THE PRINCESS THE ALPHA REJECTED
His posture, always so carefully controlled, faltered for just a heartbeat before he forced it back into place.
I felt no triumph in it. I had thought, somewhere in the months since the rejection, that I might. Instead, I felt only the quiet, unremarkable truth of it: he had judged me by what he could see, and what he could see had never been the whole of me. That was his failure to carry, not mine to savor.
My father's voice rose as we reached the front of the hall, carrying easily without needing to be raised.
"Many of you have spent this past year among a young woman you knew by another name," he said. "I present my daughter. Princess Ariana Mooncrest."