Transcription
"Tell me you feel that." He growled against the curve of her neck, his breath so hot it practically scorched the delicate skin beneath her ear, and Brielle shivered because she did feel it. God, she felt everything. His calloused fingers pressing into the bare curve of her waist where her shirt had ridden up, the hard planes of his chest pinning her against the cold stone wall, and that invisible golden thread between their souls pulling so tight she thought it might snap them both in half.
"Cade," she gasped, and his name tasted like sin on her tongue, like the kind of mistake you make with your whole body and never once regret.
"We can't, someone will let them," he said, and his voice was gravel and honey and the low rumble of distant thunder. And then his mouth found hers and the entire world went sideways, went sparking and electric and absolutely unhinged. And Brielle grabbed the front of his leather jacket with both fists and kissed him back like she was drowning and he was air, because maybe she was. Maybe she had been drowning her whole life and never even knew it until this man, this impossible, infuriating, devastatingly beautiful alpha king pulled her out of the dark.
But that was before. Before the ceremony. Before he said another woman's name in front of 600 witnesses and Brielle felt her ribcage crack open from the inside out, felt the bond between them scream like a living thing being flayed alive, felt every whispered promise shatter into shrapnel that shredded her from the inside. Before she ran. Before he tore his kingdom apart hunting for her. Before everything went to hell and then somehow, impossibly, caught fire in a way that burned even hotter.
Let me back up. 22-year-old Brielle Maddox had exactly three rules for surviving life as a servant in the royal palace of Ashenor. Keep your head down. Don't make eye contact with anyone above your station. And for the love of God, never ever fall for the king. She'd broken all three on a Tuesday.
It was supposed to be an ordinary feast, the kind she'd worked dozens of times before, platters of roasted meat and goblets of red wine, nobles laughing too loud and drinking too much, Brielle weaving through the crowd like a ghost because that's what she was, a ghost and nobody, an orphan who'd crawled out of a group home in Bakersfield at 16 and walked for 3 days without food until she ended up at the castle gates begging for any job they'd give her. She was good at disappearing. Had been doing it her entire life.
But then Cade Ashworth walked in and Brielle's carefully constructed invisibility went up in smoke. He wasn't supposed to be there. He was supposed to be on some diplomatic trip to the southern territories, gone for another month at least, and the feast was a minor one, barely worth the good China. But there he was, 6'3, dark blond hair pushed back from a face that could have been carved by a sculptor having an emotional breakdown, green-gold eyes scanning the room like a predator looking for something specific. Those eyes landed on and the tray of wine glasses she'd been carrying crashed to the marble floor with a sound like the universe laughing at her. Every noble head in the room swiveled toward the clumsy servant girl now kneeling in a puddle of cabernet, her cheeks burning, her hands shaking, her wolf, that quiet, half-starved thing that lived in the back of her mind, suddenly wide awake and howling.
"Forgive me," she whispered, scrambling for the shards. "I'll clean this up right away. I'm so sorry. I—"
"Leave it." His voice hit her like a physical force, deep, smooth, threaded with an authority that made something low in her belly tighten. She looked up without meaning to and found him standing directly above her, close enough to touch, close enough that she could smell leather and pine and something darker underneath, something that made her wolf want to roll over and bare its throat and never get up again. He was even more devastating up close. Candlelight caught the sharp cut of his jaw, the slight crook in his nose that said it had been broken at least once, the impossible fullness of his lower lip. He looked at her like she was a puzzle he'd been trying to solve his entire life.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Bri— Brielle, your majesty."
"Brielle." He said it slowly, like he was memorizing how it felt in his mouth. Then he did the single most insane thing she had ever witnessed a king do. He knelt beside her on the wine-soaked floor and started picking up broken glass with his bare hands. The hall went dead silent. Kings did not kneel. Kings did not touch broken glass. Kings absolutely did not help servant girls clean up their messes. But there he was, gathering shards into his palm like it was nothing, like she was worth the blood now beating across his calloused fingers.
"You'll cut yourself," she whispered, horrified.
"I heal fast." That almost smile again, the one that would haunt her dreams for weeks. "You're shaking."
"I'm not, you are." He stood and offered her his hand. His palm was bleeding, a thin red line across the skin, and when she took it, because what else could she do? He was the king. Something happened. A spark. A current. A feeling like every scattered piece of her had suddenly found the shape they were supposed to make, and the shape was him. He felt it, too. She could tell by the way his eyes went wide, the way his fingers tightened around hers, the way he inhaled sharply like he'd caught a scent he'd been chasing his entire life.
