Chapter 1 - My Return.

MORGAN'S POV:

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Wilson speaking. Welcome aboard Flight T629, with service to Eastern International Airport. The local time is 7:45 a.m., and the temperature outside is a bit chilly, but beautiful. It looks like fall has finally arrived in the Eastern Kingdom.

“As you can see, I’ve turned on the seat belt sign. Please remain seated for the remainder of the flight unless there is an emergency. We’ll be landing in approximately twenty-two minutes at Gate Five, located in the north wing of the airport."

“On behalf of my entire crew, I’d like to thank you for flying with us today. It has been a pleasure having you aboard, and we hope you enjoyed your flight.

“Welcome to the Eastern Kingdom.”

Home.

One fucking word, and my heart nearly exploded inside my chest.

I leaned toward the tiny window and stared through the clouds, searching for the first glimpse of the land I hadn't seen in almost four years.

Four years.

It felt like a damn lifetime.

My ass was literally on fire after nearly fourteen hours on that plane. And no, I was not exaggerating. I'd gotten up a few times to use the lavatory and stretch my legs, but there was only so much walking up and down a narrow aisle a woman could do before people started wondering if she had bladder problems.

What I really needed was to shift.

Kira was becoming restless beneath my skin, and honestly, I couldn't blame her.

I could already imagine her massive paws pounding against the ground as she tore through the dense forest surrounding our Pack.

I could almost smell the pine trees, the wet soil, the river.

I could feel the wind ripping through her fur as she ran faster and faster, finally free after being trapped inside me for far too long.

Soon, I promised her.

She stirred impatiently.

Apparently, soon wasn't soon enough.

But I refused to complain.

Not today.

Because I was going home.

The excitement bubbling inside me was indescribable. No one—not even another wolf—could possibly understand how glorious it felt to return to the place where I belonged.

My brother Alex had probably been counting the days.

Hell, knowing him, he'd probably been counting the hours.

I smiled as the plane descended beneath another layer of clouds.

“Crescent Moon Pack,” I whispered, “your troublemaker is back.”

Kira chuckled inside my head.

Troublemaker? Who the hell are you kidding, Morgan? You're probably the most well-behaved she-wolf in the entire Pack. Stubborn as shit, maybe, but you live by the rules.

I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing.

That's what she thought.

Unfortunately for Kira, she was about to be very disappointed in me.

Because I had plans.

And those plans definitely did not include following the rules.

I was born in the Eastern Kingdom of the North American continent, one of four democratic kingdoms governing our territory.

North.

South.

East.

West.

Together, the four kingdoms stretched from Canada all the way down through Mexico, making our territory geographically one of the largest werewolf nations in the world.

It hadn't always been divided.

According to the history books—and the stories our elders loved repeating until every young wolf could recite them in their sleep—more than a century ago, the entire continent had belonged to one king.

Not just any king.

The Moon Goddess's chosen King.

She had personally selected him to govern our kind, gifting him with unnatural abilities no other wolf possessed. He was said to have been extraordinarily powerful, yet fair and compassionate. He protected his people, respected the Packs under his rule, and commanded loyalty without demanding fear.

Almost every Alpha willingly submitted to his authority.

Almost.

Because apparently every great story needed one greedy son of a bitch determined to fuck everything up.

One Alpha wanted more.

More land. More wealth. More control. More power.

So he betrayed his King.

He murdered the very wolf chosen by the Moon Goddess and attempted to seize control of the entire continent. Fortunately, the other Alphas weren't stupid enough to bow before him.

They fought.

And the bastard never made it to the throne.

Afterward, the Moon Goddess chose not to place that much authority into the hands of one wolf again. Instead, she divided the continent into four kingdoms and selected four brave, loyal, warmhearted Alphas to rule them.

Each king was given his own territory.

Each swore to protect his people.

And each kingdom entered into treaties meant to prevent another war over power. Because apparently every creature needs political boundaries to keep us from killing each other.

Power and wealth.

The root of all fucking evil.

