Chapter 16

Nadia

We returned to Royal territory by mid-afternoon, exhaustion settling deep into my bones despite the relief carried by everyone around me. Draven and the surviving rogues who'd surrendered were escorted under heavy guard toward a secure holding facility on Row's land, neutral ground agreed upon by all three pack leaders.

My father insisted on a healer checking my shoulder the moment we arrived, though the wound turned out shallow enough to close within days without any lasting damage.

"You'll have a scar," the healer said, finishing the wrap. "Small one."

"I don't mind," I said, and meant it. It felt earned, in a strange way, the first real mark from finally standing in the fight instead of hiding from it.

Kade stayed close through all of it, quiet but present, hovering in the doorway while the healer worked, then sitting beside me afterward while my father handled the flood of messages arriving from all three territories.

"You should rest," Kade said eventually.

"I don't think I can. Not yet." I glanced at him, still soaked and tired myself, mud dried along one sleeve. "You should rest too."

"Probably." He didn't move. "I keep replaying it. The moment you went into the river after him. I've never been more terrified in my life."

"I had it handled."

"I know." He managed a small, exhausted smile. "Doesn't make watching it any easier."

News of Draven's defeat spread quickly through all three territories over the following days, and with it came a shift I hadn't fully anticipated. Where rumors about a hidden female Alpha had once carried an edge of danger, curiosity, or threat, the story now spreading was different entirely — a princess who'd walked willingly into an ambush and won.

"You're famous," Priya announced at school the following week, sliding a printed pack newsletter across the lunch table. "Like, actually famous. Look at this."

I glanced at the article, my own name printed formally for the first time in my life, details of the alliance and Draven's defeat laid out for pack families across the region. "This is strange to see."

"Strange good or strange bad?"

"I don't know yet." I set the newsletter down carefully. "A month ago, nobody outside my family knew I existed. Now there's a printed article about me fighting a rogue Alpha in a river."

"Welcome to being a legend," Priya said, grinning. "Very on-brand for you, honestly."

My father called a formal gathering two weeks later, inviting representatives from all three allied packs to Royal territory, along with several smaller packs from the surrounding region who'd reached out cautiously since the news broke. I stood beside him on the front steps of the main house, wearing the blue formally again, Kade at my side as the crowd gathered below.

"Word has spread quickly," my father began, addressing the gathered representatives, "of the threat our territories faced, and of how it was finally resolved. I won't pretend the danger is entirely behind us. Draven's remaining followers, wherever they've scattered, may yet cause trouble. But the immediate threat to our borders has ended, and I believe the manner of its ending matters as much as the outcome itself."

He gestured toward me. "My daughter, Nadia, the first female Alpha born into our bloodline in three generations, chose to stand and fight rather than hide. She walked willingly into danger to protect not just herself, but every pack now standing here today."

A murmur passed through the crowd, though this time it carried none of the wariness I'd half-expected. If anything, the expressions looking back at me held something closer to respect.

"For eighteen years," my father continued, "I made the choice to hide her, believing it was the only way to keep her safe. I was wrong. Her strength was never something to fear or conceal. It was something this region needed, and something it will continue to need as we move forward, together."

He turned to me, something proud and steady in his eyes. "Nadia will begin taking a formal role in Royal Pack matters, training not just as my daughter, but as heir to this territory, openly and without concealment from this day forward."

The crowd's response was warmer than I expected, scattered applause building into something more genuine as representatives from packs I'd never met looked at me not with suspicion, but with something like hope.

Later that evening, after the formal gathering wound down into a quieter reception, Kade found me on the same front steps, the crowd thinned to smaller clusters of conversation across the grounds.

"Heir to Royal territory," he said. "Officially, now. That's a big step."

"Terrifying step," I corrected, though I couldn't fully suppress the small smile pulling at my mouth. "But not one I'm running from."

"I noticed." He studied me for a moment, something warm and certain in his expression. "You've changed so much since that first day in training class. The girl too scared to block a hit properly."

"You've changed too," I said. "Somehow patient enough to wait out a girl who kept lying about being fine for weeks straight."

"Worth it," he said simply. "Every bit of it."

He reached for my hand, and I let him, no hesitation left in the gesture at all. Somewhere below us, our fathers stood together near the gardens, deep in easy conversation, the alliance between our packs no longer fragile or newly formed, but settling into something solid and lasting.

"What happens now?" I asked. "Formally, I mean. Between us."

"Whatever you want," Kade said. "I meant it months ago when I said I'd wait as long as you needed. That hasn't changed just because the danger's passed."

"I don't think I need waiting anymore," I said quietly. "I think I'm ready. For all of it. The bond, the alliance, whatever comes with being heir to this territory standing beside heir to yours."

Something bright and relieved passed across his face. "Are you sure?"

"I've spent my whole life being told to hide what I am, to be smaller, quieter, safer." I looked out at the grounds, at the packs gathered below, at the life stretching out ahead of me that looked nothing like the one I'd been raised to expect. "I'm done being smaller than I actually am. With you, with this alliance, with whatever comes next. I'm ready."

Kade smiled, the kind that reached all the way to his eyes, and pulled me close as the evening settled warm and quiet around us, the first true peace either of us had felt in months.

Behind us, the lights of Royal territory glowed steady against the darkening sky, no longer hiding anything at all.