Transcription
Dax, the wolf king of the Sunstone territories, a man whose growl could halt an army and whose name was a whispered threat across three continents, was being systematically dismantled by a three-year-old. His daughter Ru had been screaming for 3 months, 6 days, and approximately 4 hours. He knew the exact duration because his enhanced hearing meant every single shriek drilled directly into his primal cortex. A sensation akin to being repeatedly stabbed with a knitting needle made of pure despair.
Every nanny, from the sternest pack matron to the gentlest omega, had fled. The last one had vaulted over a balcony. It was a first-floor balcony, but the sentiment was clear. The one before her had simply walked into the kitchen, set down her apron, picked up a wheel of cheese, and left the castle without a word. She was last seen boarding a ship to the southern Isles. She did not leave a forwarding address.
Now he stood in his throne room, a cavernous space of grim stone and ancient tapestries depicting glorious silent victories, listening to the unholy racket echoing from the nursery. His beta Kale stood beside him looking profoundly weary. It was his default expression. In fact, Dax had once seen a portrait painter attempt to capture Kale smiling, and the result had looked like a man experiencing a particularly confusing sneeze.
"She's developing a rather impressive vibe," Kale noted, his voice dry as sunbleached bone. "Perhaps we should look into opera lessons. I hear the Moonhowl Conservatory is accepting applications. She could audition remotely. I believe they can hear her from there."
Dax shot him a look that had once made a rival alpha pee himself. Kale merely arched an eyebrow. "I'm just saying we should channel her talents. At this rate, she'll be able to shatter glass by her fourth birthday. Think of the tactical applications. We could save a fortune on siege equipment."
"Find me another one," Dax growled, the sound rumbling in his chest, a low thunder of desperation. "Anyone. I'll pay them in gold. I'll give them a title. I'll give them the northern farmlands. I just want it to stop."
"We are fresh out of nannies, your majesty," Kale said with the tone of a man delivering a terminal diagnosis. "They have all, and I quote, the nanny guild's official notice, sought less hazardous employment. Apparently, dragon taming is now considered a safer profession. One of the former nannies has taken up competitive bear wrestling and reports that she finds it, quote, significantly more relaxing."
However, he paused, pulling a scroll from his tunic. "I took the liberty of looking outside the usual channels. There is one last option. An Omega pup specialist from the Silver Creek Pack. Her name is Josie Park."
"A specialist?" Dax latched onto the word like a drowning man to a log. "Is she good?"
"Good." Kale gave a short, humorless laugh. "Dax, she's a legend. They call her the pup whisperer. They say she once calmed a litter of six alpha pups during a full moon thunderstorm using nothing but a blanket and two verses of a lullaby. She doesn't come to you. You petition her. Her waiting list is 2 years long. There is a rumor that the queen of the eastern reaches offered her an entire province and she said she'd think about it. She is still thinking."
"Get her," Dax commanded.
"I already have," Kale said, a flicker of satisfaction in his eyes. "I may have implied the fate of the kingdom rested upon her immediate assistance and offered her a truly obscene amount of money. She arrives in 1 hour."
Josie Park arrived in 58 minutes, not on a gilded carriage, but in a dusty wagon driven by a farmer who looked terrified to be anywhere near the royal citadel. She was not what Dax had expected. She was small, with dark hair tied back in a practical knot, and her clothes were simple, clean, and utterly unremarkable. She carried a single, heavily worn leather bag. There was no difference in her posture, no fear in her dark, intelligent eyes as they swept over the oppressive grandeur of the throne room. She looked, Dax thought with a jolt of irritation, completely unimpressed. She looked at the vaulted ceiling, the ancient weapons on the walls, the throne carved from a single piece of black mountain stone, and her expression said quite clearly, "Needs better lighting."
Her gaze landed on him, and for a moment he instinctively straightened, letting a sliver of his alpha aura fill the room. It was a subtle pressure, a quiet declaration of power that made even seasoned warriors lower their eyes. Josie Park blinked. "Is there a draft in here?" she asked Kale, pulling her cardigan a little tighter.
Kale's mouth twitched. "Apologies. The king's presence can be atmospheric."
Dax felt a muscle in his jaw jump. His wolf, the ancient and powerful beast that lived under his skin, was deeply offended. "She does not see us," it snarled in his mind. "Make her see. We are the apex predator, the storm given flesh, the—"
She yawned. His wolf sputtered into indignant silence.
Before he could formulate a suitably intimidating response, a fresh wave of screaming, so piercing it made his teeth ache, cascaded down the grand staircase. Jos's head tilted, her expression shifting from mild boredom to sharp focus. She ignored Dax completely, turning to Kale. "3 months, you said?"
"And six days," Kale confirmed.
"Her mother left." Jos's eyes softened with a flicker of something Dax couldn't name. It wasn't pity, it was understanding. "Right," she said, her voice all business. "Where is she?"
Without waiting for an answer, she started walking toward the sound, her worn boots making soft, determined steps on the cold stone. Dax and Kale exchanged a look, and then, feeling strangely like attendance in his own castle, the alpha king followed the nanny.
The nursery was a disaster zone. Toys were strewn everywhere. A mural of what looked suspiciously like berry jam adorned one wall in a pattern that could generously be described as abstract expressionism. And in the center of it all, a tiny red-faced hurricane named Ru stood in her crib, screaming as if the world were ending, which from her perspective it had. Dax's chest tightened. This was his daily failure put on full display. He braced himself for Josie to recoil, to make excuses, to quit before she'd even begun.
Instead, she did something no one else had done. She ignored him. She ignored the mess. She walked calmly over to the crib, not too close, and simply sat down on the floor, cross-legged. She opened her leather bag and took out a small, lumpy object made of worn, multicolored yarn. It looked like a deformed octopus. It looked, more specifically, like an octopus that had been knitted by someone who had only ever had an octopus described to them by a person who had never actually seen one either. It was magnificent in its wrongness.
She began to hum a low, gentle tune that was nearly swallowed by Ru's continued wails. Ru's screaming faltered for a second. A tiny hiccuping gasp broke her rhythm. Her big, tear-filled blue eyes, so like his own, fixated on the strange woman on the floor. Josie didn't look at her. She just hummed and fiddled with the yarn octopus, making one of its lumpy tentacles wiggle. A tiny, curious sound escaped Ru's lips. It wasn't a scream. It was a question.
Josie continued to hum, now making the octopus dance a little jig on her knee. Another hiccup from Ru. The screaming had stopped. The silence was so profound, so sudden that Dax felt dizzy. He'd forgotten what it sounded like. His ears were ringing with the absence of noise, like the moment after a cannon blast.
