He Chose Her Pup, I Revealed My Royalty

Chapter 4

The air seemed to seize, motionless, in that one instant.

Chloe was the first to recover. She burst into shrill, bright laughter,the kind that bent her at the waist, until she had to brace herself on Dominic to stay upright.

"The Lycan King's daughter?"

She laughed until tears welled up, swiping at her eyes, jabbing a finger at me as though I were a lunatic.

"Seraphina, have you finally cracked? Is this some delusion you've been running in your head,one you couldn't wake up from?"

"Everyone in this hall knows you crawled out of the slums. A Rogue. And now you have the gall to play at being some long-lost princess of the Lycan King?"

"It's the joke of the century."

She turned, smirking, to Dominic.

Dominic. Look at her. Tell me she's lost her mind. To dare to lie like this.

But Dominic was not laughing.

He was staring at me. Locked onto me. And in those deep, dark eyes,for the first time in five years,I saw doubt.

He was, after all, an Alpha. His ability to feel the weight of power was sharper than Chloe's by an order of magnitude.

In the instant before, he had felt,clearly,the terrible pressure rolling off me. That was not the aura of any Rogue. That was the natural blood-suppression of a higher being upon a lesser one.

"Seraphina."

He took a step forward, brow drawn tight, and reached for my wrist.

"Stop this. Come back with me. I'll forget every word of the nonsense you're spouting."

I looked at the hand reaching for me,the hand that had once held mine a thousand times, that had once cradled me to sleep,and now turning my stomach.

"Off."

I bit out the single word.

In the next breath, a wave of violet-gold force exploded outward from me.

BOOM.

Dominic did not even brush the hem of my coat. He was hurled backward three full strides, slammed into the rosewood cabinet behind him, the impact shaking the room. The priceless antique vase on top of it tipped, fell, and shattered into a thousand pieces.

"Ahh!"

Chloe shrieked, her face white as paper, hands clutching her belly as she scrambled aside.

Dominic stared at his own palm in shock. There was a livid burn across the skin,the price of trespass against royal authority.

"This is impossible…"

He raised his head, pupils wildly dilated, breathing shallow.

"You can't carry this kind of wolf-pressure… You couldn't even manage a basic shift…"

"That was what you all believed."

I let my gaze sweep, slow and contemptuous, across the villa I had once poured my heart into,and settled, at last, on Dominic's bone-white face.

"My wolf-soul slept because my blood is too strong. As a child I sealed her down myself, in self-defense,and you blind, witless creatures all mistook that silence for the mark of trash."

"As for the wolfsbane."

I let my mouth curl.

"That filth wouldn't fit between my wolf's teeth."

I did not glance at them again. I turned and began the long walk toward the door.

The wind and snow surged in across the threshold and tore at my hair,but I felt none of the cold. The royal blood running in me had ignited, hot as flowing magma.

"Halt!"

Dominic roared from behind me. His Alpha instinct could not endure the sensation of something escaping his control.

"Lycan King's daughter or not,this is the territory of the Silvermoon Pack, and I am the Alpha here! Without my permission, you do not pass through that door!"

"Won't I?"

I did not turn. I only looked toward the great gate of the courtyard, where the snow still raged.

"Then perhaps you ought to ask them whether they'll permit it."

My words had not yet faded when a low, rolling thunder of engines came in from the distance, its vibration travelling through the snow on the ground.

It was the unmistakable purr of a top-tier convoy.

Then the headlights,searing, ruthless,cut through the blackness of the storm. Ten armored Rolls-Royces in coal-black formation barrelled through the wrought-iron gates of the villa as though they were paper, and rolled to a stop before the steps of the manor.

Doors flew open in a single motion.

Twenty men in tactical black,gold wolf's-head insignia gleaming over their hearts,poured from the cars in unison. Every motion was disciplined, exact. Their bearing was that of a royal guard, and only of a royal guard.

The man at their head removed his sunglasses, revealing a pair of eyes that shone with the same violet-gold as mine.

He strode through the snow to me, ignoring the stricken, ashen Dominic and the trembling Chloe entirely. There, in the howling storm, he sank to one knee and bowed his proud head before me.

It was the absolute submission owed only to royalty.

"Welcome home, my lady."

His voice rang clear, cutting through the wind and the snow.

Behind him, twenty royal guards spoke as one, the chorus thundering across the courtyard.

"Welcome home, my lady."

I looked down at the man kneeling at my feet,my own blood brother. The young heir of the line. Lucian.

"Brother. I'm home."

Lucian raised his eyes. The man who was hard as iron in all things had, in this moment, eyes full of pure, aching love for me. He stood, swept the heavy black overcoat from his own shoulders and laid it gently across mine,and then he turned, and his stare went cold as winter steel as it locked onto Dominic, frozen statue-still in the doorway.

"This is the worthless dog who let my honored sister suffer for five years?"

His voice carried not a single degree of warmth. The temperature of the air around us seemed to plunge by another ten.

Dominic stared at the gold wolf's-head crest,the highest sigil of werewolf authority,and his legs, against his will, began to shake.

That was the dread written into the very genes of every wolf alive. The dread before the Lycan King himself.

He understood now. He understood, at last, what he had thrown away.

In that instant, what I saw in Dominic's eyes was named Despair.

But this was only the beginning.