KAIA'S POV
That night, Mia and I didn’t sleep right away.
After everything we talked about, there was no way we could just crawl into bed and pretend like everything was normal. Alpha Gareth’s coronation being rushed, the secret meeting, the rumor of a surviving heir—it all felt like the beginning of something much bigger than us. Still, we tried to focus on what we could control.
Mia helped me practice all the things I might need to say during the ceremony—speeches, greetings, how to answer questions from council members_which, by the way, I’d rather not. We read through scrolls, practiced stances, and repeated phrases until our mouths hurt.
Somewhere between reading and planning, we both fell asleep—fully dressed and surrounded by chaos. Books were scattered on the floor. Scrolls wer
