I know this. The letters told me months ago. But hearing it from Gar'than's mouth—in the old tongue's cadence, with the weight of a man who served my father for sixty years—turns knowledge into a blade. Sarah's hand finds my thigh beneath the table, fingers pressing into the muscle, grounding me.
"The lung rot took hold six months ago," Gar'than continues. "The lung rot has taken his strength. He can no longer lead, can no longer command. The healers cannot say how long—orc warlords are difficult to kill, even by disease. But he will never rule again. And the clans..." He exhales through his nose, a sound weighted with decades of frustration. "Three factions fight for the throne. Your cousin Torgan's death left a void no one can fill. The eastern clans arm for civil war. The northern alliance threatens secession. Thousands stand to die if no legitimate heir steps forward."
He leans across the table. "You are the only heir all factions will accept."
I let the silence hold. Let it stretch until the waves fill it.
"Prince Kragnar died twenty years ago." My voice comes out even, controlled, the voice I use at the head of a church table when brothers need steadying. "I'm Knox Stone. President of the Feral Sons MC."
"Your people need you."
"My people are here."
Gar'than's jaw tightens. The iron beads in his braids click as he straightens. "You would let your homeland burn? Let children starve and warriors slaughter each other over a throne you abandoned?"
The guilt hits before I can stop it. A spike through the center of my ribs, sharp and familiar, the same guilt that surfacesevery time one of those letters arrives with the Bloodstone seal. Sarah's grip tightens on my leg. She feels the crack in my composure through the bond, and she shores it up the way she always does—steady, certain, unmovable.
"He won't be going alone if he does go."
Her voice carries across the table, clear and unhurried, and Gar'than's eyebrows climb toward his braided hairline.
"You would go to the orc territories?" he asks.
"Where my mate goes, I go." She meets his stare the same way she met mine the night I pulled her out of the rain. "That's how this works."
I cover her hand with mine. "I'm not going. Not now, maybe not ever. But when I make decisions about my former homeland, my mate will be part of them."
Gar'than studies her for a long moment. His nostrils flare—scenting, the way orcs do when they're trying to read a face that gives them nothing.
I stand. Sarah rises with me.
"Tell my father I wish him a peaceful death." The words taste like ash and obligation, like the last threads of a life I shed two decades ago. "Tell the clans I have claimed a mate, that she carries my heir, and that my loyalty belongs to them both."
"There will be consequences."
"Then let them come."
"You would start a war over a human?"
I look at Sarah. Her hand in mine, the bite mark pale at her throat, our child growing beneath the green fabric of her dress. Everything I built. Everything I chose.
"I would end one for her."
Gar'than's ancient eyes move between us, and the hard lines of his face rearrange. The look of a man who has lived long enough to know when stubbornness has roots too deep to pull.
"You've built a life here, Kragnar." He pauses. Corrects himself. "Knox. Your father would hate it."
"I know."
"But your mother would have loved it."
My throat closes. The grief hits fast and low, a sucker punch from a dead woman's memory, and I breathe through it because breaking down in front of a clan elder defeats every point I've made in the last ten minutes.
"Yes, she would have."
Gar'than pushes to his feet. The bronze caps on his tusks catch the light from the windows, flashing the Bloodstone sigil across the white tablecloth.
"I'll deliver your message. But this isn't over."
