The Eternal One stopped before Kai. Those mismatched eyes, brown and blue, gleamed in the firelight.
Kai fought the urge to fall at her feet, to weep.
They weren’t alone.
Not anymore.
“How did you know to come?” Kai asked, her voice barely more than a breath.
Drakaa smiled softly and squeezed Kai’s shoulder.
Then she straightened, her voice rising like a tide. “Kai Silver Wolf, you recently reminded me that if you fall, we fall. We, the Unseen, come to you today as Clan.”
And then, before the eyes of the mountain, Drakaa lowered to one knee.
The silence that fell was heavier than any war cry.
Behind her, the Unseen warriors dropped to one knee, heads bowed. Blades lowered.
Gasps shivered through the mountain.
Drakaa raised her chin. “Command us, First Daughter. We will follow.”
“Crownless king!”
Not a mocking rebuke.
A call to arms.
The Perean people roared in answer—fierce, united.
The hiss of steel filled the air. Blades drawn, not against him.Forhim.
For the first time in months, Dimitrios knew where he stood. With the certainty that he was no longer alone.
One by one, soldiers dropped to their knees, armor and swords scraping against stone. His people followed, pledging themselves not to a crown, but to a cause.
Nikolas smirked, gaze sweeping the masses. Slowly, deliberately, he knelt. “We remain yours to command, Your Majesty.”
The words struck like a smith’s hammer against the molten metal of his spine. He let them forge him—hot, steady, final.
Dimitrios stepped forward, sword sheathed, hilt gripped tight. “Good,” he said. “Now get me a horse.”
He turned to the gates. To the storm rising in the north.
“We ride at once.”
“The remaining matriarchs must be found.” Kai’s voice rang into the stillness Drakaa had summoned with a single sentence.
First Daughter.
Command.
Lead.
She would be the daughter who rose above all the rest.
Kai Silver Wolf squared her shoulders—not as a warrior, but as heir to the mountain. “Protect our mothers and our people. Guard our clans with your lives.”