Ru pointed a chubby, jam-sticky finger at the toy. "Puss," she mumbled.
Josie finally looked up at her, a small, warm smile touching her lips. "He is, isn't he? He's a very friendly octopus. He told me he was looking for a princess to be his friend." She held the octopus out. Hesitantly, Ru reached for it. Her tiny fingers closed around the yarn. The tension in her small body seemed to melt away. And then the true miracle happened. A sound Dax hadn't heard in 3 months. A sound he'd begun to fear he'd never hear again. A laugh. A tiny, gurgling, beautiful laugh.
Dax's breath caught in his throat. His wolf, the proud ancient beast, was utterly stunned. It sat back on its haunches in his mind, head cocked, ears perked forward. "She has silenced the storm," it whispered, a note of pure awe in its mental voice. "With a deformed sea creature, this woman is a sorceress."
He took a step forward, overwhelmed by a tidal wave of relief so powerful it almost brought him to his knees. "How?" he began, his voice rough with emotion.
Josie looked up at him, her expression unreadable. "She needed someone to meet her on her level," she said simply, "not loom over her." The words were a quiet rebuke, and they landed like a physical blow. He had been looming. He was always looming. He was a king. He was an alpha. It was what he did. His entire approach to fatherhood had been to stand at full height and project an aura of capable authority at a person whose head barely reached his kneecap.
Later that evening, after Ru had been fed, bathed, and tucked into bed without a single shriek, Dax found Josie tidying the nursery. Ru was fast asleep clutching the yarn octopus. The piece was so fragile, so precious, he was almost afraid to breathe.
"It's bedtime," Josie said softly, not looking at him. "We need to be quiet."
He was the king. This was his castle, his daughter. He opened his mouth to say something, to assert some small measure of his lost authority. A low, possessive growl rumbled in his chest before he could stop it. It was an unconscious assertion of dominance, a reminder of who was in charge.
Josie froze. She turned around slowly, her hands on her hips. She looked him directly in the eye, and there was no fear there, only a kind of weary disappointment, the exact expression of someone who has just watched a large dog eat an entire birthday cake off the counter and doesn't even have the energy to be surprised. "We don't use that voice in this house," she said, her tone level and firm. "Not around her. It's a scary sound for a little pup."
Dax's mind went completely blank. No one had spoken to him like that since his own mother, and she had been a queen with a notoriously short temper and a wooden spoon she had named the diplomat. He was the alpha king. His voice commanded armies. His growl was law. He should have been furious. He should have fired her on the spot. He should have.
His wolf did none of those things. Before his human brain could even process the command, the great ancient beast inside him did the mental equivalent of tucking its tail between its legs and rolling onto its back, exposing its soft, vulnerable belly. "Sorry," it whimpered. "New rule. No scary sounds. Got it. She is the boss now. We accept this."
Dax stood there utterly speechless, his mouth slightly agape. Kale, who had materialized silently in the doorway with the supernatural stealth of a man who never missed an opportunity to witness his king's humiliation, choked back a sound that was suspiciously close to a snort. Josie just gave Dax a final expectant look, and when he said nothing, she turned back to her task, humming her little tune as she folded a tiny blanket. The Alpha King had been given an order by an Omega nanny, and to his profound and escalating horror, he had obeyed.
Kale leaned in as Dax retreated to the hallway. "For what it's worth," he whispered. "I thought your growl was very impressive, very fierce, very indoor appropriate."
"I will end you," Dax whispered back.
"Of course, your majesty," Kale said pleasantly. "Shall I for nap time? It's non-negotiable."
Apparently, the days that followed were a study in organized chaos. Josie Park didn't just care for Ru. She terraformed the grim, silent wing of the castle into something resembling a functional home. A schedule appeared written in cheerful purple ink on a piece of parchment and tacked to the door of the royal kitchen. It included things like "nap time non-negotiable," "glitter-based catharsis hour," and "snack attack: cheese stars only. The triangle cheese incident of last Tuesday shall not be repeated." The royal chefs, who were used to preparing seven-course banquets for visiting dignitaries, were utterly baffled by the sudden demand for apple slices and cheese cut into star shapes, and the implied threat contained within the phrase "triangle cheese incident."
Dax found his life, once governed by treaties and troop movements, now revolved around this baffling schedule. One afternoon, he was striding through the main hall, deep in discussion with Kale about a border dispute with the Shadow Fan Pack, when Josie intercepted him. "It's 3:00," she announced, holding up a small glitter-encrusted unicorn backpack. "Time to pick up Ru from Forest School."
Dax stared at the backpack as if it were a venomous snake. "Forest school?"
"It's what I'm calling our nature walk in the royal gardens," Josie explained patiently. "It sounds more official. She's been collecting magical pebbles. You're on pickup duty." She thrust the tiny backpack at him.
He looked from the backpack to Kale, who was observing the exchange with the clinical interest of a scientist, watching two very different species interact. Dax was the alpha king. He had legions at his command. He did not do pickup duty. "Tell her," his pride roared. "Tell her who we are."
His wolf, however, had other ideas. "Oh, a quest!" it yipped excitedly in his head, practically spinning in circles. "We must retrieve the small one and the magical pebbles. The backpack is our sacred vessel. Do you think there are snacks in it? I bet there are snacks."
Defeated by his own traitorous psyche, Dax took the unicorn backpack. The glitter came off on his black leather gloves. It would never come off. Glitter was permanent. Glitter was forever. Historians would one day unearth his gloves and conclude that the wolf king had been a man of great sparkle. "Fine," he muttered, his voice tight with humiliation.
As he stalked off toward the gardens, the unicorn backpack dangling from one massive fist, a troop of palace guards snapped to attention as he passed. Their eyes tracked from his face to the backpack. Not one of them said a word. Not one of them dared, but he could feel their restraint like a physical force. Behind him, he heard Kale say to Josie, his voice laced with unholy glee. "Remarkable. I haven't seen him this flustered since the ambassador from the southern Isles accidentally called him Ducky."
He didn't speak to anyone for three days. His humiliation was not yet complete. The following Saturday, Josie declared it was pancake morning. She insisted it was a vital bonding activity, and she said the word "bonding" with a specific emphasis of a woman who would not be argued with, which Dax was learning was the only emphasis she had. He found himself in the cavernous royal kitchen wearing an apron with a smiling daisy on it that a terrified-looking cook had procured from somewhere deep in the castle's storerooms. The apron was too small. The daisy's smile was mocking him.
