The Crown’s Greatest Regret

“Mate? That whale?”

The words hit me before I even understood what I was hearing. I had come around the corner of the banquet hall with a plate of food in my hands, looking for Cassian because I wanted to wish him luck before the ceremony. Instead I found him surrounded by his friends, all of them laughing so hard some of them had to hold onto each other.

I should have walked away right there but I didn’t.

“I’d rather die mate-less,” Cassian said, and the whole group howled like he had just told the funniest joke in the world.

I stood frozen behind a pillar, my plate shaking in my hands until a piece of cake slid off and landed on the floor with a soft, pathetic sound that somehow felt louder than his laughter.

I was seventeen. I had loved Cassian Thornwyck since I was twelve years old, back when he used to sit beside me in class and share his pencils because he said mine always broke. Somewhere between then and now, he became the person everyone wanted and I became the girl everyone laughed at. Somewhere between then and now, I let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, the way my wolf howled every time he walked into a room meant something to him too.

Now I know the truth. He had known. He had known I was his mate, and instead of telling me, instead of even looking at me with anything close to kindness, he stood in front of his friends and called me a whale.

I don’t remember walking back to my dorm room. I don’t remember dropping the plate somewhere along the hallway, though someone told me later that they found broken glass and cake outside the east wing and assumed there had been an accident. There was an accident, It was me.

That night I cried until my throat hurt, until my pillow was soaked through, until I had no tears left and only a strange hollow feeling remained where my heart used to be. I looked at myself in the mirror through swollen eyes and I hated everything I saw. My arms. My stomach. My thighs. The body that Cassian Thornwyck, future king of the Lycan throne, had just told an entire crowd he would rather die than claim.

I did not sleep that night. I lay awake and listened to my own heartbeat and promised myself I would never let anyone see me cry over him again.

A few months later, my parents sat me down at the kitchen table and told me they were sending me abroad, to a pack territory across the ocean where a distant cousin of my mother’s could help me finish my education somewhere no one knew my name or my shame. I did not argue. I did not beg to stay. I packed my bags myself, folding each item with a kind of quiet determination I had never felt before.

The morning I left, Draven came to see me off. He was the only one who did. He hugged me so tight I could barely breathe and told me that anyone who couldn’t see how amazing I was didn’t deserve to be in my life anyway. I remember laughing through my tears, because that was so like him, always trying to fix what could not be fixed with kindness alone.

Before I got into the car, I turned back once and looked at the kingdom that had made me feel so small for so long. The palace towers, the training grounds, the halls where Cassian’s laughter still echoed in my memory like a wound that refused to close.

I made myself a promise that day, standing there with my suitcase in one hand and the last of my tears drying on my cheeks. I will never let anyone make me feel small again.

I did not know then how long that promise would take to keep, or how much it would cost me. I did not know that seven years later, I would be walking back through those same palace gates, no longer the girl who cried in secret, no longer the girl who begged silently to be loved.

I did not know that Cassian Thornwyck would be standing there waiting, and that this time, it would be his turn to feel what it meant to want someone who no longer wanted him back. But that comes later. First, you should know who I became…