004

Klaus

I'd stopped looking for a mate years ago, if I was honest with myself. Not by choice — by exhaustion. I'd searched every village within our borders and half the neighboring kingdoms besides, and every search ended the same way. Nothing. No pull, no recognition, no proof that the woman meant to fix any of this still existed.

The council didn't care about proof. They wanted an heir. They wanted the throne strengthened before one of our rivals decided our lack of one was an invitation. I understood the logic. I even agreed with most of it. What none of them understood — what none of them could understand, since I'd made sure of it — was that I wasn't simply unlucky in love.

I was cursed.

Bride after bride had walked through these gates believing she might be the one to break it. Bride after bride had died proving she wasn't. I was tired in a way sleep didn't fix anymore, and somewhere in the palace right now sat the newest one, dragged back overnight after trying to run before she'd even spent a full day within these walls.

I couldn't blame her for trying. If I were her, I'd have run too.

"Sebastian."

My Beta appeared in the doorway within seconds, like he'd been waiting just outside it. Knowing him, he probably had been. "Yes, your majesty."

"Walk with me. Tell me how the eastern border held through the storm last week."

"Held well enough," he said, falling into step beside me. "We lost a section of the outer wall near the river crossing, nothing structural. The patrols are already repairing it. More concerning is the grain report from the southern villages — this year's yield is down again."

"Third year running."

"Third year running," he agreed. "The council will want to discuss rationing before winter, if the trend holds."

"Of course they will." I let out a breath, already tired of a conversation I hadn't finished having. "Add it to tomorrow's council session. I'll hear the full report then."

"Understood." He hesitated a moment before continuing, the kind of hesitation he only used when he was about to say something I wouldn't want to hear. "There's also the matter of this cycle's bride, your majesty. The council has asked twice now when you intend to move forward with the mating ritual. House Voss sent their daughter days ago, as required. They're growing impatient waiting on your answer."

"Tell them I'm considering it." I wasn't. We both knew I wasn't. "Inform whoever's in charge of the new girl that I won't be joining her for breakfast this morning. I've lost my appetite."

"Are you unwell, your majesty?" Sebastian's concern was real, not performed — one of the few things I still trusted completely in this palace.

"I'm quite well. I'd simply rather not sit across a table from someone who spends the whole meal afraid I'll kill her before she's finished eating."

Something flickered across his face — not quite disagreement, but close enough that I noticed. He didn't say it out loud. He rarely did anymore, not since the fourth bride, not since he'd learned exactly how little patience I had left for being questioned on this.

"One more thing," I said, before he could offer whatever careful, diplomatic thing he was building instead. "Move the mating ritual to this evening. And no one enters the east wing between now and moonrise. I won't be myself. You know what that means better than anyone."

"Understood." He bowed, low and practiced. "I'll see to it that everything is prepared."

He left without another word, and I let myself imagine, for one indulgent moment, what it might feel like to find her. Not a bride. Not another name on a list the council had put together for political convenience. Her. The one whose blood actually carried the power to end this — the last thread of a royal line my own forefathers had spent generations trying to erase, hidden so completely that even the priestesses couldn't say whether she'd survived at all.

If she had. If she existed. If the Moon Goddess hadn't simply decided my father's sins deserved a punishment with no end.

I didn't let myself hope for long. Hope was worse than the curse most days — it cost more and gave back less.

The sun had nearly finished its climb by the time I made my way to the east wing alone. The doors there were fortified with the high priestess's oldest wardings, spellwork layered thick enough to hold even when I stopped being anything close to myself. No one was allowed past them once the sun crossed its peak. Not Sebastian. Not the guards. No one, until the worst of it had passed and I was fit to be trusted with a door handle again.

I stepped inside, locked it behind me, and let my robe fall to the floor.

The moon crescent carved into the center of the room had waited for me a hundred times before this one. I stood at its center and closed my eyes, bracing the way I always braced — for the tearing, for the fire under my skin, for the hours of losing myself to something that hated the man wearing its shape.

The first wave hit exactly on schedule. Bones grinding, reshaping, a pain so familiar it barely registered as pain anymore, just weather I'd learned to stand inside.

And then, halfway through it, something happened that had never happened before.

A scent reached me from somewhere beyond the warded door — faint at first, barely more than a suggestion, but growing sharper with every passing second. Someone was moving through the east wing. Someone who had no business being anywhere near it.

I knew before I let myself believe it. The wards were built to keep me contained, not to mask what lay beyond them completely — and whatever this scent belonged to, it was unlike anything that had ever drifted past that door before.

It couldn't be. Not after this long. Not like this.

I told myself it was exhaustion. Wishful thinking dressed up as instinct. I'd chased false hope before and paid for it every time.

Then the pull hit — sudden, violent, undeniable, cutting through the pain of the change like it was nothing at all.

Mate.