"Who are you?" he breathed.
"Nobody, your majesty."
"No," he said, and his thumb traced across her knuckles, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. "No, I really don't think you are."
After that it was notes slipped under her door. "Meet me in the east garden at midnight." "Meet me in the library after the feast." "Meet me anywhere." "Just meet me." It was stolen hours in moonlit corridors, his hands in her hair, her back against a bookshelf, conversations that started as whispers and ended in confessions neither of them had ever told another soul. He told her about the suffocating weight of the crown, about the mother who had never once held him, about the council that treated him like a puppet, and the loneliness that had been eating him alive since his father died when he was 17. She told him about the group home in Bakersfield, about the headmistress who beat her for reasons Brielle never understood, about walking those 3 days through the desert with no water and no plan and no reason to believe anything would ever get better. She told him about the strange things she could sometimes do, sense emotions like colors, predict things before they happened, draw animals to her like she was magnetic.
"You're special," Cade said one night, tracing the curve of her cheekbone with his thumb while moonlight painted silver stripes across the bed. "More special than you know."
"I'm nobody."
"You're everything." He kissed her then, gentle, reverent, like she was something sacred he was terrified of breaking. "You're everything, Brielle, and I will never let anyone hurt you again." She believed him. That was her first mistake.
The bond happened 6 weeks later. Neither of them planned it. They'd been careful. God, they'd been so careful because a mating bond would be detected by the pack elders, would blow their secret wide open, would bring down consequences they might not survive. But that night in his chambers, with the windows open and cool air mixing with warm skin, something shifted between them. Brielle looked into his green-gold eyes and saw her entire future reflected there, and Cade whispered words that no king should ever speak to a servant, words about permanence, about a devotion that transcended everything they were supposed to be to each other. The bond snapped into place like a lock clicking shut. They both felt it, the sudden, staggering connection that went beyond anything physical, anything rational, anything either of them had language for. She was his. He was hers. Nothing in the world could undo what they'd become.
"We have to tell them," Brielle said afterward, trembling in his arms. "We have to—"
"No." His voice was firm. "Not yet."
"My mother, the council, they'll never accept this."
"They'll hurt you, Brielle."
"They'll destroy you to get to me."
"Then what do we do?" He pulled her closer, his lips against her hair. "We wait."
"I'll find a way."
"I'll protect you."
"I swear it."
"Just give me time."
So she waited. And 3 weeks later, she felt him choose another woman. It wasn't a whisper or a rumor. It was the bond itself, that sacred thread between their souls stretching, tearing, bleeding. Brielle was in the servants' corridor when the pain hit, and it dropped her to her knees on the stone floor with a gasp that tore out of her throat like something dying. In the great hall, surrounded by 600 nobles and dignitaries, Cade was speaking a name, Margot Sinclair, daughter of the most powerful family in the eastern territories, a woman bred and groomed for the throne with cheekbones like knife blades and ambition to match. Brielle felt every syllable of that name like a blade through her ribs.
What she didn't know, what she wouldn't learn for weeks, was that Cade's mother had discovered the bond. The dowager queen, Vivian Ashworth, was a woman who was beautiful the way a venomous snake was beautiful, all elegant lines and lethal intentions. She had spent 20 years maneuvering her son like a chess piece, and she was not about to let some nameless servant girl topple the board. "Choose Margo Sinclair," Vivian had told Cade 3 weeks before the bond even formed, "her voice cold enough to freeze blood, or I will have your little pet dragged before the council and executed for treason." "Seducing the king is a capital offense, darling. You know the law." And because Cade knew his mother, knew she would do it, knew she would smile while she watched Brielle burn, he had agreed. He had walked into that great hall and spoken Margo's name while his soul screamed in protest.
But Brielle didn't know any of that. Brielle only knew the agony. And before the applause had even died down, before the nobles had finished raising their glasses, before Margo Sinclair's triumphant smile had reached its full wattage, Vivian had delivered the final blow. A note, slipped under Brielle's door by one of the dowager queen's ladies. A detailed description of Cade's future with Margo. The children they would have. The life she would never share. The kingdom that would never be hers. Brielle read it once. Then she ran. Through the servants passages, up the kitchen doors, past the guards who never noticed the quiet girl with the downcast eyes. She ran until the castle was a shadow behind her, until the forest swallowed her whole, until she collapsed against a tree and sobbed until her throat was raw and her eyes were empty and there was nothing left inside her but a hollow, ringing silence where love used to live.
