로그인I couldn’t move.
The words echoed through my mind like thunder.
The last surviving princess of the Lycan Kingdom.
It had to be a lie.
A mistake.
Some cruel joke the Moon Goddess had decided to play after everything Alpha Kael had already taken from me.
“I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else,” I whispered, taking a step back. “I grew up in Blackwood Pack. My mother died when I was young. I don’t belong to any kingdom.”
Commander Rowan lowered his head respectfully.
“Your mother made certain that no one would find you.”
“My mother wasn’t royalty.”
“She was.”
Silence settled over the clearing.
The guards remained kneeling, their eyes fixed on the ground as though looking directly at me without permission would be disrespectful.
Everything felt unreal.
“If this is true…” My voice trembled. “Why was I abandoned?”
Commander Rowan’s expression darkened.
“You were never abandoned.”
He looked toward the black carriage waiting beneath the towering pines.
“You were hidden.”
My fingers tightened around the moonstone pendant hanging from my neck.
“Twenty-two years ago, the Lycan Kingdom was betrayed from within. Your grandfather, King Aldric, was assassinated during a royal banquet.”
I felt my heartbeat quicken.
“The royal palace burned that same night. Every prince and princess was believed dead.”
“Everyone?”
“Everyone except one.”
His eyes met mine.
“You.”
My breath caught.
“My mother escaped?”
Commander Rowan nodded.
“Princess Seraphine fled the palace while carrying you. She disappeared before our enemies could find her.”
“Then… why didn’t she ever tell me?”
“Because every child carrying royal blood was hunted.”
The words sent a chill through me.
“If anyone had learned your identity, you would have died before your first birthday.”
Memories surfaced without warning.
Mother refusing to let me remove the pendant.
Her constant warnings.
“Never tell anyone where this came from.”
“If anything happens to me, never take it off.”
I had thought she was simply sentimental.
Now I realized she had been terrified.
A young guard approached Commander Rowan.
“The carriage is ready.”
Rowan nodded.
Then he turned back to me.
“Your Majesty, we should leave immediately.”
“I am not a queen.”
“Not yet.”
The words settled heavily between us.
Just as I opened my mouth to argue, the royal physician hurried from the edge of the forest.
“Commander.”
His voice was urgent.
“We found something.”
Several guards dragged one of the assassins into the clearing.
I froze.
He was still alive.
Barely.
Blood soaked his clothing, but hatred still burned in his eyes the moment he saw me.
Commander Rowan crouched before him.
“Who sent you?”
The assassin laughed weakly.
“You… are already… too late.”
Rowan’s face remained unreadable.
“Answer.”
The assassin slowly turned toward me.
His cracked lips stretched into a cruel smile.
“So…”
He coughed violently.
“…the lost princess lives.”
Every guard immediately drew their swords.
The assassin ignored them.
His gaze dropped to my stomach.
His smile widened.
“The prophecy…”
My blood ran cold.
“What prophecy?” I demanded.
He laughed again.
“The royal heir…”
His breathing became ragged.
“…must never…”
Before he could finish, his body jerked violently.
Dark veins spread across his neck.
Foam gathered at his lips.
Within seconds, he collapsed lifeless onto the forest floor.
The physician examined him before looking up grimly.
“Poison.”
Commander Rowan cursed under his breath.
“He bit a poison capsule hidden inside his teeth.”
The assassin had chosen death rather than reveal the truth.
But he had already revealed enough.
He knew who I was.
He knew about my unborn child.
And he had spoken of a prophecy.
Commander Rowan slowly stood.
“This changes everything.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
He hesitated.
For the first time since meeting him, uncertainty crossed his face.
“The prophecy says that the child born from the last royal princess…”
He paused.
“…will either unite every werewolf kingdom…”
His voice became almost a whisper.
“…or destroy them all.”
A distant wolf howl pierced the night.
Commander Rowan’s expression hardened instantly.
“They’ve found us.”
He drew his sword.
“Protect the Princess!”
From the darkness beyond the trees, dozens of glowing red eyes suddenly opened.
