Chapter 97
Draven’s POV
The sound of the crowd still rang in my ears.
It was a deafening roar—cheers, howls, voices raised in unison. Approval. Submission. Acceptance.
I stood there, unmoving, my body rigid with the weight of the moment. It felt unreal, like I was trapped in a dream that didn’t belong to me. That if I so much as breathed too deeply, the illusion would shatter, and I’d wake up to find the world as it had always been—hostile, unforgiving, unaccepting.
But they had chosen me.
Me.
Draven Ironwood.
I was to be crowned Alpha.
The words echoed in my head, heavy, almost foreign.
I had braced myself for resistance. For a challenge. For someone—anyone—to rise from the crowd and call this decision into question.
To remind them of my past. Of the reasons I had never