"The key is to wait for the bubbles," Josie instructed, demonstrating with a perfect golden-brown pancake she flipped effortlessly. "When you see bubbles on the surface, it's time to flip. Patience."
Dax, armed with a spatula that felt absurdly flimsy in his hand, stared down at the blob of batter he had poured into the pan. It looked less like a pancake and more like a map of a failed state. He was a master strategist. He could anticipate an enemy's move 3 weeks in advance. He had conquered the Ironwood cliffs with 30 wolves and a questionable plan. How hard could this be? He waited. No bubbles. He growled at the pan, a low, frustrated rumble. The cook in the corner squeaked and dropped a whisk.
"Patience," Josie said, not looking up from where she was helping Ru arrange blueberries into a smiley face on her own pancake. "And no growling at the batter. It gets nervous."
His wolf whined, "But we are hungry, and the flatbread is not cooperating. Maybe if we roar at it, a display of dominance, we could flip the entire stove. That would show the batter who is in charge."
He ignored his wolf. He waited. A bubble appeared, then another. Victorious, he jammed the spatula under the pancake and flipped it with all the force of a man accustomed to heaving training logs. The half-cooked batter flew through the air, performed a graceful, tragic arc, and landed directly on a stack of parchment on a nearby table. The parchment, Dax realized with a sinking heart, was the newly drafted trade agreement with the Northern Ridge Pack. There was a moment of horrified silence, broken only by the soft sizzle of batter melting the wax seal on the treaty. Six months of negotiation, three diplomatic summits, one very expensive calligrapher, all marinating in buttermilk batter.
Ru giggled. "Daddy made a sticky map."
Josie walked over, looked at the batter-soaked treaty, then at Dax's mortified face. She didn't laugh, she just picked up a cloth. "Well," she said, her voice unnervingly calm. "I guess the northern ridge pack will have to wait. The most important treaty right now is the one between us and this pancake batter." She handed him the cloth. "Let's clean it up together."
He stood there, the great alpha king, wiping gooey batter off a priceless diplomatic document and felt something shift inside him. It wasn't just the humiliation. It was the "together." No one had said that to him in a long, long time.
Later, as he watched Josie patiently teach Ru how to stir the batter without flinging it across the room, a strange quiet settled over him. It wasn't the dead, oppressive silence of the screaming months. It was a warm, lived-in quiet filled with the soft clink of a spoon against a bowl and Ru's happy humming, a faint echo of Jos's own tune. He was losing his authority. His castle was covered in glitter. His most important treaty smelled faintly of burnt sugar. And for the first time in a very long time, his shoulders didn't feel quite so heavy. He was carrying a unicorn backpack instead of the weight of the world. And it was, to his complete and utter astonishment, a relief. He caught Jos's eye across the kitchen and she gave him a small, genuine smile. His heart did a strange, clumsy flip in his chest. His wolf, the traitor, wagged its tail. "She smiled at us," it howled with joy. "Maybe if we make another sticky map, she will smile again. We should destroy more important documents. It is clearly a courtship ritual." Dax groaned and put his head in his hands. He was doomed.
From Jos's perspective, the Sunstone Citadel was the most ridiculously dramatic place she had ever been. Everything was gray stone, 10-ft tall doorways, and tapestries of wolves looking constipated with glory. The staff moved with the silent, terrified efficiency of people who expected to be smoked at any moment. There were weapons on every wall, most of them unnecessarily large. She had counted seven different swords in the hallway between the nursery and the kitchen alone. Seven for a hallway. Did the man expect to be ambushed on his way to breakfast? And at the center of it all was the alpha king, Dax, a man who seemed to be constructed entirely of brooding muscle and a deep-seated suspicion of anything smaller than a warhorse.
Her first impression had been exactly what she expected. An arrogant, powerful alpha who thought a growl could solve a toddler's grief. Classic alpha king nonsense. Her internal monologue had supplied, "Dry as toast. He probably thinks his aura of 'I'm very important' should be enough to command a diaper change." When he tried that little alpha pressure trick in the throne room, she'd almost laughed. It felt like a particularly intense ceiling fan. She'd spent her life around the raw, unfiltered emotions of pups. A grown man's carefully cultivated intimidation was just noise.
But then there was Ru, a tiny, heartbroken storm of a child drowning in a grief far too big for her small body. Josie had seen it a hundred times before. Pups were barometers for the emotional weather of their pack. When a bond was broken, when a parent left, they didn't have the words for the gaping hole it left behind. So they screamed. They screamed to fill the silence, to protest the wrongness of it all. A child doesn't know how to say something is missing. A child only knows how to say "everything hurts." Dax, for all his power, had been trying to command the hurricane to stop. Josie knew you had to sit in the eye of the storm with it. You had to offer it a lumpy yarn octopus and the quiet promise that someone was staying.
The king himself was a fascinating, frustrating puzzle. He was clearly a man who had forgotten how to live in his own home. He walked through the halls like a visiting general, not a father. When she'd told him not to use his scary voice, she'd seen the flicker of pure shock in his eyes, followed by a bewildering instantaneous submission. It was like watching a mountain apologize. "Well, that's new," her inner voice had commented. "His wolf has more sense than he does. Probably a golden retriever in a direwolf costume. Bless its enormous heart."
The following weeks were a campaign of domestic pacification. She wasn't just calming a pup. She was retraining an alpha. She made him carry the unicorn backpack because he needed to feel the physical weight of his daughter's world, because a father who couldn't carry a sparkly bag had no business carrying a kingdom. She made him attempt pancakes because he needed to learn the value of failing at something small and unimportant. He was so used to winning wars, but he had no idea how to win a Saturday morning.
She saw the way he watched her with Ru, a mixture of awe and deep, profound sadness in his eyes. He loved his daughter. That much was clear. He just had no idea how to connect with her. His grief over his lost mate, Lyra, had built a wall of grim duty around him, and he was trapped inside. "He had confused providing for his daughter with being present for her, and they were not the same thing. Not even close." "You can give a child a castle," Josie thought, "but if there's no laughter in it, it's just a very large, very cold building."
Her own past was a quiet, locked room she rarely visited. She'd grown up in a small, tight-knit pack, but she'd seen what happened on the fringes. She'd seen pups left behind by rogues, pups caught in the crossfire of alpha disputes, pups abandoned when a faded mate bond was rejected. The fallout was always the same, a small, shattered heart that needed mending. She'd found her calling in picking up those pieces. It was safe. It was necessary. It was a job with a beginning and an end. She was the specialist you called in, not the family you kept. This boundary had always been her shield. It kept her from getting too close, from feeling the ache of leaving when her work was done. And she always left. That was the deal.
