Behind me, the castle doors slammed shut. The war had begun.
But Kade had made one fatal mistake.
He thought he was fighting for an heir.
He didn't realize he was fighting a Queen who had already won.
---
The boom echoed in my bones, down to the marrow where five years of fear lived.
Five years of being called wolfless. Five years of Kade's rejection echoing in the square: "I, Alpha Kade, reject you, Elara, as my mate."
Now Alpha Kade knelt in the snow outside MY castle walls. Not his. Mine.
"Open the gates, Elara," he snarled, his Alpha voice cracking against my wards. "Give me my son. End this without bloodshed."
Our son. The one he didn't know existed until the Moon Goddess forced his hand at the last Alpha gathering. The one whose scent made every wolf in Kade's pack drop to