And back in the great hall, in the middle of his declaration, Cade stopped speaking. His hand flew to his chest. His eyes went wide. Because the bond, the bond he thought he'd hidden, the bond he'd been willing to destroy himself to protect, was screaming. She was running. And if he didn't find her, he would lose her forever.
"Find her." He said it first to the darkness of her empty room, standing in a space stripped so bare it looked like she tried to erase her own existence. The bed was made with military precision. The walls were blank. The only thing left was a single dried wildflower on the windowsill, a moonflower, the kind that only bloomed in the palace gardens. He'd given it to her the night they first kissed. He picked it up with trembling fingers and it crumbled to dust in his palm.
"Wake the trackers," he told the guard who'd followed him despite orders. "Send out every hunting party we have. Search every village, every forest, every mountain within a hundred miles. And send word to the border outposts. No one matching her description leaves this kingdom."
The guard hesitated. "Your majesty, the queen consort is asking for—"
"I don't care what she's asking for." His voice dropped to something that made the guard physically step backward. "Find the girl. Find her or I will tear this kingdom apart stone by stone until I do." He didn't wait for a response. He was already shifting, bones cracking and reforming, the wolf surging to the surface with a fury that was more animal than human. The bond pulled him northwest, toward the Blackwood Forest, toward the most dangerous territory in the realm, and the alpha king ran into the night like a man running from his own damnation.
Brielle, meanwhile, was learning what it felt like to want to die. The Blackwood was a dark and merciless place, ancient trees so thick that sunlight barely touched the forest floor, strange sounds echoing in the distance, howls that didn't quite sound like wolves. She didn't care. Let the forest take her. Let whatever lived in its depths swallow her whole. It would be easier than this, this constant, crushing agony of feeling Cade through the bond while knowing he belonged to someone else. She tried to sever the connection. Clawed at it mentally. Screamed at it to break. But it persisted, stubborn and eternal, and she didn't understand why, didn't understand that she was a veil walker, that she had the power to unmake bonds entirely, and that her desperate attempts to cut herself free were actually working, shredding the connection thread by thread in ways that shouldn't have been possible. She didn't know any of that yet. All she knew was pain.
When the rogues found her, she almost welcomed them. Three feral wolves, scarred and hungry, circling her in a clearing with grins that made her stomach turn. The biggest one, a massive brute with a shaved head and dead eyes, stepped closer. "A pretty little thing, lost in the Blackwood all alone. Didn't anyone tell you it's dangerous here?"
Brielle bared her teeth because she had nothing left to lose, and the brute lunged, and everything exploded because out of nowhere, a massive gray wolf slammed into her attacker hard enough to crack the tree he hit. The other two charged and were cut down with brutal, surgical precision. Three bodies on the forest floor. Silence. The gray wolf shifted into a man, tall, lean, silver-haired despite a face that looked no older than 35. His blue eyes held a weariness that spoke of centuries.
"You're far from home, little omega," he said. "And you're being hunted."
His name was Eli. He was an elder, one of the ancient wolves who had survived for hundreds of years, watching kingdoms rise and fall. He lived alone in the Blackwood, a hermit by choice, and he had recognized something in Brielle the moment he laid eyes on her. Over the following weeks, hidden in a cave behind a waterfall, he taught her what she was.
"You're not just an omega," Eli said on the third night, firelight dancing across the cavern walls. "Your wolf is different. Close your eyes. Focus on her. Let her rise, not to shift, but to see through you." Brielle obeyed, and when she opened her eyes again, the world had transformed. Colors she'd never seen before painted the walls, shimmering auras that pulsed with light. She could see the heat from the fire as ribbons of gold, could see Eli's energy surrounding him like a silver shroud.
"The sight," Eli said, his voice soft with something that might have been awe. "A gift that hasn't appeared in wolf bloodlines for nearly 500 years. You can see truth, girl. See through lies, through illusions. And that's not all. The wolves who possessed this in ancient times were called veil walkers. They could manipulate the bonds between wolves. Strengthen them. Weaken them." He paused. "Sever them entirely."
Brielle's blood went cold. "That's why your bond with the alpha king weakened so quickly when you ran," Eli continued. "You were unconsciously tearing at it. Normal bonds don't do that. They're meant to be eternal." He also told her why he'd saved her. 500 years ago, he'd loved a veil walker, a woman with Brielle's exact gifts. The alpha king of that era had discovered what she could do, feared that she could unravel the bonds holding his pack together, and had her burned alive in front of the entire kingdom. Eli had watched his mate die. "I swore that if I ever found another, I would protect them. No matter the cost."
