“I didn’t care,” he said, his voice dropping low, almost a growl. “I was ready to fight them all, to tear down anyone who tried to stand between us. And she—she was just as ready. We stood our ground, ruled this pack side by side, and eventually, the whispers faded. People stopped talking. They saw we weren’t going anywhere.”
He leaned forward now, his hands unclenching, spreading flat on the desk like he needed something solid to hold onto. “Two years later, she got pregnant.” His voice softened, and for the first time, I saw a flash of something like joy in his eyes, mixed with something else—something heavy, like dread. “We were overjoyed, but… scared, too. Not of each other, never that, but of what it meant. What kind of child would we bring into this world? A wolf? A dragon? Somethin
