로그인By the time the next trade season rolled around, Mooncrest had a well‑earned reputation.Not just for its markets or its neutrality.For its princess.Which apparently meant visiting envoys thought they knew stories about me before they ever set foot in the hall.Some of those stories were…creative.***The envoy from the eastern coast arrived draped in silk and confidence.He had the kind of smile that knew it was charming and liked to practice in polished surfaces. His retinue trailed behind him like a bright tail—scribes, attendants, one very bored‑looking guard.We received him in the smaller audience chamber, not the full throne hall. This was a meeting about tariffs and river routes, not declarations of war.Not yet.I stood at Alden’s side, Kael and Rian a few steps off. My brothers scattered around the room in ways that looked casual and were anything but.We made it through the first round of pleasantries.The envoy’s eyes kept drifting back to me.I ignored it.Mostly.“…and
By the time the next trade season rolled around, Mooncrest had a well‑earned reputation.Not just for its markets or its neutrality.For its princess.Which apparently meant visiting envoys thought they knew stories about me before they ever set foot in the hall.Some of those stories were…creative.***The envoy from the eastern coast arrived draped in silk and confidence.He had the kind of smile that knew it was charming and liked to practice in polished surfaces. His retinue trailed behind him like a bright tail—scribes, attendants, one very bored‑looking guard.We received him in the smaller audience chamber, not the full throne hall. This was a meeting about tariffs and river routes, not declarations of war.Not yet.I stood at Alden’s side, Kael and Rian a few steps off. My brothers scattered around the room in ways that looked casual and were anything but.We made it through the first round of pleasantries.The envoy’s eyes kept drifting back to me.I ignored it.Mostly.“…and
Time didn’t stop because I survived.It didn’t even slow down.It did, however, stop trying to kill me every other week.That was an improvement.***Months passed.Seasons shifted.Snow melted off the roofs; flowers pushed up through thawed soil. The city stopped flinching at every loud noise. The scouts on the walls moved with a watchfulness that didn’t have panic under it.I learned what my life looked like when it wasn’t entirely about staying alive.It looked like work.And, sometimes, naps.***“High Mediator,” Theron said one morning, sliding a stack of slim folders toward me across the small council table. “We have three disputes awaiting your decision. One about grazing rights. One involving a contract miswritten in favor of a merchant. And one…interesting case of an Alpha claiming his omega ‘volunteered’ a child for fostering when the paperwork suggests otherwise.”I scanned the fronts, my eyes lingering on the last one.“Start there,” I said.He nodded, unsurprised.We spen
The worst was over.The laws were in motion.The web was gone.The market was being remade into something that no longer smelled of fear.On the surface, everything in my life was louder—laughter, training, arguments, and plans.Underneath, things were quieter.Quiet enough that the things we hadn’t said yet had room to rise.***It was Alden who found me first.I was in the west garden, where the stone wall was low enough to sit on, and the ivy hadn’t entirely taken over yet. The late afternoon light slanted through the leaves, dappled on my boots.He came without his cloak, without a stack of documents, looking, for once, less like an Alpha and more like a man whose shoulders had finally remembered how to drop.“Is this seat taken?” he asked, nodding to the stretch of wall beside me.“Yes,” I said. “By you.”He smiled and settled next to me, forearms braced on his thighs, gaze on the training yard below where two of our newer recruits were clumsily attempting a drill Jax had setWe
I never thought I’d be the one telling anyone how to stand.For years, every lesson my body learned was about making itself smaller—shoulders rounded, eyes down, hands still. Don’t attract attention. Don’t take up space you can’t pay for.Now, small wolves clustered in front of me, waiting to be told the opposite.***“Feet apart,” I said. “A little wider than your shoulders.”We stood in one of the smaller practice yards—less intimidating than the main field, with a softer surface of packed sand and grass. The morning air was cool, breath puffing faintly when the pups huffed too fast.A motley group faced me.A few full‑blooded Mooncrest boys with too‑long limbs and scuffed knees. Two Nightveil girls visit with their parents, standing straight as saplings. A couple of Bloodthorn pups from families who’d come to Mooncrest seeking distance from old habits. Two hybrids—one shy boy with mismatched eyes, one small girl with a streak of darker hair through her curls.All of them watched me
The festival thinned as the night grew older.Music softened from wild dances to slower tunes. Some lanterns had already burned out their rune‑stones and dimmed, while others still glowed stubbornly, bobbing against their strings. Children drooped against parents’ shoulders. The air smelled of smoke and spilled wine and sugar from some Nightveil sweet. I hadn’t learned the name of yet.It was…a lot.In the best way.In the kind of way that made my bones buzz and my skin feel one size too small.“I’m going to–” I told no one in particular, then just started walking.No one stopped me.That was new, too.I slipped out of the square, past the last ring of lantern light, and followed a narrow path I’d discovered months ago. It wound up the back of one of the low hills beyond the castle, just high enough to give a view of Mooncrest’s rooftops and, in the distance, the faint pricks of Nightveil’s campfires where their delegation had set up outside the walls.By the time I reached the top, m







