CHAPTER FOUR

Two weeks.

Fourteen days, and somehow Dorian Crest had dismantled every wall I’d spent six years building — not by force, not by charm alone, but by being relentlessly, almost irritatingly consistent. He said he would call and he called. He wanted to understand the pack’s trade challenges and sat with me for three hours going through documents he had no obligation to care about. He remembered that Damien hated the crust on his bread and Enzo slept with the light on, and he never once made either of them feel small for it.

I wanted to marry him. Not for the alliance. Not for the pack. Not even for my sons, though the way he loved them did things to my chest I had no language for.

I just wanted him. Plainly, terrifyingly, like a person and not a princess.

Which was precisely why I was standing in his room now with my shoulders squared and my smile measured, watching him fold the last of his shirts into his bag like it wasn’t affecting me at all.

“I think that’s everything,” he said, straightening.

“Safe travels, Your Majesty.” Smooth. Professional. “We’re deeply honored you stayed as long as you did.”

He looked at me.

I looked back.

“Sera.”

“Mm.”

“There is no one else in this room.”

“I’m aware.”

“So you can stop doing the voice.”

“I don’t have a voice.”

“You do. That professional princess voice.”

He crossed the room in four unhurried steps and took both my hands in his. His thumb moved once across my knuckles — slow, deliberate — and every composed thing in my body staged a quiet revolt.

“I’m going to miss you,” he said. Simply. Like it cost him nothing. “Two weeks and I feel like I’ve known you longer than most people.” He tilted his head. “Tell me you won’t miss me at all. Say it convincingly and I’ll drop it.”

My mouth opened.

Nothing convincing came out.

He smiled — the slow one that had been making my pulse misbehave for fourteen days — and cupped my face in both hands, and I almost gave myself away entirely at how warm they were.

“I’ll think about you every day,” he said quietly, “until I’m back for the engagement.”

I had no response. I had rehearsed responses for diplomatic confrontations and public appearances and none of them applied here, and before I could locate something that did he leaned forward and kissed me.

Not tentative. Not a question. A kiss that knew exactly what it was — deep and certain, his hands still framing my face — and for one full second I froze completely.

Then I stopped thinking and kissed him back.

Everything I hadn’t said in two weeks went into it. Every careful smile and measured sentence, every moment I’d talked myself out of feeling what I was feeling — I stopped managing it and let it be true, my arms going around his neck and his pulling me closer, and it was simultaneously the most reckless and the most honest I’d been in years.

When we broke apart we were both breathing like we’d forgotten how, foreheads touching, his eyes still closed.

“God,” he muttered. Then lower: “You have absolutely no idea what you do to me.”

I laughed — small and helpless — and he groaned and stepped back, running a hand through his hair with the expression of a man exercising extraordinary self-control.

“I need to leave this room,” he said, picking up his bag, “before I give in to the primal urge to throw you on that bed and fuck the living day lights out of you.” He pointed at me, almost accusatory. “You’re dangerous.”

“Goodbye, Your Majesty,” I said. My voice only shook slightly.

“Just Dorian.” He was already at the door. He paused, hand on the frame, and looked back once. “Tell the boys I’ll see them soon.”

He left.

I sat down on the edge of his bed and smiled at the ceiling like a complete idiot.

Oh no, I thought. I’m in so much trouble.

******

Two weeks later I couldn’t find a quiet corner of the Voss palace if my life depended on it.

Planners with clipboards had colonized every hallway. Florists were having territorial disputes in the courtyard. Someone had delivered seventeen identical centerpiece options and needed a decision immediately. My sons were treating the whole affair as their personal obstacle course, weaving through caterers and decorators with gleeful disregard for everyone’s sanity.

I stood at the top of the staircase and watched the beautiful chaos below and breathed.

This is real, I thought. This is actually happening.

“You look like you’re about to run,” my mother said, appearing at my elbow with the timing she’d perfected over thirty years of catching me mid-decision.