"You think Cade would do the same to me?"
"I think all kings are the same."
Meanwhile, back at the castle, Cade was falling apart. Two weeks of searching. 12 trackers, the best in the kingdom, following her scent trail northwest until it simply vanished at the edge of a ravine, as if she'd walked to the cliff and stepped off into nothing. Or jumped. He refused to think about that. He hadn't slept more than a handful of hours since the ceremony. His wolf was fraying at the edges, driven half mad by the severed bond. His captain of the guard, a massive, scarred warrior named Petra Blackmere, approached him at the ravine with the careful body language of someone approaching a wounded animal. "Your majesty, the team needs rest. We've been running for 3 days straight."
"Then let them rest." Grant's smile was a cold and calculated thing. "I have agents in the Blackwood. If the king's trackers fail, mine won't." Margo studied her father's face. "You mean to kill her?"
"I mean to solve a problem." He patted her hand. "Don't trouble yourself with details, darling. Just focus on being the perfect queen." But Margo wasn't so sure it would be that simple. She had seen the way Cade looked when he spoke of the missing girl, had felt the faint hum of the bond between them during the ceremony. Whatever connected the king to his servant, it was stronger than anything Margo could compete with. Unless that connection was permanently destroyed.
"Find her," she said quietly. "Find her and make sure she never comes back."
It was around this time that Brielle read Cade's letter. Eli had agreed to deliver a message from Cade. Tracked them to the waterfall caves, a confrontation that carried the weight of 500 years of bad blood between Eli and Cade's royal line. Eli refused to let Cade see her, but agreed to carry the letter back to the cave. "She's not here," Eli had told the king, blocking his path. "And if you know what's good for you, you'll leave the way you came."
Later, Eli gave her the letter and Brielle read it 17 times, memorizing every smudged line, every place where Cade's hand had trembled against the paper. "My love, I know you hate me. You have every right. But I need you to understand. I never chose Margot. She was forced on me by my mother's threats against your life. 'Execute her for treason.' She said. 'Burn her as a seductress who corrupted the king.' I couldn't let that happen. I would rather lose you than watch you die. The bond we share is real. It has always been real. I feel it even now, faint and fragile, but still there, still calling me to you. If you can forgive me, come back. I will tear down every obstacle between us. I will defy my mother, my council, my entire kingdom. I will burn it all to the ground if that's what it takes. But if you cannot forgive me, if the pain I caused is too great, then I will respect your choice. I will let you go, even if it destroys me. Just know this, I have loved you since the moment you dropped that tray of wine glasses. I will love you until my last breath. And nothing, not politics, not duty, not the crown itself, will ever change that. Yours eternally, Cade."
She pressed the letter to her chest. Every cell in her body was screaming to go to him. But Eli urged patience. "Learn to control your powers first. Understand what you are before you reveal it to anyone. One month, then go with my blessing."
"One month," she agreed. "But then I'm leaving. With or without your blessing." She used the sight to reach through the remnants of the bond and felt his emotions directly. Grief so profound it stole her breath, guilt like razors, longing that bordered on insanity, and beneath it all, steady as a heartbeat, love. Pure. Overwhelming. Unchanging. He was telling the truth. Every word.
The attack came 3 weeks into her month of waiting. She was gathering herbs near the waterfall when coordinated howls split the morning air. Not rogues, not wild wolves, but a trained hunting party. Five soldiers burst from the underbrush and took her down in minutes. When she woke, she was in chains. A dungeon in a remote Sinclair holding. No windows. One door. The door opened and Margot Sinclair walked in wearing silk that cost more than Brielle would earn in 10 lifetimes. Her eyes cold, her smile sharp enough to draw blood.
"So, you're the servant girl who's caused so much trouble." Brielle said nothing. "Nothing to say? No begging?" Margot circled her. "I want my husband. You've stolen his heart, his mind, his wolf, and I want it back. You can't make someone love you."
"No." Margot said. "But I can remove the obstacle." The door opened again and an old woman shuffled in. A witch, Brielle realized with a sickening lurch, a crone with milky eyes and teeth filed to points who dealt in magic so dark she'd been exiled from every civilized pack on the continent. The witch examined Brielle's bond with gnarled fingers and grinned. "Strong bond. Very strong. Even a veil walker can't undo what my blood magic seals. With her blood, I can sever it."
