Darius POV
I stood outside Wynterhold Keep and tried to convince myself this wasn't the stupidest thing I'd ever done.
It probably was.
"You're nervous," Rowan observed in my head.
"Shut up," I muttered.
You're about to ask the most powerful Alpha family in the kingdom if you can court their only sister. Of course you're nervous.
"Not helping," I said.
My hands were sweating. I wiped them on my pants for the third time. The formal courting letter felt like it weighed a hundred pounds in my jacket pocket. Not the personal letter I'd written to Beatrice—that was still safely locked in my desk drawer. This was the official request, carefully worded with Brennan's help to follow every protocol.
Behind me, Alpha Brennan waited by the carriage. We'd come under the guise of finalizing tra