“I’m not going to run.”

“Good.” She steered me firmly toward my room. “The dressers have been waiting twenty minutes and I will not have you walking out there looking anything less than devastating.” A pause. “You made a good choice, Sera. The best one. You’ll see.”

I let her lead me and said nothing and hoped she was right.

When I came downstairs two hours later I stopped on the bottom step.

Ivory and gold everywhere — draped, lit, arranged with a precision that made the whole room feel like something out of a memory not yet made. Candles in clusters on every surface, flowers cascading from arrangements taller than I was. The courtyard doors thrown open to the night, lights threaded through the trees making the garden look like something dreamed rather than built.

This is for me, I thought, and the reality of it moved through me slow and warm.

“Quite something, isn’t it.”

I turned.

Eli. Mila on his arm. Dressed well, smiling the way people smile when they’ve already decided they’re the most important people in a room.

My stomach didn’t drop. It didn’t do anything. I looked at the man I had once burned my entire life down for and felt — nothing that mattered.

“Eli,” I said pleasantly. “I didn’t expect to see you.”

“I’m the Beta of the one of the top ten packs in the continent.”He spread his hands. “There is no reason to not expect me here.”  His eyes moved over me — quick, assessing. “I’m more surprised to see you. What exactly are you doing here?”

I raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry?”

“This is a high-profile event, Sera.” His voice dropped — low enough for only me, which meant he knew exactly how it would land. “People with names and legacies and reputations that don’t include abandoning a pack in the middle of the night. Who knows how you got into here? By hoarding off some sugar daddy perhaps? But that doesn’t matter because whatever tricks you used to get through these doors won’t hold. Because even I can smell the trash off you.”

I looked at him for a long moment.

“Eli,” I said, “you rejected me at a kitchen table and told me I was doing you a favor by leaving.” I smiled “And yet here you are, six years later, still bringing me up.” I tilted my head. “Doesn’t that seem like a you problem?”

His jaw tightened. “I’m trying to save you from embarrassing—”

“I do not need your help.”

“Do not be rude. In fact I was right, you did me a favour by leaving because you were nothing but a dead weight. Do you know how much Mila has helped me over the years? The connections I got from her? I mean thanks to her, I’ll be meeting the continental Alpha tonight for a business deal. But you? Once a trash always a trash.”

I smiled, “Well I’m happy for you. Truly. Now I’ve got a place to be but let me tell you this, Eli…I might be a trash to you…but read my lips as I say this. Before the end of this night, you will be bowing to me.”

He laughed. “Delusional.”

I was already walking away.

The announcement came twenty minutes later.

The room shifted — that subtle collective realignment when someone significant enters — and I heard Dorian’s name before I saw him, and even in a room full of powerful people he moved like the most important one.

He found me before I reached the stage.

The spotlight caught us both and he didn’t hesitate — crossed the distance between us, took my face in his hands, and kissed me in front of every person in that room like he’d been waiting two weeks for exactly this.

Somewhere in the applause I heard a sharp, strangled sound and I didn’t need to look to know which table it came from.

When he released me I was smiling and so was he, and he leaned down briefly, just for me: “You look extraordinary.”

I took the microphone.

The room quieted.

“For the past six years,” I said, my voice clear and steady, “I have been home — working, rebuilding, learning. Quietly. Only those closest to this pack knew of my return, and I was content to let that be.” I paused. “Tonight I’d like to change that.”

I looked out at the room. At my father in the front row, chin lifted, eyes bright. At my sons — dressed, still for once, watching me with their small serious faces.

At the table near the back where two people had gone very, very still.

“I’d love to officially introduce myself. My name is Sera Voss.” My voice didn’t waver. “Princess of the Voss pack. Official heir to the throne. And as of tonight—” I glanced at Dorian beside me, “—the fiancée of the Continental Alpha.”

The room erupted.

I looked at Eli’s table and grinned at the look of horror on his and Mila’s face.