Dear Little Prince
1580 Words
Future Ashen.
“Papa,” my daughter whispered, “did the letter make him happy?”
I looked down at the ring on my finger.
The fire was low that night, nothing but a bed of red-gold embers and slow breathing shadows. My children had stopped sitting like children somewhere along the way. They leaned closer now, listening not for the pretty parts, but for the wounds hidden underneath them.
“No,” I said quietly. “Not happy.”
My son frowned. “But it was from his mother.”
“Yes.”
“Then why not?”
I turned the ring once.
“Because sometimes the people we love leave us answers too late. And sometimes, the answers they leave are really just doors to more questions.”
My daughter’s face softened.
“Did he still read it?”
I smiled faintly.
“He had to.”
Younger Ashen.
I caught her wrist gently.
“Still hurts?”
Her eyes lifted to mine.
“Not at all.”
Guilt moved through me before I could stop it.
“I’m sorry.”
“For being stabbed?” Her brows drew together.
“For making you feel it.”
“You did not make me.”
“I chose to keep our bond open” Her voice softened. “Do not apologize for something you bled through.”
I did not know how to answer that.
So I held her hand a little longer before letting go.
This time, I did not pull away through the bond.
At least, I tried not to.
Then I remembered the letter
I put my hand in my pocket.
The paper was still there.
Folded.
Warm from being close to my chest.
My mother’s handwriting waited against my fingers like a pulse.
Dear Little Prince.
The words I had seen before the attack came back so sharply I forgot the forest, the hunters, the blood, the cold.
I pulled the letter out.
No one spoke.
Even Lord Pebblewick, perched on a low branch above Veyra’s shoulder, seemed to understand that cooing at the wrong moment might get him turned into soup.
Moon sat beside me.
Not touching.
Close enough that I could feel her warmth if I needed it.
I unfolded the letter.
The seal had already broken for my blood. The paper opened easily now, as if it had been waiting years to breathe.
My mother’s handwriting flowed across the page in silver-blue ink.
Beautiful.
Steady.
Alive in a way she was not.
My throat tightened before I read the first line.
My little prince,
I stopped there.
Just there.
Three words, and something inside me folded.
No one had ever called me that.
Not even as a joke.
In SilvaFrost, I had been boy, omega, useless, burden, mistake. My name had been used like a warning. Like something to spit out before punishment.
But my mother had written little prince.
Not because she pitied me.
Because she knew something I had never been allowed to know.
Moon’s fingers brushed the ground near mine.
An offer.
Not a demand.
I kept reading.
If this letter has opened for you, then the ring has accepted your blood and the cabin has awakened. That means I failed to keep the truth hidden long enough for you to grow safely. I am sorry, my son. I am sorry for every cold morning you faced without me, for every question I left unanswered, and for every lie that was allowed to grow around your name.
Allowed to grow.
My fingers tightened around the paper.
Not just told.
Grown.
Like roots.
Like thorns.
Like the world had planted lies around me and waited for me to choke inside them.
You and your sister are not weak. You were never weak. You come from the last pure white ice-wolf line of Frostveil, a bloodline older than LunariaNova’s throne and feared by those who remember what winter can do when it kneels to no crown.
Nara made the smallest sound.
I looked up.
Her eyes were wide, fixed on the letter as if the words had reached across the clearing and touched her too.
Not weak.
You were never weak.
My mother had written it like she knew.
Like she knew what they would call us.
Like she knew Nara would be made to feel small before her wolf ever had a chance to rise.
Like she knew I would believe empty was a name.
I looked back down.
The letters blurred for a moment.
I blinked until they sharpened.
Our wolves were hidden because our blood was hunted, coveted, and feared. There are those who would have chained you for your power, bred you for your blood, crowned you for their own ambition, or killed you before you learned to stand. I did what I thought would keep you alive.
Hidden.
My wolf had not been gone.
Not absent.
Not proof that the Moon Goddess had looked at me and found nothing worth blessing.
Hidden.
Auron had been there.
Chained in the dark.
Sleepy voice. Tired breath. Still calling me special when I had spent nineteen years believing I was less than everyone around me.
I swallowed hard.
Moon shifted closer.
This time, I did not move away.
Your father’s rejection damaged the bond around your wolf. That much I feared. The bond between mates is sacred, but when broken cruelly, before truth is spoken and before blood is protected, it can fracture more than hearts. It can wound what has not yet fully awakened.
My father.
Of course.
Even in a letter from my mother, his shadow found me.
Torren Drakewood had rejected her. I knew that much. He had let Seraphine rule his home. He had let Callan and Lysa look at me like dirt beneath polished boots. He had let Nara grow up afraid of being too visible.
But this was worse.
His rejection had not just hurt my mother.
It had touched my wolf.
My hand curled into a fist.
Frost crept over the edge of the paper.
Moon’s hand covered mine.
Carefully.
“Ashen,” she whispered.
I looked at the frost.
It stopped spreading.
I forced myself to breathe.
“I’m fine.”
Solan, from the tree, said quietly, “That sentence is losing credibility.”
I should have been annoyed.
Instead, the dry comment kept me from breaking the paper in half.
I read on.
But rejection alone should not have chained him so deeply. If your wolf is silent when you read this, then something else was done. A curse. A spell. A betrayal. I suspected it before I died, but suspicion is not proof, and proof without protection would have made you a target sooner.
My heart slowed.
A curse.
A spell.
A betrayal.
Three possibilities, and each one worse than the last.
Someone had helped chain Auron.
Someone had looked at a child and decided his wolf should never wake.
My breath went cold in my lungs.
Who?
My father?
Seraphine?
A witch?
Someone from Frostveil?
Someone from Moon’s court?
I hated that the questions came faster than the answers.
I hated that my mother knew enough to fear, but not enough to tell me where to place the blame.
Do not trust any hand that reaches too quickly for the Frostveil ring. Do not trust false moonlight. Do not trust a white wolf who needs witnesses more than truth.
Dorian.
The thought came sharp as a blade.
False moonlight.
A white wolf who needed witnesses.
Had she known?
No.
She could not have known Dorian specifically.
Could she?
I stared at the line until the words seemed to move.
Do not trust a white wolf who needs witnesses more than truth.
Dorian had stood before court and performed power.
I had spent my life hiding from mine.
Which one would frightened people believe?
The one who knew how to shine.
Or the one who still did not know why his wolf slept.
If your sister has awakened before you, do not fear it. Nara was born under a priestess moon. Her path will not look like yours, but it will cross yours when your power is bound and when your eyes cannot see the snare. Protect her, but do not cage her. She is not only yours to save. One day, she may be the reason you survive.
Nara stopped breathing.
I felt it more than heard it.
Protect her, but do not cage her.
The words struck too close.
I looked at my sister.
She was staring at me, face pale and bruised from exhaustion, with the knife still in her hand and guilt still sitting behind her eyes.
I had spent so long keeping her behind me that I had not known how to let her stand beside me.
Mother had known that too.
Somehow, from years away, she had still known me well enough to correct me.
Nara’s mouth trembled.
“I don’t know what that means,” she whispered.
“Neither do I,” I said.
It was the first honest thing I had said in hours.
I looked back at the letter.
I cannot tell you everything in this letter. Some truths are too dangerous when written. Some names listen when ink remembers them. Some betrayals still have teeth.
A chill moved through the clearing.
Veyra’s face went still.
That line meant something to her.
“Veyra,” I said.
She looked away.
- Writer
