SEVEN YEARS, ONE CROWN

You are the long-missing Lycan Princess. Daughter of the late King Aldric. Rightful heir to the Lycan throne.

I read the line three times.

Then I read it again.

The letter was printed on heavy cream paper with the royal council's seal pressed into the top corner. Official. Real. Not a mistake.

My name is Sera Calloway. I have been married to Alpha Damon Voss for seven years. I manage his household, attend his functions, raise his son, and smile at his pack members like I belong here.

I have never been made Luna.

I always told myself it was coming. That the mark was coming. That Damon was simply cautious, that the council was difficult, that the timing was never right.

The letter said something different.

It said I was never just a pack wife waiting for her turn. It said my blood was older than this house, older than Damon's title, older than anything he had ever built. It said the Lycan King election closes in fifteen days and as the only surviving heir of King Aldric, I had the right to claim the throne through a marriage alliance.

Fifteen days.

My wolf stirred somewhere deep in my chest. She had been quiet for so long I sometimes forgot she was there. We always knew, she said. Low. Certain. We always felt it and he kept us small enough not to ask why.

I folded the letter and put it in my pocket.

I needed to find Damon.

Not because I wanted comfort. Not because I needed him to tell me it was going to be okay. I wanted to look at his face when I told him. I wanted to watch his eyes and see, finally, what had always been hiding behind them.

The house was quiet at that hour. Our son Luca was at school. The pack members were out on their morning duties. My heels clicked against the marble floor of the east corridor and the sound felt too loud, like the house itself knew something had shifted.

Damon's study door was not fully closed.

I raised my hand to knock.

And then I heard it.

A laugh. Soft and low. The kind of laugh that belongs to a moment that was not meant to be shared.

I pushed the door open.

Damon was standing at his desk. Celeste was in front of him, close enough that her forehead was nearly against his jaw, her fingers curled into the front of his shirt like she had done it a thousand times before. Like she owned the right to stand that close.

My stepsister.

The woman who sat across from me at every family dinner. Who hugged me at holidays. Who once held my hand when I cried because the council rejected my Luna petition for the third time and told me it would happen soon, that Damon just needed more time.

Time.

Damon saw me first. He did not jump back. He did not let go. He looked at me the way you look at someone who has walked into the wrong room and simply needs to be redirected.

Mildly inconvenienced. Nothing more.

"Sera," he said.

That was all. Just my name. No explanation. No shame in his voice. No panic.

Celeste turned slowly. She looked at me and something moved across her face. Not guilt. It was closer to relief, like a secret she had been carrying too long had finally been put down.

My wolf went very still inside me.

I did not shout. I did not cry. I felt something cold settle into my bones and I let it sit there.

How long, I said.

Damon stepped away from the desk. He straightened his jacket. A habit. Something he did before difficult conversations, before pack meetings, before he needed to be in control of a room.

This is not the time to do this, he said.

How long, Damon.

He looked at me for a moment. Then he exhaled through his nose and something in his expression shifted into a kind of tired honesty that was worse than any lie he had ever told me.

Years, he said. It has been years, Sera.

The word landed flat. Years. Like it was simple. Like it was just a fact he had been waiting to say out loud.

Celeste said nothing. She was watching me the way people watch something fragile to see if it breaks.

I was not going to break.

You were never going to mark me, I said.

He did not deny it.

The council, I started.

The council was never the problem, he said. You were never going to be Luna. I need you to understand that. It was never what I intended.

Seven years. Seven years of managing his house and attending his events and holding his pack together from the inside. Seven years of telling myself I was building something real.

My wolf made a sound in my chest that I had never heard from her before. Low and broken and then very, very hard.

There is something else, Damon said.

I looked at him.

Luca. He said our son's name carefully. He is not yours. Biologically.

The room did not spin. My vision did not blur. I just stood there and felt the last solid thing I had been holding onto go quiet in my hands.

Luca. Four years old. Slept with a stuffed wolf I bought him on his first birthday. Called me Mama in the mornings when he was still half asleep and his voice was soft and he reached for me before he was fully awake.

Not mine.

Whose, I said.

Damon glanced at Celeste.

I did not need him to say it.

I turned and walked out of the study. I walked down the corridor. I walked through the back door and into the east garden and I stood in the middle of it and I breathed through my nose until my hands stopped wanting to shake.

My wolf rose up slowly inside me. Fully, this time. Like she had been waiting for exactly this moment to finally take up all the space she had been denied.

The letter was still in my pocket.

Heir to the Lycan throne. Fifteen days.

I pressed my hand flat against my chest and I made myself a promise I had no intention of breaking.

Damon Voss had spent seven years making me small.

He had fifteen days to enjoy it.