I could feel it, rising inside me. A fire, an unstoppable force that burned with a clarity I hadn’t known I was capable of. The moment my fingers had touched the stone altar, the power had surged through me, like a wild river breaking through its dam. It was a weight—heavy, relentless—and it didn’t just linger in my chest or my veins. It filled me. It surrounded me. It consumed me.
And as I stood there, my skin still tingling from the contact, I realized something. Something that made everything else fade into the background, as though it had always been there, waiting for me to see it.
My fate wasn’t tied to a bond. It wasn’t tied to a mate, or the life I had once believed was mine.
No, my fate was tied to something else. Something far older, something deeper.
A throne.
The throne of