But here in this ridiculously gloomy castle, her shield was starting to feel thin. It was in the small moments when Dax, trying to read a bedtime story, fumbled the voices for the three little pigs, making the wolf sound like a squeaky mouse, and the pigs sound like gruffly voiced generals conducting a military briefing about structural engineering. Ru had giggled so hard she'd snorted, and Dax had looked up at Josie, a rare, unguarded smile on his face that made her own breath catch. Or when he'd walked into the nursery to find her humming Ru to sleep, rocking gently in the chair. He hadn't said a word, just leaned against the doorframe, the great alpha king looking utterly lost and achingly gentle. In that moment, he wasn't a king. He was just a father watching his child find peace.
Being a parent, she was realizing, wasn't about power. It wasn't about providing or protecting or any of the grand noble things the alpha legends talked about. It was about showing up every day for the small stuff. The bedtime stories with bad voices, the star-shaped cheese, the sticky maps. It was about being the person who was always, always there. And Dax was learning that slowly, clumsily, with batter on his shirt and glitter in his hair. But he was learning. The professional distance she usually maintained felt impossible to hold. She felt a dangerous, unfamiliar pull, not just toward the pup, but toward the lonely wolf standing in the doorway. "Careful," her inner voice warned, a little quieter than usual. "This is the job. Fix the pup. Support the parent and leave. That's the deal."
But as she looked at Dax, his massive shoulders slumped in relief, his eyes full of a gratitude so profound it was almost painful to see. She felt the neat lines of her professional life begin to blur. She was the pup whisperer, the fixer. But for the first time, she felt a dangerous, terrifying whisper of a thought. What if she wanted to stay? She pushed the thought away, tucking it back into the locked room with all the other things she wasn't allowed to feel. She was here for Ru. That was all it had to be.
The turning point came on a cold, rainy night. A storm raged outside the citadel, rattling the thick glass of the windows, and a different kind of storm began inside the nursery. Ru woke up just after midnight with a cry that was different from her usual screams of grief. It was a thin, pained whimper. Josie was by her side in an instant. The pup's forehead was burning, her breath coming in shallow rasps. Fever.
Jos's professionalism snapped into place like armor. She dispatched a sleepy guard to fetch the pack healer, sent another for cool water and cloths, and began sponging Ru's small, hot body. She was so focused she didn't hear Dax enter until a low, panicked growl vibrated through the floorboards. He was standing in the doorway, a silhouette of pure parental terror. His eyes, glowing with the faint gold of his wolf, were wide with fear.
"What's wrong with her?" His voice was a raw, ragged thing.
"It's a fever," Josie said, her own voice calm and steady, a rock in his sea of panic. "It's common. The healer is on their way. We just need to keep her cool."
He didn't seem to hear her. He took a step into the room, then another, his movement stiff with helplessness. He was a king who could command the earth to tremble, but he was powerless against a simple childhood illness. "She's so still," he whispered, his gaze fixed on his daughter's flushed face.
"That's the fever," Dax. Josie said softly, using his name without thinking. "She needs rest."
The healer, an old wolf named Allara, arrived and confirmed Jos's diagnosis. A common pup fever, easily broken with the right herbs and care. She administered a dose of a bitter-smelling tincture, left instructions, and departed, leaving the three of them alone in the quiet, lamplit room. The storm outside raged on. Dax pulled a chair up beside the crib opposite Josie. He didn't speak. He just watched his daughter breathe. The silence stretched, filled only by the rain and Ru's soft breaths. The carefully constructed walls between them, employer and employee, king and nanny, seemed to dissolve in the shared primal anxiety of caring for a sick child.
"Her mother, Lyra," Dax said suddenly, his voice low and rough, as if the words were being dredged up from a deep, painful place. "She hated storms."
Josie didn't respond, just continued to gently wipe Ru's forehead with a cool cloth. She knew this was a threshold. He was opening a door she wasn't sure she should walk through.
"She was my mate," he continued, his gaze distant. "The moon goddess chose her for me. The bond snapped into place the moment I saw her. It was overwhelming. Everything." He gave a short, bitter laugh. "For me, anyway. For her, it was a cage. She was a wild spirit, a rogue at heart. She never wanted to be a queen. She never wanted a pack, a citadel, a nursery. She tried. For Ru, she tried, but the walls were closing in on her. One day, she just couldn't breathe anymore." He finally looked at Josie, his golden eyes raw with a grief that had never healed. "She rejected the bond, severed it. It was like having half my soul torn out. She said she was leaving to save herself. She thought Ru would be better off with a father who was present than a mother who was a ghost." He paused, and his next words came out barely above a whisper. "She was wrong. A child needs both. A child needs a mother's softness and a father's steadiness. A child needs the person who hums the lullaby and the person who checks for monsters under the bed. I have been trying to be both, and I have failed at being either."
The story hung in the air between them, stark and painful. It explained everything. The screaming pup, the grim king, the hollow castle. It wasn't just a breakup. It was a fundamental violation of their world's most sacred law, a rejected, faded bond. "No wonder he was a wreck."
Josie finally stopped her ministrations, her hand resting gently on Ru's small leg. "My parents weren't faded," she said quietly, her own voice softer than she intended. "My father was an omega, my mother a beta. Theirs was a choice bond. The pack elders disapproved, said it was unnatural, but it was quiet and steady. They chose each other every day." She took a shaky breath. "When I was 10, a rogue alpha challenged our pack leader. My father was a recordkeeper, not a fighter. He got caught in the middle." Her eyes were on Ru's small, sleeping face. "He died protecting a litter of pups in the nursery. He didn't even hesitate. He was the smallest wolf in the room and he threw himself between those pups and a beast three times his size because that's what a parent does. It's not about being the strongest. It's about being the one who stays."
Dax was looking at her now, his grief momentarily forgotten, replaced by a quiet attention that had nothing to do with being a king. "My mother faded after that," Josie continued, her voice steady but thin. "The choice bond wasn't as violent as a faded one when it broke, but it was just as deep. She was gone within a year. The elders said it was proof that such bonds were weak." Josie looked down at her hands. "I thought it was proof that love, no matter what kind, is a risk, a beautiful, terrible risk. I decided I'd rather spend my life mending the breaks in other families than risk a break of my own."