More than a century later, the system remained.

The Southern Kingdom was governed by King Luis Castillo.

The Northern Kingdom belonged to King Augustus Dupont.

King Ezra Maxwell ruled the West.

And the Eastern Kingdom belonged to my own King—

Stephen Khallowells.

Wait.

I frowned.

No.

Scratch that.

King Damian Khallowells.

Stephen Khallowells had stepped down approximately eighteen months ago, allowing his son to take over the throne, and apparently I'd forgotten to update that particular piece of information in the filing center of my brain.

In my defense, I'd been busy.

Very fucking busy.

Studying abroad didn't exactly leave me with enough free time to follow every royal announcement coming out of my kingdom.

Although...

There had been one announcement I hadn't missed.

King Damian's engagement.

I'd seen it plastered across the cover of The Gossip Magazine back in March.

THE EASTERN KING FINDS HIS QUEEN

Princess Kathia.

Royal blood.

Australian.

Beautiful enough to make normal women want to throw things at mirrors. And, most importantly, according to the magazine—

King Damian's mate.

They had to be married by now.

It had been seven months since the announcement, and no wolf stayed separated from their fated mate for that long.

Not willingly, anyway.

I hadn't bothered following their story after that. Between exams, projects, and completing my studies, I barely had enough time to sleep, much less keep up with royal gossip from another continent.

Still...

Princess Kathia was one lucky bitch.

Because King Damian Khallowells was—

Good Goddess.

That man.

I shifted in my seat just thinking about the photograph.

Forget being King.

He deserved to be featured in The Hottest Man Alive.

Tall.

Dark blond hair.

Broad shoulders.

A jawline that should've been fucking illegal.

And those eyes.

Even through a stupid magazine photograph, there was something about his stare that had made my stomach do the strangest little flip.

The man didn't smile for the camera.

Of course, he didn't.

Apparently kings were too important for basic facial expressions.

Instead, he'd stared straight into the lens with that dark, commanding expression that practically screamed, Bow.

And embarrassingly enough, some tiny part of me had thought:

Gladly.

I'd slammed the magazine shut immediately afterward.

Kira had laughed at me for ten fucking minutes.

I wasn't ashamed to admit that King Damian was gorgeous. Any woman with functioning eyes would agree. But there was something else about him that I couldn't explain.

Something that had enchanted me.

Something about that photograph had stayed with me long after I'd tossed the magazine aside.

And that night?

I dreamed about him.

Not just any innocent little dream, either.

Oh, no.

My traitorous brain had apparently decided to humiliate me in my sleep.

It was one of those dreams.

The kind that made you wake up tangled in your sheets, hot as hell, wondering what the fuck was wrong with you.

Except the strangest part wasn't that I'd dreamed about King Damian.

It was what I'd been in the dream.

His Queen.

Me.

Morgan Miller.

Queen of the Eastern Kingdom.

I almost laughed aloud just remembering it.

How fucking ridiculous.

I was a Pack she-wolf who had spent the last four years buried beneath textbooks, exams, and enough caffeine to kill a human.

He was a king.

A powerful, terrifyingly handsome king who had already found his mate and was probably married to Princess Perfect by now.

And I still hadn't even found mine.

At my age.

Yeah.

That was another fucking story.

I shook my head and looked through the window again as the ground slowly appeared beneath us.

Forests.

Roads.

Buildings.

Home.

A smile tugged at my lips.

King Damian Khallowells had absolutely nothing to do with my life.

And I had absolutely nothing to do with his.

Me, Morgan Miller, mated to the King?

Please.

Even the Moon Goddess couldn't have that fucked-up of a sense of humor.

****

Many of our Elders still believed in an ancient prophecy.

According to them, the four kingdoms wouldn't remain divided forever. One day, another Chosen King would rise.

A wolf blessed by the Moon Goddess herself.

He would possess unnatural powers and abilities similar to those of the original King—abilities no ordinary Alpha, or even one of our current kings, could ever hope to possess.

Some Elders believed he would unite the kingdoms again.

