chapter 1_THE WEIGHT OF THE CROWN

​The steel bones in my chest pressed tightly and pains ran through my ribs, making every breath feel like a struggle. I had grown used to the pain, but this morning, something felt different. It felt like a warning.

​I sucked in a shallow, controlled breath through my teeth, letting the cold morning air of the Blue Mountains sting the back of my throat. Every single fiber of my muscles rebelled, screaming under the unnatural compression, but I didn’t have the luxury of comfort. Comfort was a civilian word, a luxury reserved for those who weren’t living a lie that could get them killed before the sun even rose above the trees.

​Breathe through the pain, Kael, I told myself, staring into the cracked brass-framed mirror of my austere quarters at Apex Academy. Just breathe.

​To the rest of the Sovereign Court of Australia, I was Crown Prince Kael the unyielding, razor-sharp heir to the throne, a war machine forged in iron and silence. They watched me with a toxic mixture of terrified awe and cold political calculation. They whispered in the high-ceilinged halls about my brutal efficiency with a broadsword, my absolute indifference to pack politics, and the terrifying absence of mercy in my violet-gray eyes.

​They didn’t know the truth. They couldn't afford to, and neither could I.

​If they ever discovered the truth hidden under the heavy coat, high collar, and leather clothes under the armor was a woman hiding her true identity of Tarni-Kaelen, the hidden princess erased from history at birth to prevent a bloody civil war twenty-one years ago the entire empire would tear itself apart in a single night. My blood would be spilled on the altar, and the packs would tear each other to shreds for the carcass of the throne.

​I reached across my mahogany desk, my fingers brushing past stacked military ledgers until they hit the cold glass of a small, lead-sealed crystal vial. The daily tonic. Grand Regent Malachi had personally handed me the fresh batch last night, his old, wrinkled eyes gleaming with a sickeningly sweet display of grandfatherly pride.

​“Drink it every morning without fail, Kael,” he had murmured, his hand resting heavy and cold on my shoulder, heavy enough to bruise. “It stabilizes your shifting core, keeps your volatility in check, and ensures the kingdom remains stable. A prince cannot afford weakness, and a prince certainly cannot afford to lose control.”

​I uncorked the stopper. A heavy, coppery scent rose from the viscous dark liquid, a scent that had tasted like copper and slow poison on my tongue for as long as I could remember. My fingers trembled slightly, a faint, involuntary numbness shooting down to my fingertips. It happened more often lately. Just a passing fatigue, I always told myself, shaking off the sudden, sharp spike of dizziness that tried to pull me off balance. I couldn't afford weakness either.

​Tilting my head back, I swallowed the bitter, burning tonic in one harsh gulp. It hit my stomach like liquid lead, sending a dull, radiating ache through my midsection that I instantly forced myself to swallow down. The nausea clawed at my throat, but I choked it back down where it belonged, locking it behind a wall of teeth and sheer willpower.

​With my disguise securely locked in place, I gripped my practice broadsword off the heavy iron rack. The cold steel felt like an old friend balanced, silent, and brutally honest. In a world where every single person I passed was either trying to use me, kill me, or figure out my weak spots, steel was the only thing I could truly trust.

​I fell into the familiar, devastating rhythm of my morning forms. Step, pivot, slash, parry. The blade hissed through the chilled air of my chamber, slicing the silence into thin ribbons. Each movement was a calculated strike against the invisible walls closing in around me.

​My chest throbbed, the binders biting deeper with every heavy exertion, but I pushed harder. I needed the physical pain. It grounded me. It reminded me that I was still breathing, still surviving, still playing a game I wasn't allowed to lose.

​Yet, as the minutes ticked by, an unshakable feeling of being watched crept over the back of my neck.

​It wasn't the normal, everyday paranoia that came with living a lie at an elite academy filled with ambitious, cutthroat Alpha heirs. This felt sharper. Heavier. Like an apex predator tracking its prey through thick underbrush, knowing the prey had nowhere left to run.

​My sword paused mid-swing, the heavy blade hovering an inch from the cold stone pillar.

​The heavy oak door of my quarters wasn't locked. Prince Kael didn't hide behind locked doors, because princes didn't fear shadows. But the heavy silence pressing against the back of my skull told me I was no longer alone in the room.

​Slowly, deliberately, I lowered the broadsword, letting the tip rest against the worn floorboards. I didn't turn around right away. I just stared at my own reflection in the cracked mirror, watching the dark, yawning threshold of my antechamber in the glass.

​The shadows near the doorway seemed to deepen, twisting against the pale morning light filtering through the high arched windows. A faint, intoxicating wave of scent drifted into the room, smoke, damp earth, and something dangerously dark, rich with authority, that made my pulse spike in an instant, feral alarm.

​"You train too early, Your Highness," a voice murmured from the dark.

​It was smooth, rich with velvet poison, and dripping with an effortless, mocking smile that made my blood run cold.

​Vance Huxley. ​The general's son, The most feared, untouchable, and unapologetically ruthless Alpha heir in the entire academy. A man who looked at the high court not with respect, but like a wolf looking at a pen full of sheep waiting for slaughter.

​I turned slowly, keeping my face locked in the cold, unreadable mask of Prince Kael. Vance was leaning casually against the stone doorframe, his broad shoulders blocking the only exit. He was wearing his dark military coat unbuttoned at the collar, heavy silver chains glinting against his throat, and those terrifying, predatory amber eyes locked onto mine with a hunger so intense it felt physical.

​He hadn't knocked. He had stood there in the dark, watching me bleed my sweat into the floorboards, studying every movement I made like a hunter evaluating a prize kill.

​And as his gaze dropped slowly from my face down to the rigid line of my chest before sliding back up to meet my eyes with a knowing, slow-burning smirk, a single, horrifying thought hit me with the force of a falling mountain:

​He didn't just come here to watch.

​He knows.