The blade was precise. Shallow cuts along her arm, blood running into a silver bowl etched with symbols that hurt to look at. The chanting filled the air in a language that predated wolves, predated humanity, predated everything. And through the bond blown wide open by the dark magic, the wall she built shattered, Brielle felt Cade react. His confusion first, then concern, then agony.
"Brielle."
"Brielle." His voice exploded through the connection stronger than it had been in weeks. "Cade, they have me. They're trying to—" Another cut. Another surge of fire. "Where are you? I don't—" The castle, the dungeons. "Hold on." "I'm coming. I swear I'm coming. Just hold on." But the bond was tearing, not from her this time, but from the witch's magic ripping it apart fiber by fiber, and Brielle screamed, and somewhere above her in the castle, Cade screamed with her.
He had returned to the castle weeks ago, searching every corridor, every loft door, unable to rest until he found her. He was in the war room studying maps when the pain hit hard enough to drop him to his knees. He saw flashes through the bond: stone walls, torchlight, a hunched figure with gnarled hands, a silver bowl full of blood. "The dungeons," he gasped. "She's in the castle." He ran.
The dungeon door exploded inward. Cade stood in the wreckage, barely human, eyes blazing with a fury that made the torchlight shrink. He took in the scene in a single heartbeat. Brielle chained to the wall, bleeding from multiple cuts, the witch crouched over her bowl, and in the corner, frozen with shock, Margot Sinclair.
"Get away from her." The witch raised her hands. Dark magic crackled between her fingers. It didn't matter. Cade was faster. Between one heartbeat and the next, the witch was dead on the floor and the magic died with her. The silver bowl cracked. The symbols went dark. He shattered Brielle's chains with his bare hands and caught her as she collapsed.
"I've got you," he whispered into her hair. "I've got you. You're safe now." She looked up at him with eyes full of everything she'd been trying not to feel for weeks. "You came."
"I will always come for you. Always." Behind them, Margot made a small, broken sound. Cade turned and his expression went arctic. "You did this."
"I was only trying to—"
"To torture my mate? To destroy our bond? To use dark magic that could have killed us both? I loved you." The words burst out of Margot like a wound splitting open. "I've loved you since we were children. I watched you every day, hoping you'd notice me, hoping you'd see me as more than a political arrangement. And then you chose her, a servant, a nobody."
"And I couldn't— I couldn't—"
"You couldn't accept that my heart belonged to someone else." Cade said. "So you tried to steal it." Margot crumpled. All the pride, all the ambition, all the cool calculation fell away, and what was left was just a woman whose heart had been broken for so long she'd forgotten what wholeness felt like. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."
He called the guards. "Escort Lady Margot to her chambers. House arrest until I decide what to do with her." He turned back to her and his voice dropped. "Your father orchestrated this, didn't he?" Her silence was answer enough. Then he carried Brielle out of the darkness and into the light.
In the royal chambers, on the edge of his bed, she told him everything about Eli, about the sight, about the veil walkers, about the fact that she could sever mate bonds with nothing but her will. "If you're afraid of me," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "If you think I'm a threat, I understand. I'll leave. I'll disappear. You'll never have to—"
"Stop." He cupped her face in his hands and tilted her gaze up to meet his. "Do you know what I see when I look at you? I see the woman who dropped a tray of wine glasses and stole my heart in the same second. I see the woman who made me laugh for the first time since my father died. I see the woman I love, not despite what she is, but because of it. You could sever every bond in my kingdom and I would still choose you."
"You mean that?"
"I have never meant anything more. My ancestor was a coward who destroyed something precious because he couldn't control it. I refuse to make the same mistake." She kissed him then, desperate, relieved, overflowing with a love she tried so hard to bury, and he kissed her back with everything he had, his hands in her hair, his body pressing against hers like he was trying to make up for all the weeks they'd been apart in a single moment.
"I want to mark you," he said roughly when they finally came up for air. "Properly. In front of everyone. I want the whole kingdom to know you are my queen, my mate, my everything."
"What about Margot?"
"The alliance?"
"The alliance was built on lies. It ends now. But first, I need to deal with the people who started this."
The confrontation happened at dawn. Cade summoned the full council, every noble, every advisor, every person of power in the kingdom. They gathered in the great hall in confused, whispering clusters, and then the doors opened and Cade walked in wearing black, fire in his eyes, certainty in his stride, and Brielle at his side, her hand in his, dressed in deep blue that somehow made her look more regal than every noble present combined.