Others believed his arrival would mark the beginning of a new era for our kind. And then there were the dramatic ones who talked about wars, bloodshed, ancient bloodlines, and the Moon Goddess reclaiming what had once belonged to her.

Personally?

I idn't know what the hell to believe.

I wasn't much of a historian.

Give me a good romance novel with a possessive Alpha, a stubborn heroine, and enough sexual tension to make me forget I needed sleep, and I could read until three in the morning.

Ancient werewolf politics?

Not so much.

But if I remembered correctly, the original Chosen King—King Hastings—had come from the Northern Kingdom.

Maybe history would repeat itself.

Maybe the next Chosen King would come from the North too.

Who knew?

Certainly not me.

The Northern Kingdom was probably the territory I knew the least about. From what I'd read, they were ridiculously wealthy and had some of the finest universities in the world. Had circumstances been different, one of their medical schools would've probably been near the top of my list.

But I'd gone much farther away than the North.

Far away from my kingdom.

Far away from my Pack.

Far away from everyone I loved.

And I'd done it because of one person.

My mother.

If the decision had been mine, I would've never left the Eastern Kingdom.

Never.

I was the kind of girl who loved her tiny circle and didn't give a shit about expanding it. Give me my family, my handful of friends, my Pack, and Kira, and I was perfectly happy.

I had been homesick before I'd even finished packing my fucking suitcase.

And leaving Alexander?

That had nearly killed me.

My brother wasn't simply my brother. He was my best friend. My protector. My biggest pain in the ass. The person I could fight with at breakfast and threaten to murder by lunch, only to be curled up beside him watching a movie that same night.

Leaving him for four years had been torture.

But Mom had wanted me to go.

And when Adeline Elizabeth Miller wanted something for one of her children, she usually had a reason.

Even when she refused to explain what that reason was.

"Princess, one day those beautiful hands of yours will heal the sick, give sight to the blind, and restore the hearts of our kingdom. Never forget that."

I'd heard those words hundreds of times growing up.

Sometimes she'd say them while holding my tiny hands between hers.

Sometimes while brushing my hair.

Sometimes after catching me trying to put a Band-Aid on some injured animal I'd dragged into our house.

She always called me Princess.

That had been her nickname for me since I was little.

I'd never thought anything of it.

I was her daughter.

Her little girl.

Her princess.

And because Mom was a doctor, I'd always assumed she meant that I would follow in her footsteps someday.

That my hands would heal people because I would become a physician. What else could she possibly have meant?

My mother had been an extraordinary Pack doctor. Actually, extraordinary didn't do her justice. She was fucking brilliant.

But her intelligence wasn't what made people love her.

It was her heart.

Adeline Miller possessed the kind of compassion you couldn't learn from a textbook. She remembered people's names. Their children. Their illnesses. Their fears. She could sit beside someone terrified of dying and somehow convince them there was still hope.

Her heart had to have been made of fucking gold.

Everyone loved her.

And somehow, she seemed to have enough love inside her to give a piece of herself to everyone she met.

When she died five years ago, it wasn't only our family that mourned.

Our entire Pack did.

Hell, it felt like half the fucking kingdom mourned with us.

For months afterward, Crescent Moon didn't feel like Crescent Moon anymore.

People still worked.

Children still played.

Wolves still ran through the forest.

Life continued because life was cruel like that.

But something was missing.

The Pack had lost some of its warmth.

It's light.

Because my mother hadn't simply been the light of our home. She'd been a beam of light everywhere she went. And she'd gone almost everywhere.

As a Pack doctor, she had opportunities to travel throughout the fourth kingdoms for specialized training, research, and medical conferences. Every three months, she traveled to the Central Region, where physicians from all four kingdoms gathered at a massive medical headquarters to exchange research, study new treatments, and train with innovative equipment.

Except Mom rarely went there merely to learn, because most of the time, she was the one teaching.

She had received awards I couldn't even remember the names of. Medical recognitions from different kingdoms. Invitations to foreign territories. Requests for consultations from doctors I'd only ever read about.