They sat in silence for a long time after that. Two lonely souls sharing their scars in the dim light of a nursery, while outside the storm raged, and inside a small child slept peacefully, not knowing that she was the bridge between two broken hearts.
Sometime before dawn, Ru's fever broke. The heat receded from her skin, and her breathing deepened into a peaceful, healthy sleep. Dax's shoulders, which had been rigid with tension all night, finally slumped in relief. He looked at Josie, his eyes clear for the first time. The Alpha King was gone. The brooding facade was gone. All that was left was a tired man full of a gratitude so immense it was humbling. "Thank you, Josie," he whispered.
Without thinking, she reached across the small space between them and squeezed his hand. His skin was warm. His large hand dwarfed hers, but his grip, when he returned the gesture, was surprisingly gentle. They sat like that, shoulder-to-shoulder, their hands clasped over their sleeping child until the first gray light of dawn broke through the storm clouds. The professional line hadn't just been blurred. It had been erased completely.
The morning after the fever was quiet and strange. The storm had passed, leaving the world washed clean and glistening under a pale sun. The atmosphere inside the castle had shifted, too. The air between Dax and Josie was charged with the unspoken confessions of the night before. It was awkward, but it wasn't uncomfortable. It was the tentative, fragile silence that comes after a shared crisis, a new intimacy that neither of them knew what to do with.
Dax found he couldn't stop looking at her. He saw her not as the pup whisperer or the nanny, but as Josie, a woman who had shared her own pain with him, who had sat with him through the darkest hours of his fear. A woman whose small, steady hand had anchored him when he felt himself drifting into panic. His wolf, which had been in a state of quiet, reverent worship since she'd calmed Ru, was now pining. "She touched us," it purred. "She chose to touch us. She is our anchor, our calm, our—" The wolf's thoughts trailed off into something that felt suspiciously like a happy sigh. It then immediately followed this with, "Do you think she likes belly rubs? We should offer belly rubs. Wait, do we like belly rubs? This is confusing. Feelings are hard."
Josie, for her part, was trying desperately to rebuild her professional walls, but it was like trying to build a sandcastle in a rising tide. Every time Dax looked at her, his eyes full of that new unguarded warmth, a crack appeared in her resolve. She busied herself with Ru, who was back to her cheerful, non-screaming self, albeit a little tired. She focused on making oatmeal, on reading a story about a bear who lost his hat, on anything that would keep her from thinking about the feeling of Dax's hand in hers.
The new tension bred a new kind of chaos. Later that day, Dax found Josie in the royal library looking for a new book for Ru. She was on a small step ladder, reaching for a book on a high shelf. He came up behind her, meaning to ask if she needed help. "I was just looking for—" she started, turning around on the ladder. She hadn't realized how close he was. Her turn was too quick. The ladder wobbled and she lost her balance. She let out a small gasp, her arms flailing, and fell directly into his chest.
For a moment, they were frozen. Her hands were pressed against the hard muscle of his torso, her face just inches from his. He could smell the faint scent of lavender and old books that clung to her. His arms had come around her automatically, holding her steady. His heart was hammering against his ribs, a frantic, wild rhythm. His wolf was screaming a single triumphant word. "Finally."
He looked down into her wide, startled eyes. Her lips were slightly parted. The world seemed to narrow to the space between them. He leaned in, his movement slow, almost involuntary. She didn't pull away. Her breath hitched. This was it. This was the moment.
"Ahem." The sound, a dry, pointed cough, shattered the moment into a thousand pieces. They sprang apart as if electrocuted. Kale was standing at the entrance to the library, one eyebrow raised so high it was in danger of disappearing into his hairline. He was holding a tray with two cups of tea. "I brought refreshments," he said, his voice dripping with faux innocence. "I see I have interrupted a rigorous book retrieval process. A team effort, clearly very collaborative. My apologies. Do carry on. Don't mind me. I'll just be cataloging the dust over here." He sauntered away, humming pointedly.
Dax and Josie stood there, mortified, a chasm of awkwardness now separating them. "Thank you," she stammered, grabbing a random book from the shelf and practically fleeing the room. Dax was left standing alone, his heart still pounding, his wolf whining in profound disappointment. "So close. The beta is a saboteur, a fiend, a tea-wielding villain. We should demote him. We should promote him to a position very far away, ambassador to somewhere cold."
The near miss only heightened the awareness between them. Longing looks were exchanged across the dinner table, only to be caught by a smirking Kale or a curious guard. Hands would brush when passing a plate, sending jolts of electricity through them both, followed by hasty apologies and a sudden intense interest in the nearest wall sconce. Dax found himself making excuses to be near the nursery, claiming he needed to inspect the structural integrity of the rocking chair. Josie found herself lingering after Ru was asleep, tidying things that were already tidy just to be in the same quiet space as him.
The pack gossip network, which operated with more speed and efficiency than any royal messenger system, was in overdrive. Whispers followed them down the halls. The cooks debated the significance of the king suddenly developing a taste for apple slices. The guards placed bets on when, not if, the Alpha King would finally make a move. Kale, to his credit, did not participate in the betting pool. He administered it.
One afternoon, Dax walked into the gardens to see Josie and Ru having a picnic on the grass. Josie was weaving a crown of daisies, her head bent in concentration, a small smile on her lips as Ru chattered away beside her. The sun caught the highlights in her dark hair, and she looked so peaceful, so beautiful, so right there in his home that the breath left his body. His wolf gave a great shuddering sigh of pure adoration. "She makes flowers into crowns. She is magic. She is the sun, and we are a very large, very smitten sunflower."
He must have made a sound because she looked up and saw him. Her smile widened, a brilliant, unguarded thing that struck him right in the chest. "Your Majesty," Ru yelled, waving a half-eaten biscuit. "Come see, Josie made me a queen crown."
He walked over, his feet moving of their own accord. He sat down on the grass with them, his formal black tunic looking absurd amongst the daisies. Josie placed the finished crown on Ru's head, and his daughter beamed, "A tiny, perfect queen." Then Josie, her finger still holding a few stray daisies, looked at him. Her expression was soft, her eyes full of a warmth that had nothing to do with the sun. And in that moment, Dax knew he was utterly, irrevocably lost. This wasn't just gratitude. It wasn't just proximity. The terrifying, exhilarating truth hit him with the force of a physical blow. He was in love with his daughter's nanny.
