--- I should have died last night. Instead I was standing on a raised stone platform in the center of the Great Hollow, bloodied bandages wrapped around my Lycan shoulder, my unborn Lycan daughter kicking against my ribs like she was trying to remind me she was still here. And ten thousand eyes were on me. The Gathering. Every pack, every realm. Wolves, Vampires, Fae, and Lycans who hadn’t seen each other in 200 years had come. All to see if the new Lycan dynasty would live or die. Darius stood to my right, silver Lycan blade at his hip, hand hovering close to mine like he’d bolt in front of me the second anyone moved wrong. Elias was on my left, small but unshaken in his ceremonial black, chin high, silver Lycan eyes scanning the crowd like a king who’d been born for this. He was.

