CHAPTER THREE

Six Years Later

“Enzo! Damien! I swear if you two don’t—”

The blur of small bodies shot past me so fast the stack of documents in my arms nearly went with them, papers fanning out in every direction as I grabbed the wall to steady myself.

“SORRY MAMA!” Enzo’s voice was already halfway down the corridor and getting smaller.

“You two should slow down!!” I called after him, but they were already gone — the thunder of small feet, a crash that sounded expensive, then laughter suggesting nothing was actually broken. I muttered something under my breath that a princess probably shouldn’t mutter, gathered my papers, and kept walking.

Six years. Six years and those boys still ran everywhere like the floor was on fire.

The past six years have been….thrilling and brutal at the same time. I had a lot of catching up to do once I came back home and settled in…but it’d all been an absolute bliss. Especially because of my two boys. They were like the light I needed in the right moment of my life, and everything I do…was because of them.

I pushed open my father’s study door without knocking — he’d given up expecting me to knock approximately four years ago — and crossed to his desk and dropped the stack directly on top of whatever he was reading on his screen.

He looked up slowly and pushed his glasses came down.

“I have told you,” he said, with the patience of a man who had said this many times, “that documents belong on the server. Not in your arms. Not on my desk. On the server. This is not the eighties.”

“First of all,” I said, pulling the chair across from him and sitting, “I happen to enjoy working with paper and pen, thank you. Second of all—” I leveled a look at him. “How could you?”

He blinked. “Which particular how could I.”

“You know which one.”

 He removed his glasses completely, set them on the desk, and leaned back — and something in the careful way he did it told me he had been waiting for this conversation and had dressed himself accordingly.

“I was going to tell you.”

“When?” I leaned forward. “After the venue was booked? After the guest list was finalized? You made a decision about my marriage and I found out from Aunt Rowe over breakfast like it was pack gossip—”

“Your Aunt Rowe needs to learn to hold her tongue—”

“Dad.”

He exhaled. “Sera.”

“I’m not a child you arrange things around anymore. I’m going to be Alpha of this pack in a few months. I sit in every meeting, I sign off on every treaty, I have rebuilt this alliance from the ground up with my own hands—” My voice was steady but my jaw was tight. “And you made a decision about my life without telling me first. I deserve better than that.”

The room went quiet.

When he spoke again his voice had shifted — less administrator, more father.

“You’re right,” he said. “I should have come to you first. That was wrong of me and I’m sorry.”

I hadn’t expected the apology to arrive that quickly. It took some of the heat out of me.

“But I need you to hear me,” he continued. “Not as your father. As your Alpha.” He folded his hands on the desk. “In a few months you step into the most powerful and most exposed position on this continent. You will be a woman in a room full of men who have already decided what you can and cannot do. You will need allies that no amount of intelligence or hard work can manufacture alone.” He paused. “A marriage alliance with the Continental Alpha gives you that. It gives your sons that. It gives this pack that.”

“Dad…”

“With great power comes great responsibility. As a woman who will get so much power you must realize that you have thousands of lives in your control. Their fates are attached to the decisions to make which means that when you think, you think what will benefit these people trusting on you FIRST…before anything else.”

I pressed my lips together because he was right and I didn’t want him to see me concede it too quickly.

“What if I don’t like him?”

My father smiled.  “You will learn to.”

“That is not reassuring.”

“Dorian Crest is respected across every territory on this continent. Strong, responsible, and by everything I know of him, a man of his word.” He tilted his head. “And you know this. You’ve read his record.”

I had. The moment Aunt Rowe’s voice had dropped to a whisper over her tea I had pulled every document, every treaty decision, every alliance outcome attached to his name. He was impressive on paper. Most dangerous men were.

“Nobody even knows what he looks like,” I said.

“Neither do you.” A beat. “Which means you’ll meet each other honestly.”

I looked at my father for a long moment. Then at the stack of documents between us — six years of work, of rebuilding, of becoming someone my pack could stand behind.

My sons deserved a stable future. My pack deserved a strong alliance. And I deserved to stop making decisions from fear.

“Fine,” I said, standing. “I’ll think about it.” I pointed at him. “But if you ever arrange something this significant without telling me first again, I will move every file in this study to the server and you will never find a single one.”

He had the audacity to look unbothered.

****

I thought about it for exactly twenty-four hours. Then I said yes.

One week later I was in the front sitting room in a dress I’d changed into three times, my palms flat against my thighs because I was not going to meet my future husband with visibly sweaty hands.

The room was too quiet. The clock on the mantle was too loud.

You have negotiated trade agreements that made continental Alphas uncomfortable, I reminded myself. You can have a conversation with a man.

Small feet on the staircase made me turn.

Enzo and Damien came down in their good clothes — actually buttoned, actually tucked, which meant their grandmother had been involved — and installed themselves on either side of me with identical expressions of barely contained excitement.

Enzo leaned up and whispered, “Is today when we meet our new daddy?”

My heart did something complicated and I kept my face smooth. “We’re meeting him, yes. Which means?”

“Best behaviour,” they said together.

Damien looked up at me with six-year-old sincerity. “Mama, we’ve always wanted a daddy. So of course we will be on our best behavior.”

I pressed my lips to the top of his head and said nothing, because some things lived in the chest and not in the mouth.

The front doors opened.

Two bodyguards first, then three more — and then him.

I had read his record. I had studied his alliances, his decisions, his reputation across four territories. I had prepared myself for a powerful man.

I had not prepared for this.

He moved through the room like someone who had never once questioned whether he belonged in it — not arrogant, not performative, just settled in himself in the particular way of people who have nothing left to prove. Dark amber eyes swept the room and landed, briefly but completely, on me.

He greeted my father. Then he turned and smiled at me — unhurried, like we had all the time in the world — and something in my chest did something I chose to immediately ignore.

“Welcome to our home, Your Majesty.” I kept my voice even and dipped my head.

My boys chorused it a half second behind me.

He looked down at them and something shifted in his expression — the formal composure loosening into something warmer and entirely real. He lowered himself into a crouch, level with two very wide-eyed six-year-olds.

“And who are these?” he asked.

“Enzo,” said Enzo.

“Damien,” said Damien. Then, carefully: “Your Majesty.”

He laughed — low and genuine. “Did your mother tell you to be on your best behavior today?”

They glanced at me. Back at him. Nodded.

“Smart woman,” he said. “And she’s right — gentlemen always conduct themselves well in public.” He leaned in slightly, conspiratorial. “But you know what’s not allowed in my house?”

They leaned in too, completely captivated. “What?”

“Being boring.”

His hands shot out.

The twins dissolved into shrieking laughter and I stood watching the most powerful Alpha on the continent tickle my sons into the sofa cushions like he’d known them their whole lives, and my chest did the thing again and this time I was too slow to ignore it.

He stood eventually, smoothed his jacket, and turned to me.

The laughter was still in his eyes when he extended his hand.

“You have remarkable sons,” he said. “I mean that.”

I took his hand. Firm, warm. “Thank you.”

“I know this is fast.” His voice dropped slightly — not for the room, just for me. “I know you agreed to this without any reason to trust it. I’m not going to pretend that’s nothing.” He held my gaze steadily. “But I want to make you a promise. From today. If you give this a chance — if you walk into this with me — I will spend every day making sure you feel chosen. Cherished. Like you are exactly where you are supposed to be.”