The realization settled over the next few days, not like a storm, but like a quiet, inevitable dawn. He watched Josie and Ru, a painful, hopeful ache in his chest. He saw them in the garden, their heads bent together over a ladybug. He heard their shared laughter echoing from the nursery. He saw the way Ru would run to Josie for comfort, the way Josie would scoop her up, her movements full of an easy, natural affection that was both beautiful and agonizing to witness.
One sunny afternoon, he found them sitting on a bench near the castle's ancient rose garden. Josie was reading from a picture book, her voice animated as she performed the different characters. Ru was leaning against her side, completely absorbed, her small hand clutching a fold of Jos's simple dress. Dax watched from a distance, hidden by the arch of a stone trellis, feeling like an intruder in his own garden.
As Josie finished the story, Ru looked up at her, her blue eyes wide and serious. She reached up a small hand and gently touched Jos's cheek. The gesture was so tender, so full of a quiet, childish adoration that Dax's heart clenched. And then it happened. The world stopped.
"Mama," Ru whispered, the words soft but perfectly clear. Her little face was full of simple, unquestioning love. She wasn't confused. She wasn't asking. She was stating a fact. In her three-year-old heart, this warm, safe, loving person was Mama.
Dax froze. The blood drained from his face. He saw the exact moment the word hit Josie. Her smile faltered, then vanished completely. The light in her eyes went out, replaced by a look of pure, unadulterated panic. She gently removed Ru's hand from her cheek, her movements suddenly stiff and unnatural. "Oh, sweetie," she said, her voice strained. "I'm not. I'm Josie."
"Mama," Ru repeated a little more insistently, a confused frown starting to form on her face. She didn't understand the sudden shift in the atmosphere. Children never do. They feel the temperature drop in a room before anyone says a word, and they don't know why. Jos's face was a mask of distress. She looked around wildly, as if searching for an escape route, and her eyes met Dax's across the garden. The panic in her gaze intensified. He saw it all in that one shattering look. The crossed line, the broken rule, the professional boundary that had just been decimated by a single innocent word. She stood up abruptly. "I think it's time for your nap, Ru," she said, her voice tight. She scooped up the pup, who was now starting to whimper, sensing the change in her caregiver. Josie didn't look at Dax again. She turned and walked quickly, almost running back toward the castle. The beautiful sunny day suddenly felt cold and gray.
The word echoed in his mind. Mama. He found her letter two hours later. It was on the polished oak table inside his private study. A single sheet of fine parchment. Her handwriting neat and precise. A formal resignation. It spoke of her contract being fulfilled. Of Ru's initial adjustment period being successfully concluded. It recommended several other qualified nannies from the guild. It was professional, detached, and utterly heartbreaking. It was signed, "Josephine Park, Omega Pup specialist. Not Josie."
He went to her room. He was too late. The room was empty. The worn leather bag was gone. The small touches that had made the space hers. A book on the nightstand, a shawl draped over the chair, a small pot of lavender on the windowsill, all gone. The bed was made with the crisp efficiency of someone who had learned never to leave a trace. She hadn't just left. She had erased herself.
"Kale appeared behind him, silent as a shadow. 'She took a horse from the stables,' he said, his voice uncharacteristically gentle. '20 minutes ago, heading south toward Silver Creek.'"
"And you let her go." Dax's voice was hollow.
Kale was quiet for a moment. "She asked me not to stop her. And she was—she was crying. Dax. I have seen that woman face down a screaming toddler, a burning fever, and your alpha aura without blinking. When a woman like that cries, you listen."
From the nursery. A sound, a high, thin wail. Not the furious screaming of before, something worse. A small, confused, heartbroken question aimed at a door that wouldn't open. Ru had woken up from her nap. Ru was looking for Josie.
Dax closed his eyes. He went to his daughter. He sat beside her crib and pulled her into his arms. And she cried into his shoulder. Not screaming, just crying. Soft, bewildered tears that soaked through his shirt. He held her and rocked her and tried to hum the tune Josie always hummed, but he couldn't remember it. Not really, just fragments that fell apart like smoke.
"Jossie?" Ru asked, her voice small and wet, her blue eyes searching the room. "Where, Josie?"
"Josie had to go away for a little while, sweetheart," he said, and every word felt like swallowing glass. "Why?"
"Because she's afraid. Because she lost her parents and decided love was a risk she would never take. Because my daughter's innocent, perfect love was the one thing her armor couldn't withstand. Because sometimes the bravest people in the world are terrified of the one thing they want most."
"She just needs to think about some things," he said.
Ru considered this. "Is she thinking about pus?" She held up the yarn octopus, which she had not let go of since the day it was given to her. Dax almost smiled. Almost.
Maybe. The days that followed were a different kind of terrible than the screaming months. Ru didn't scream. She was worse than that. She was quiet. She followed the schedule Josie had left behind with the solemn obedience of a child who believed that if she did everything right, the person she loved would come back. She ate her star-shaped cheese. She went on her nature walks. She collected her magical pebbles. But the laughter was gone. The humming was gone. The light had gone out of her eyes. And what was left was a three-year-old performing the rituals of happiness without understanding why they no longer worked. It gutted him.
He tried. He tried so hard. He sat on the floor of the nursery with the octopus and attempted to make it dance. He burned three more batches of pancakes. He read the story about the bear who lost his hat in 17 different voices, each one worse than the last. Ru tolerated it all with a patient politeness that was more devastating than any tantrum.
Kale watched from the sidelines, his usual sardonic commentary very notably absent. On the third day, he brought Dax a cup of tea and sat down in the chair beside him. "You look terrible," he said, which was Kale's version of a warm embrace.
"She took the lullaby with her," Dax said, his voice low. "Ru asks for it every night, and I can't—I can't remember it."
Kale was quiet for a long moment. "You know," he said carefully, "there's a difference between chasing someone and waiting for them. She didn't leave because she doesn't care. She left because she cares too much and doesn't know what to do with it. And if she doesn't come back," Kale looked at him, and for once there was no sarcasm, no dry humor, no arched eyebrow, just the steady gaze of a man who had been his friend long before he'd been his beta. "Then you'll still be Ru's father, and that will have to be enough." He paused. "But for what it's worth, I don't think a woman who knits yarn sea creatures and fights alpha kings over indoor voice policies is the type to run forever. She's too practical. She probably has a spreadsheet for her emotions, and right now she's in the process of color coding them."
Dax didn't laugh, but something in his chest loosened just a fraction. Josie made it all the way to
The Silver Creek border before she stopped. She had ridden hard for two days, the landscape blurring past her, driven by a panic so deep it felt like drowning. She had done this before, dozens of times. She had walked into broken families, mended the cracks, and walked away, clean, professional, complete. It was what she did. It was who she was.
