“Change.” Voss repeated the word with the disgust of a man chewing rotten fruit. “Is that what you call this? Working alongside the species that imprisoned Lord Farmon? That killed Commander Kaelwyn and Lady Diera? That manufactured feral wolves from our own people?”
Every name landed.
Farmon, whose ruined hands were visible from where Voss stood. Percy’s parents, murdered on the first expedition. The weight of those names pressed against my chest and I let it.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly what I call this.”
I turned to face the camp. Not Voss. Not the soldiers or the council reps or the ravens with their recording eyes.
The people.
Lycans and humans standing on opposite sides of a clearing, watching a king with expressions that ranged from hope to contempt.
Mira stood near Farmon’s station. Arms at her sides. Watching me with mismatched eyes that held no expectation, no demand, just the steady observation of a woman who’d stopped waiting for men to do the right thing and started doing it herself.
“I chose wrong.”
The words came out rough. Unscripted. Not the diplomatic framework I’d prepared but the truth that lived beneath it.
“When the council ordered the rejection of my mate, I complied. I broke the bond with the woman carrying my children because the throne demanded it and I was too afraid to refuse.”
The silence in camp was deafening.
“I told myself it was duty. That a king protects his kingdom first. That sacrifice was required.”
My hands were fists at my sides and I let them be. Let the camp see the composure fracturing because composure had been the weapon I’d used to justify every wrong decision.
“But it wasn’t sacrifice. It was cowardice. I chose the path that let me keep my crown and my certainty, and I let the woman I love pay the price.”
Percy’s frequency surged through the bond. Approval, grief, pride tangled together. Solomon’s channel pulsed steady. Anchoring.
“The cycle of hatred between our species has lasted centuries,” I continued. “It has cost us Farmon’s freedom, Kaelwyns and their lives, and generations of lycans who deserved better than a war without end. Innocent humans that got dragged into this world. And it will continue to cost us unless someone decides to stop feeding it.”
My gaze found Voss.
“I am deciding. Here. Today. Not because a human woman changed my mind but because she showed me what courage actually is when it isn’t dressed in armor and titles. She walked into the Order’s compound alone, pregnant, hunted by her own father, and she built an alliance that none of us had the imagination to attempt.”
I turned back to the camp.
“I am not asking you to forgive what the hunters have done. That pain is real and I will never minimize it.” My voice steadied. The king’s register settling over the man’s raw edges. “But the cycle that created that pain will outlive every one of us if we keepfeeding it. I am choosing to starve it. And that is the kingdom I want my children to inherit.”
The clearing held.
Annora stood at the perimeter with the council representatives. Her expression was unreadable. She greeted the nearest council rep with a graceful incline of her head, the gesture of a queen candidate welcoming familiar allies.
Whatever my speech accomplished, her positioning accomplished the opposite. A reminder that tradition had a representative too.
Voss studied me for a long time.
“Pretty words,” he said. “Your father would have vomited.”
“My father never met Mira.”
The corner of Voss’s mouth twitched. Not amusement. Grudging acknowledgment that the response had landed.
“I have a condition,” Voss said.
“Name it.”
