LOGINELENA'S POV, “Elena.” That voice from before came again, closer this time. “Focus on my voice, and let it consume you.” I recognised that voice this time because he kept speaking. It wasn't the first time I had heard it, and my mind still remembered it. Silverlake. He had appeared at my left witho
ELENA'S POV, “Elena, leave—” Andrew's voice cut through the noise and I ducked without thinking. Something passed over my head that I felt rather than saw, and then Andrew was there. “This place is not safe for you.” “Prince Andrew is right, come with me, Princess,” Joyce said, handling what I had
ELENA'S POV, The door swung open and the noise hit me like a wall before I could recollect my thoughts. The events unfolding in the main hall weren't the clean, controlled chaos of a fight with established rules and regulations. It was the other kind, the wild kind of chaos that I was expecting t
ANDREW'S POV, “That seems premature. We're at a delicate point in the discussion—” “Which is exactly why we need a few minutes,” I said, holding his gaze. He looked away first, and I continued. “To discuss your proposals in private and speak our mind without you listening to us. Unless there's a r
ANDREW'S POV, I noticed the guard first. Not his presence, his absence. The post in the east corridor had been manned every time I had checked it since we arrived. It was a consistent, unremarkable detail that I had catalogued the way I catalogued everything in a room like this one—automatically,
ELENA'S POV, The report came in fragments, the way bad news always did. It wasn't clean, nor with the kind of clarity that made decisions easy. Just pieces, arriving one after another through channels that were supposed to be secure and reliable, and each piece landed worse than the one before it.
RYAN'S POV,“Which is exactly why some of us believe you overstepped. And I agree with them.”I looked around the room and noticed many heads nodding in agreement with him. This was what I feared when I declared our support for Prince Andrew—the cracks were starting to appear in the pack. While it w
“Is this true, Elena?”“Is your real name, Princess Sofia, Elena?”“Were you hiding your identity all this time from us?”“Did Julian know about you?”“Was your divorce to Julian related to your new identity?”I swallowed hard, my throat tightened as I looked for answers that could satisfy them. I w
RYAN'S POV,The meeting ended with a round of applause from both sides.It was polite, measured and rehearsed. They were clapping hands not out of joy, but out of obligation. I saw it on their faces. The chairs scraped softly against the marble floor as everyone rose, the advisors murmured congratul
“She should stay with us, in this palace,” I continued before he could say anything about taking her back to the Lycan Kingdom. “You know this is the safest place for her, amongst the people who will fight for her till their last breath.”This time, Andrew turned fully toward me. “Ryan—”“I know,” I