"Lords and ladies of Ashynmoor," he announced. "I've gathered you here to correct a grave injustice, one I was complicit in, and one that ends today." Guards brought forward three prisoners. Margot, pale and tear-streaked. Grant Sinclair, cold and calculating even now. And Vivian Ashworth, the dowager queen, whose fury was barely contained behind a mask of aristocratic composure. Cade laid out their crimes, against Grant and Margot, the kidnapping and dark magic, against his mother, the threats and manipulation that had set it all in motion. He sentenced Grant Sinclair to exile, and Margot, though he acknowledged her genuine remorse, to five years of service in the Eastern Healing Halls, her title suspended, and his mother, the woman who had started it all, to a lifetime of confinement in the Eastern Tower with no visitors and no influence.
"You can't do this to me!" Vivian screamed as the guards dragged her away.
"After everything I did for you, you did nothing for me," Cade said, and his voice was quiet and devastating. "You did everything for yourself. You never loved me, mother. You loved what I represented, a throne you could rule through, a kingdom you could shape to your will." Her screams echoed through the hall long after she was gone.
Then Cade turned to Brielle, got down on one knee. "I chose you once in desperation," he said. "In secret. In shadows. Afraid of what the world would think. I'm not afraid anymore. Brielle, will you be my queen? Not in secret, in front of everyone. Will you let me mark you, claim you, love you for the rest of our lives?"
"Yes," she breathed, tears streaming and a smile breaking across her face like dawn. "Yes, a thousand times yes."
The marking ceremony took place under a full moon in the sacred grove, an ancient circle of standing stones where wolves had pledged themselves to each other for a thousand years. Brielle stood at the center dressed in white, moonflowers in her dark hair, and Cade walked toward her like she was the only person who existed.
"Before the moon and stars," he declared, his voice carrying across the grove, "before the spirits of our ancestors and every wolf in this kingdom, I claim you, Brielle. I give you my heart, my soul, my life. From this moment until my last breath, I am yours."
"I am yours," she echoed, her voice shaking with emotion. Then he leaned in, pressed his lips to the curve of her neck, and she felt his fangs extend, felt the sharp, sweet pressure against her skin, felt pain that melted into pleasure that melted into something beyond both, his mark searing into her, branding her as his for eternity. Through the bond, blazing back to full strength, she felt his wolf howling with triumph, felt his joy crashing through her like a wave.
"My queen," he breathed against her skin. She pulled him down and kissed him in front of 600 witnesses and didn't care about a single one of them.
Six months later, Ashynmoor had transformed. Under their joint rule, the old laws restricting wolves with unusual abilities had been abolished. Eli had emerged from centuries of isolation to lead a new academy for young veil walkers. Margot, surprisingly, had become one of the academy's most dedicated supporters, finding purpose in something that wasn't just ambition, and Brielle had forgiven her, though the scars on her arms would always remain.
One morning, over breakfast in their chambers, Cade sat down his coffee and studied her with sudden intensity. "You're glowing. More than usual." Brielle looked down at her plate, hiding a smile. "Am I?"
"You are. Brielle, is there something you want to tell me?" She'd planned to wait, planned a whole announcement. But looking at him now, her mate, her king, her everything, she couldn't keep it another second. "I'm pregnant."
The silence was absolute. Then he was out of his chair, crossing to her in two strides, lifting her off her feet into an embrace so fierce it stole her breath. "Truly? We're having a baby?"
"We're having a baby." He kissed her, deep and joyful and overflowing, and when he pulled back, tears were running freely down his face. "I never thought I'd have this," he whispered. "A mate who loves me. A child. A kingdom that feels like home. You gave me all of this, Brielle. You saved me."
"We saved each other," she said, touching his face. "That's what mates do."
Nine months later, the baby was born on the night of a full moon, a girl with her mother's dark hair and her father's green gold eyes. They named her Aurelia, meaning golden light, because that was exactly what she was. As Brielle held her daughter for the first time, Cade beside her on the bed with his hand gentle on her shoulder, she thought about everything that had led to this moment, the ceremony that broke her, the desperate flight into the Blackwood, the weeks of hiding and training and learning who she really was, the enemies who tried to tear them apart, and the stubborn, persistent, unbreakable love that had refused to die no matter how many times the world tried to snuff it out.
"She's perfect," Cade breathed, stroking Aurelia's tiny cheek with one finger.
"She has your eyes," Brielle murmured. "She'll break hearts someday."
"Not until she's at least a hundred."
"I'll lock her in a tower first."
"We don't lock people in towers anymore, remember? That was the whole point."
"I'll make an exception for any wolf who tries to court my daughter."
They sat together in comfortable silence while their baby slept.