End of Chapter 6
The message stayed there beneath the missing record, undisturbed.*We know she remembers.*No one moved for several seconds. I wondered, my stomach twisting, whether whoever had written this could somehow see into the memories themselves.“They don’t need to know what you remembered,” the High Priestess said gently, correcting me before the fear could take hold fully. “They only need to know you’ve been recovering memories connected to Aurelia at all. That’s enough to tell them someone has been watching this investigation closely.”Lucien ordered the archive sealed completely, no further discussion needed.-----Rowan changed the security protocol immediately. I would never enter restricted areas alone again. No archive access without him or Lucien present. Every administrative authorization would be verified twice over. Anything concerning Aurelia would be moved into protected custody, and anyone accessing royal records from now on would be logged personally.“This isn’t about lockin
Rowan noticed something odd while examining the ancient document again — the royal seal impressed into it sat slightly different from the silver administrative seal recovered after the assassination attempt.He placed both side by side. Not identical.But built from the same administrative authority.The High Priestess studied them carefully. The modern seal, she realized, might not simply have been copied from the ancient one. It might have been passed down, generation after generation, through the same office entirely.That made the connection far more serious than any of us wanted it to be.-----Rowan pulled the modern security authorization records and compared them directly against the old documents.The similarities unsettled all of us. Then: guard assignments altered, restricted routes manipulated, royal movements monitored, orders issued through official authority, the eastern passage specifically targeted.Now: guard assignments altered, restricted routes manipulated, my own
I couldn’t stop thinking about that final line.*The traitor wore the royal seal.*“Does that mean the traitor was definitely a royal official?” I asked.The High Priestess explained carefully that the seal proved access, not identity. Someone could have held legitimate authority themselves, or borrowed the seal, or been ordered to act by someone above them, or simply abused a position they’d been trusted to hold honestly.Lucien ordered the document kept secret. I understood, sitting with it, how frighteningly close this ancient betrayal sat to everything we’d just lived through ourselves.-----Rowan began reconstructing the massacre from every surviving record, building it into a single timeline rather than treating each fragment separately. Palace security changed. Guards redirected. The eastern passage opened. The escape route exposed. The royal wing breached. The passage ordered closed. A countermand issued. The guardian carrying me through regardless. The official record, event
The words still hung in the archive.*House Valerius.*“Who are they?” I asked.The librarian explained that House Valerius had historically been one of the kingdom’s most powerful administrative families. Unlike the great warrior houses, they’d never commanded armies. They’d controlled something quieter, and in some ways more powerful — information itself.Royal records. Succession documents. Sealed correspondence. Palace administration. Official decrees. For generations, their influence had come simply from knowing what the kingdom knew before anyone else did.-----The librarian retrieved an older administrative genealogy, and it revealed something significant.The position of Keeper of Royal Records hadn’t been a simple individual appointment. For generations, it had effectively stayed within House Valerius — not officially hereditary, but almost always passed to someone from the same family regardless.Which meant the Valerius ancestor who’d recorded me as alive hadn’t been some
The librarian still stared at the page, the word *Alive* sitting undisturbed beside Aurelia’s name.I couldn’t stop looking at it either. Someone had written it years after the massacre.“How long after?” I asked.The librarian checked the date carefully. Long enough, he confirmed, that the infant princess would have grown well past infancy by then.Someone had held information about her, years after the initial rescue. Not simply on the night she’d disappeared.-----He compared that date against the settlement records, and found the two overlapped. By the time this notation was written, I’d already been living under my new name for some time.I understood the unsettling implication immediately. Someone in the royal administration might have known exactly where I was.And they’d never come for me.-----The High Priestess examined the notation carefully, and noted its phrasing. Not *possibly alive.* Not *rumored alive.* Not *unconfirmed sighting.*Simply, plainly: *Alive.*That kind
The librarian’s hands went still over the ancient registry. I watched him carefully, and he didn’t speak right away.“What did you find?” Lucien asked.The librarian looked at me. Then back at the page.“Aurelia,” he said quietly.The name sat written inside the oldest surviving royal registry we’d found. He didn’t declare what it meant yet. He simply turned the page carefully, unwilling to move faster than the evidence would allow.-----“This isn’t an ordinary historical record,” he explained. “This is the official royal birth and succession registry. Every legitimate royal child was recorded here — birth names, dates, parents, branch, succession position, ceremonial status.”I understood, hearing that, that this was the closest thing to an official answer we might ever find.“Read it,” I said.-----He read the entry aloud.*Princess Aurelia, youngest daughter of the reigning royal couple.*Her parents’ names matched the portrait exactly. Her birth date fit my own age perfectly. He