She stopped at an inn at the edge of the Silverwood Forest. A small, warm place with low beams and a fire crackling in the hearth. She took a room, sat on the bed, opened her leather bag, and stared at its contents. Everything she owned in the world, it all fit in a single bag. She had always thought of that as freedom. Tonight, sitting in a room that smelled of woods and loneliness, it felt like something else entirely.
She thought of Ru. The way her small hand had felt on her cheek, the absolute certainty in her voice. Mama, not a question, a declaration. Jos's chest ached. She had spent her entire life building walls. After her father died, after her mother faded, she had looked at the wreckage and drawn a conclusion that had shaped every day since. Love was a house built on sand, and the tide always came. The only way to survive was to never build the house. To be a visitor, never a resident. To fix other people's homes and never have one of her own. It had worked for years. It had worked. She had helped dozens of families, held dozens of pups, hummed hundreds of lullabies, and every time she had closed the door behind her, and walked away with her heart intact.
But Dax and Ru had not been like the others. They had not been a job. They had been the sound of a child's laugh in a gray castle. The smell of burnt pancakes on a Saturday morning. The feeling of a man's hand holding hers over a sleeping child. They had been a home. Her home. And she had run from it because a three-year-old had seen the truth before she had.
She sat in that inn room all night arguing with herself. The professional in her recited the rules. The specialist cited the boundaries. But underneath all of it, in a voice that sounded suspiciously like her father's, a quieter truth was speaking. Your father didn't die because he loved those pups too much. The voice said, "He died because he was the kind of person who couldn't not love them. And your mother didn't fade because their bond was weak. She faded because it was the strongest thing she had ever known and she couldn't imagine a world without it. You've been so afraid of the fading that you've been living faded your whole life."
She thought of her mother's face, the way she used to light up when Jos's father walked into a room. Not the grand dramatic love of faded mates. A quiet daily chosen love. A love that said, "I am here again still always." Being a parent wasn't about being the right person for the job. It wasn't about qualifications or contracts or professional distance. It was about being the person who stayed. Her father hadn't been the strongest wolf. He hadn't been a warrior or an alpha. He had been a recordkeeper who loved lullabies and couldn't cook to save his life. But he had been the person who stayed every single day until the day he couldn't anymore. And she had just walked away from a child who needed her, a child who had chosen her, a man who had opened his scarred heart to her and asked for nothing but her presence. "Oh," Josie said to the empty room, her voice thick with tears and a dawning, terrifying clarity. "Oh, I am such an idiot."
She repacked her bag. It took about 30 seconds because everything she owned in the world fit in a single bag. She thought about that again and this time the thought didn't feel like freedom. It felt like a problem she could fix. She rode through the night. She arrived at the Sunstone Citadel just as the sun was rising, painting the gray stone in shades of gold and amber. The guards at the gate stared at her. One of them, a young wolf named Tam, who she'd helped with his daughter's night terrors, broke into a huge grin, but said nothing. He just opened the gate. She walked through the corridors, her worn boots making soft, determined steps on the cold stone. The same steps she'd made months ago, the first time she'd arrived. But this time, she wasn't walking toward a job. She was walking toward her home.
She found Dax in the nursery. It was early and Ru was still asleep, her small fist wrapped around the yarn octopus. Dax was sitting in the rocking chair, still in yesterday's clothes, looking like he hadn't slept in days. He was holding a piece of parchment, her resignation letter. The edges were wrinkled as if he'd been holding it for a long time. He looked up when she appeared in the doorway, and the expression on his face broke her heart. It wasn't anger. It wasn't relief. It was the look of a man who had been bracing himself for a blow and couldn't quite believe it hadn't come. "I'm sorry," she said, the words tumbling out before she could arrange them properly. Her voice cracked. "I'm sorry I left. I'm sorry I ran. I'm sorry I gave you a letter signed Josephine Park, Omega pup specialist." Like I was filing a report instead of walking out on the two people I—" she stopped, swallowed, started again. "I was scared. Not of Ru, not of you, of me, of what I was becoming here. I have spent my whole life being the person who leaves. And Ru looked at me and saw someone who stays. And I didn't know how to be that person."
Dax was very still. He didn't speak. He just looked at her and she could see him holding his breath, afraid that if he moved, she'd bolt again. "My whole life," she continued, tears rolling down her cheeks. "Now I have told myself that love is a risk I can't afford. That the best I can do is patch up the cracks in other people's lives and keep my own heart intact. But my heart hasn't been intact, Dax. It's been empty. There's a difference." She gave a watery, self-deprecating laugh. "I am the pup whisperer. I have calmed a hundred broken children, and it took a three-year-old with a yarn octopus to break me."
She took a step into the room. "You said something to me once on pancake morning. You said, 'Together.' And it terrified me because together means I might lose you. And I have spent my whole life making sure I never had anything to lose." She was standing in front of him now. She crouched down so they were eye to eye. She took his hand the same way she had during Ru's fever. But this time it was deliberate. This time it was a choice. "I want to be the person who stays," she whispered. "Not because it's my job, not because I'm a specialist. Because that little girl in that crib has my whole heart and so does her father. And I am done running from that."
Dax's jaw was tight, his eyes bright. He hadn't blinked. His hand was trembling in hers. His wolf was absolutely silent for the first time in his entire life, as if it understood that this moment was too important for commentary. "You left," he said, his voice rough. It wasn't an accusation. It was the sound of a wound. "I know," she said. "And I will spend as long as it takes making that right. I will apologize every day if I need to. I will, Josie." His voice was quiet but firm, and it stopped her. He squeezed her hand, his grip gentle but certain. "You came back. That's—that's everything."
He stood, pulling her gently to her feet and into his arms. She buried her face against his chest, and his arms came around her, solid and warm, and she felt for the first time in her careful, controlled, perfectly structured life, like she was exactly where she was supposed to be. "For the record," he murmured into her hair. "My wolf would like you to know that it has been in a state of complete emotional collapse since you left. It ate my favorite boots. It refused to acknowledge my existence for 2 days. It has been the most passive aggressive wolf in the history of the pack." A surprised laugh burst out of her, muffled against his shirt. "I'm sorry about the boots." "Don't be. They were ugly. Kale's been telling me that for years."