As a child, I thought that was normal.

My mom was a doctor.

Doctors helped people.

Doctors traveled.

Doctors received awards.

It wasn't until I got older that I realized Pack doctors weren't normally summoned halfway across the fucking world because another kingdom wanted their opinion.

My mother was special.

Much more special than I'd understood.

Maybe that was why what happened to her never made any fucking sense.

Her final trip was supposed to be routine. Another conference in the Central Region. Another few days away. Another kiss on my forehead before she left.

I could still remember standing by the door.

"I'll be back soon, Princess."

Those were the last words my mother ever said to me.

She never came home.

Mom had been traveling with three Pack warriors when they were ambushed by rogues.

Noel.

Justine.

Salima.

Four people left for that conference.

Only one returned alive.

Noel barely survived.

He was found so severely injured that doctors weren't sure he would make it through the first night. He remained unconscious for weeks and eventually slipped into a coma that lasted almost two months.

Justine and Salima died at the scene.

And my mother—

I swallowed.

Five years later, and apparently my heart still hadn't learned how to think those words without breaking.

My mother was killed.

For nearly two months, we had no answers.

Then Noel woke up.

And somehow, his answers gave us even more questions.

He said the attack hadn't been random. The rogues weren't after money. They weren't trying to cross territory. They weren't even interested in the warriors.

They went straight for my mother.

According to Noel, the rogues kept shouting at her to surrender. They wanted her alive. And they weren't calling her Adeline.

They called her another name.

A name Noel couldn't clearly remember after everything he'd endured.

But there was one word he remembered perfectly.

Princess.

They called my mother a princess.

I'd laughed the first time I heard it — not because anything about her death was funny, but because it was absurd.

They obviously had the wrong woman.

My mother wasn't royalty.

She was Adeline Miller.

Pack doctor.

Wife.

Mother.

The woman who burned pancakes every fucking Sunday because she refused to admit she couldn't cook.

There wasn't a single drop of royal blood in our family. At least none that I knew of.

The rogues had clearly mistaken her for someone else.

That was the explanation everyone eventually accepted.

It was the only explanation that made sense.

But there was something else Noel told us.

Something I had never been able to explain.

My mother didn't shift.

Three trained warriors fought desperately to protect her, yet Mom never released her wolf. Sasha never came forward.

Noel said Mom's eyes flickered gold several times during the attack, so Sasha had definitely been there.

Awake.

Present.

But she didn't take control.

She didn't shift.

She didn't fight.

It was almost as if Mom had deliberately forced her wolf backward. And because of that, she had been left vulnerable.

Human flesh against claws and teeth.

For a long time, I hated Sasha for it.

I fucking hated her.

How could she let my mother die?

How could a wolf sit inside her human while rogues attacked her and do absolutely nothing? I would lie awake at night imagining everything differently.

If Sasha had shifted, Mom might've survived.

If Sasha had fought, maybe she would've made it home.

Maybe she would've opened our front door a few days later complaining about airport food and demanding one of Alex's hugs.

Maybe she'd still be here.

Maybe.

Maybe.

Maybe.

That fucking word nearly destroyed me.

Eventually, I had to let go of my anger toward Sasha. Not because I understood.

I didn't.

I still didn't understand a damn thing.

But resentment was eating me alive, and grief had already consumed enough of me.

I couldn't breathe some days.

Couldn't sleep.

Couldn't walk past Mom's room without expecting her to come out.

Couldn't smell her perfume without falling apart.

Losing her would've been enough.

But grief wasn't the only thing I had to carry during those years.

There had been anger.

Questions.

Secrets no one seemed able to answer. And eventually, another devastating loss that made me wonder how much fucking pain one person was expected to survive before the Moon Goddess decided she'd had enough.

But none of my questions could bring my mother back.

No amount of anger could change what happened.

And so I did the only thing I knew how to do.

I followed her.

Not literally.

Professionally.

I became a doctor.

A Pack doctor.

