Epilogue - Long Live

Ferrara

I watched my sires carefully, noting how their eyes widened, their lips curved in surprise — quiet outrage mixed with hate shinning in their eyes as they turned to one another, whispering furiously and shaking their heads in disagreement. They were reforming alliances, strengthening their solidarity against me. Any moment now, any wrong word, and they would depose me. I could feel the tension thick in the air like a smoke pollution.

“Your Majesty,” Samuel was the first to step forward, bowing curtly. “Don't you think you're making a hasty decision? Surely, you do not mean to have her as a soulmate. As beautiful and graceful as she is, her status as a shifter hardly befits your — ”

“I know what I'm doing, Sam. Her being a shifter is no basis.”

At this, he recoiled, stunned. Swiveling back to the gathering, he shrugged, muttering quietly. “He's the king. I tried but he won't listen.”

The disapproving murmurs and hostile glances at Seline multiplied, driving my butt to the edge o