DRAVEN’S POV…
The obsidian walls of my private solar seemed to pulsate with the rhythm of my heartbeat, a steady, driving thrum of restored ego and simmering malice. I stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, watching the Southern sun set over the Ironclaw marshes, turning the stagnant waters into a sea of liquid copper.
On my desk lay the trade treaty, its ink a permanent scar on my pride. But beside it sat a small, velvet-lined box containing a pearl-encrusted rattle. A symbol of the one thing Kaelion could never take from me.
"The arrangements, Alpha," a voice squeaked from the shadows.
I turned. Silas, the Master of Protocol, stood there with a stack of vellum that trembled in his weathered hands. He had been the pack’s planner for two generations; he knew how to stage a wedding, a fu