Maybe I'd never become even a shadow of the physician Adeline Miller had been, but I would spend the rest of my life trying.

I wanted to heal my Pack.

I wanted to help people the way she had. And maybe—just maybe—somewhere beyond this world, Mom would look at me and be proud.

Becoming a doctor without either of my parents there to see it had been one of the most painful experiences of my life. There were days abroad when I almost quit.

Days when I missed Alex so fucking much that I'd stare at flight schedules for hours.

I would calculate how quickly I could pack.

How much a ticket would cost.

How many hours until I could be home.

Sometimes all I wanted was my brother.

My Pack.

My bedroom.

My mother's memory without an entire ocean between us.

On the worst nights, I cried myself to sleep. And on the mornings when getting out of bed felt impossible, I reached for her picture.

I kept my favorite one beside my bed.

Mom was smiling at the camera, her blonde wavy hair falling over one shoulder, her eyes filled with that warmth I would have given anything to see again. I'd hold the photograph between my hands and pretend she was sitting across from me.

"Come on, Princess."

Sometimes I could almost hear her.

"You can do this."

So I did.

One exam.

One rotation.

One sleepless fucking night at a time.

When that wasn't enough, I looked at one of her medical awards I'd taken with me. Her name engraved across the metal always reminded me why I'd started.

ADELINE ELIZABETH MILLER.

My mother.

My inspiration.

My reason.

I had promised myself I wouldn't give up.

Even when I was breaking into a thousand pieces inside.

Even when the loneliness became unbearable.

Even when every part of me screamed to go home.

Just a little longer, I'd tell myself.

Just one more semester.

One more exam.

One more day.

Just a little longer, Morgan.

And now, as the wheels of the plane lowered beneath us and the Eastern Kingdom stretched out beyond my window, my eyes burned with tears. I didn't have to tell myself that anymore.

I had done it.

I had fucking done it.

Four years.

Thousands of miles.

More tears than I cared to remember.

And now—

I was finally home.

Kira stirred inside me, strangely quiet.

We did it, I whispered to her.

For once, my wolf didn't make a sarcastic comment. Her warmth spread through my chest instead.

"Your mother would be proud of you, Morgan."

My throat tightened.

I turned toward the window before the stranger sitting beside me could see the tears gathering in my eyes.

"I hope so," I whispered to my wolf.

But as the plane descended toward Eastern International Airport, my mother's old words suddenly drifted through my mind again.

Words I'd heard so many times that I'd stopped wondering why she always said them exactly the same way.

Princess, one day those beautiful hands of yours will heal the sick, give sight to the blind, and restore the hearts of our kingdom.

I looked down at my hands.

A strange warmth tingled across my palms.

I frowned.

Then it disappeared.

Probably nerves.

Excitement.

Fourteen fucking hours trapped inside an airplane.

I curled my fingers and dismissed it. Because my mother had been talking about medicine.

She had to have been.

I was home, and that was all that mattered at that moment.

Home.

Goddess, it felt good just thinking about it.

For the past four years, Kira had been the only constant companionship keeping me together. I had been thousands of miles away from my Pack, my brother, my friends—everything familiar to me.

But I had never truly been alone.

I had her.

She has part of me, yet somehow entirely her own being. My companion. My protector. My confidante. The one soul in this world who knew every thought I had ever tried to hide.

Which, when I really thought about it, was slightly terrifying.

"Especially the dirty ones," she added.

My mouth dropped open.

"Kira!"

Her laughter echoed through my mind.

I shook my head and looked out the window again, unable to stop my own smile.

Thank the Goddess for our wolves.

Humans would probably never understand what it was like to carry another soul within your own. To never truly experience silence. To have someone who could feel your grief before you admitted you were hurting, or sense your fear before you acknowledged you were afraid.

Our wolves weren't pets.

They weren't possessions.

They were us.

And we were them.

Two souls.

One body.

One life.

Without Kira, I didn't know how I would've survived those four years.

Without our wolves, I sometimes wondered how any of us survived at all.