They stood there for a long time holding each other in the gray morning light. While in the crib behind them, a small child began to stir. Josie felt the shift the way mothers do. The change in a child's breathing that telegraphs the transition from sleep to wake. She turned in Dax's arms and they both watched as Ru's eyes fluttered open, blue and bright and still a little foggy with sleep. Ru saw Josie. Her eyes went wide, her mouth opened, and then a smile so enormous, so incandescent, so full of uncomplicated joy that it lit up the entire room broke across her face. "Josie!" she shrieked, arms out, body already attempting to launch itself over the crib railing. "Josie, Josie, Josie!" Josie scooped her up, laughing and crying at the same time, and Ru's arms locked around her neck like she would never let go.
Over Ru's shoulder, Josie met Dax's eyes. He was smiling, a real smile, the kind that changed his whole face and made him look like a different person entirely. His wolf recovered from its emotional collapse was doing ecstatic laps in his mind. "She is back. The calm is back. The lullaby is back. Everything is perfect. We should celebrate. Is there cheese?"
"Josie," Ru said, pulling back to look at her very seriously with her little blue eyes. "You went away." "I did, sweetheart. And I'm very sorry. Did you think about things?" Jos's heart clenched. Dax had told her she was thinking. Ru had remembered. "I did. I thought about a lot of things and I decided that the most important thing is right here." Ru considered this with the grave solemnity of a tiny philosopher. Then she nodded. "Okay," she said, as if forgiving an entire existential crisis. "Pancakes?"
Dax groaned. "Not the pancakes." "Daddy's turn," Ru said firmly. Josie looked at Dax, tears still on her cheeks, but her smile wider than he'd ever seen it. "You heard the queen. It's your turn to burn them."
The kitchen that morning was filled with noise and mess and the smell of something that was either pancakes or a war crime against batter. Dax wore the daisy apron. He destroyed two pans. Ru clapped and called each disaster a "sticky map" and then ate blueberries directly off the counter when she thought no one was looking. Kale materialized in the doorway, took one look at the scene and said absolutely nothing. He just stood there smiling. It was so unusual that the cook dropped his whisk again. Then Kale cleared his throat. "For the record," he said, his voice its usual dry self, but with a warmth underneath that he would deny to his dying day. "The entire palace staff has been openly weeping since sunrise. The head cook has made a cake. The guards are pretending they aren't emotional, but Tam has blown his nose 11 times. I myself am completely unaffected." He adjusted his tunic. "I have allergies."
"Thank you, Kale," Josie said, smiling at him. "Don't thank me. Thank the horse. It's the one that carried you back." He paused. "Also, I would like you to know that your resignation letter has been officially rejected. I misplaced it into a fire accidentally. These things happen." And then he turned and walked away. And if his eyes were a little bright, well, allergies.
Their new beginning was not a fairy tale. It was better than that. It was real. Josie stayed. She stayed not as a nanny or a specialist, but as Josie. She and Dax navigated the strange uncharted territory between what they had been and what they were becoming. And they did it the way they did everything, messily, honestly, and together. Dax still growled sometimes. Josie still reminded him to use his inside voice. Ru still demanded pancakes. The castle was still covered in glitter. The Northern Ridge trade agreement was eventually redrafted, but the original was preserved, batter stain and all, in a frame in Dax's study because Josie said it was the most important document in the kingdom. "That's the day you learned that failing at something small doesn't make you less of a king," she told him. "It makes you more of a father."
One evening, months later, Dax managed to get Ru to bed early. He found Josie on the balcony off their shared chambers looking up at the stars. He came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her shoulder. She leaned back against him, a comfortable, familiar gesture. "It's quiet," he murmured into her hair, inhaling her lavender scent. "It is," she agreed, contentment in her voice. "A little too quiet. I'm suspicious." He chuckled, tightening his hold. "I wanted to give you this." He held out his hand. In his palm lay a small, lumpy object made of worn, multicolored yarn. It was a terrible replica of her original octopus with uneven tentacles and lopsided eyes. One of the tentacles was significantly longer than the others, giving it the appearance of an octopus that had been partially stretched on a rack. It was objectively the worst piece of craftsmanship in the history of the Sunstone Territories.
She gasped, taking it from him. "You made this?" "Kale tried to teach me to knit," he admitted, a faint blush on his cheeks. "He said it would be good for my repressed alpha aggression. I believe his exact words were, 'If you can learn to make a yarn cephalopod, you can learn to handle a trade negotiation without growling.' It took me 6 weeks. I went through 11 balls of yarn. I may have growled at the knitting needles twice." His wolf chimed in. "It was three times. We are not proud."
She turned in his arms, her eyes shining with tears. But this time they were happy ones. She threw her arms around his neck, clutching the lumpy octopus. "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," she whispered. He held her close, feeling a sense of peace so profound it almost frightened him. He, the Wolf King, had found his center not in a throne or a crown, but in the arms of an Omega pup specialist who had told him to use his inside voice. "I love you, Josie Park," he said, the words as easy and natural as breathing. "I love you, too, you big grumpy wolf," she replied, her voice muffled against his chest. He leaned in to kiss her to seal the perfect quiet moment.
"I'm thirsty," a small voice yelled from the doorway. They sprang apart. Ru stood there holding a stuffed bear in one hand and the original yarn octopus in the other, looking at them with wide, expectant eyes. She had somehow escaped from her crib, navigated the dark hallway, and arrived at precisely the worst possible moment with the unerring timing of every child who has ever lived. Dax sighed, the perfect moment shattered. He looked at Josie, who was laughing silently, her shoulders shaking. He felt a smile tug at his own lips. This was his life now, chaotic, interrupted, and absolutely perfect. He turned to his daughter and crouched down, holding out his arms. "All right, my little queen. What's the royal decree? Water? Juice?"
Ru ran to him and scrambled onto his back. "Piggyback ride," she commanded. "To the kitchen! Giddy up, Daddy Wolf." Dax straightened up, his daughter perched on his shoulders like a tiny triumphant ruler. He looked at Josie over his shoulder, his eyes full of a love that was vast and endless and ordinary and extraordinary all at once. She smiled back and then she did something she'd never done before. She walked over, took his free hand, and the three of them went to the kitchen together. A king, a nanny, and a tiny queen who demanded the world and got it. Because the two people who loved her most had finally figured out that the bravest thing you can do isn't conquer a kingdom, it's stay.
With the future queen of the Sunstone territory, shouting faster from his back, the alpha king obediently trotted toward the kitchen, leaving a trail of glitter, chaos, and unconditional love in his wake. He was a mess. They were a mess, but they were each other's mess. And he wouldn't have it any other way.