, you’d trust the sacrifice enough to let him close.”

I could feel her looking at me without turning.

“And the rest?” she asked.

“The first time you checked me into the boards at 14 and I couldn’t breathe for a minute, that wasn’t in the file. The nights I stayed outside your door when the visions came and you screamed, that wasn’t duty or strategy.”

My voice broke on the last part. I hated that it did.

“The reason I took Lucian’s blade instead of letting him hit you, wasn't because my grandfather wrote it down. It was because the thought of him touching you made me want to burn the world down.”

She was quiet for a long time, the wind moved between the silence.

Then she tossed me my stick. I caught it on instinct.

“One period,” she said. “Just us like before.”

“No whistle or crowd,” I said, because that’s how it used to be. Just us and the ice and the goal nets we’d dragged out here ourselves.

“Then show me,” she said, and skated out.

She didn’t have skates on. She didn’t need them. The ice didn’t break under her. The Crown was quiet under her skin, but the authority was still there in the way the air moved around her. Like the lake knew who she was.

The puck was old, scuffed and the paint chipped off.

Left here after the last game before Lucian’s coup. The last time the packs played together instead of against each other.

She dropped it at center ice and we played without exchanging any more words, it was just the sound of sticks, the scrape of steel on ice and the wind off the ridge.

She was faster. She always was. She cut left, faked right, and I bit on it like I was 15 again.

She drove me into the boards once, hard. The impact rattled my ribs. I went down. The cold bit through my leathers.

She hovered over me, stuck on my chest, the snow getting into her hair.

“Was any of it real?” she asked. Her voice was quiet. “Or was I just the assignment? The endpoint?”

The ice was cold against my back. My wolf was silent inside me, ashamed.

I looked up at her. “Every second was real, Helena. The duty was to keep you alive. That’s what they told me. Falling in love with you was me ruining the plan. I wasn’t supposed to. I was supposed to give you the Crown and walk away.”

She stared down at me. I could see the war in her. The Crown wanted blood. The girl wanted the truth.

Her jaw ticked. Then she held out her hand.

I took it. Her grip was strong. She hauled me up like I weighed nothing.

We didn’t finish the period. We didn’t need to.

We skated back to the bench in silence. The ice groaned behind us. Spring was coming early. The lake wouldn’t hold much longer.

Helena set her stick down. The sound was loud in the quiet.

“The trial is in two hours,” she said. “All the packs will stand full on the ice with Lucian in chains at center.”

I nodded. My hands were shaking but not from the cold.

“And after,” she added, glancing at me, “you tell the Council everything. On the record. In front of everyone.”

“What if they don’t believe me?” The question came out smaller than I wanted.

“Then they’ll have to answer to me,” she said, and for a second the gold flickered under her jaw. “The Crown answers to me now.”

She started back toward the shrine. I fell into step beside her, I was close, but not touching.

Behind us, the puck sat alone at center ice. Waiting.

Ahead of us, down the ridge, I could see them. Hundreds and thousands of wolves filling the stands carved into the ice.

There were banners and torches from every pack but the entire place was silent, they were all waiting for the Crown-Bearer.

And somewhere below, in a cell, Lucian was laughing. I could feel it.

Helena stopped at the top of the ridge and looked down. Her shoulders didn’t slump, not even once.

She turned to me. “Are you ready to tell the truth in front of all of them? To admit what your family did? What did you do?”

I tightened my grip on my stick until my knuckles went white. “Yes.”

“Good,” she said. Her voice was soft, but it carried. “Because after today, we either play on the same team… or we don’t play at all.”

She didn’t wait for me to answer.

She walked down to the ice, and the entire pack went to their knees.

The sound of it was like the lake breaking.