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Luna of Vengeance: Throne of the Moon EP
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Short filmTranscript
00:00I was brought into the royal castle as my sister's bonded companion.
00:03The she-wolf a Luna Queen brings when she wants a spare.
00:06While Seraphine trained in diplomacy, horsemanship, and court etiquette under the finest tutors our father's pack could buy,
00:12I was handed to a different kind of teacher entirely.
00:15Women who knew how to enter a room and make a man forget his own name.
00:19My father said it the way Alphys always do, cruelty dressed in logic.
00:24Seraphine is destined to be Luna Queen.
00:26You exist to serve her.
00:29Being allowed near her is more than you deserve.
00:32What none of them knew was that the midwife had recorded the birth times wrong.
00:35I was the one born under the full moon.
00:38The prophecy had always been mine.
00:40Alpha Uldric was known as a devoted mate.
00:43Pax across the Northern Territories admired his loyalty to his Luna Helena, as though it were a law of nature.
00:48But devotion has its limits.
00:51One night at a Pax summit, drunk and dominant and unstoppable, my father cornered a she-wolf dancer named Mara
00:57at the edge of the grounds.
00:59No one intervened.
01:00He was an alpha.
01:01Afterward, everyone braced for Helena's fury.
01:04Aluna discovering her mate had strayed that way was supposed to mean blood.
01:08The dancer, people agreed, would be lucky to survive the week.
01:11Instead, Helena smiled.
01:13She visited Mara herself, looked her over with warm appreciation, and said,
01:18What a lovely creature.
01:21No wonder Aldric couldn't help himself.
01:23She brought Mara into the estate, gave her comfortable rooms, fussed over her with genuine,
01:28seeming warmth, and performed the role of the gracious, broad.
01:32Hearted Luna so convincingly that the territory praised her for months.
01:36They didn't know what Helena had planned.
01:38On the night Mara went into labor, Helena dismissed the healers.
01:42Only her own hand-picked servants went in.
01:45By morning she emerged to present the pack with a healthy infant girl.
01:49Mara passed away unexpectedly.
01:51Helena said head bowed with practiced sorrow.
01:54No one questioned it.
01:55Because no one questioned Helena.
01:57Mara was my mother, I was the infant left behind.
02:01I always knew Helena didn't like me.
02:03I learned it from the shape of my days.
02:05Food arriving last and cold.
02:07Clothing passed down from the estate's Omega maids.
02:10Servants whose gazes slid past me without stopping.
02:13My quarters were at the far edge of the manor where the fires barely reached in winter.
02:17I had one person, Agnes.
02:19Old Agnes who walked with a limp and had been my mother's personal attendant before Mara was ever brought to
02:24Aldric Manor.
02:25Helena kept her because it made Helena look merciful.
02:28Agnes raised me.
02:29She braided my hair every morning, sat with me through fevers, whispered stories to me in the dark when the
02:34manor felt too large and too cold.
02:36She was my mother in every way that mattered.
02:38The lower servants talked within my earshot.
02:40Your mother seduced the alpha and paid for it.
02:43Wolves like her always do.
02:45When I was small, I believed them.
02:47I would cry in Agnes' arms and ask why my mother had done something so terrible.
02:51It had made my whole life a punishment.
02:54Our win is the finest girl in all the territories.
02:58Agnes always held me tighter.
03:00She told me my name had come from Mara herself.
03:03She'd wanted me to grow up like a small, sharp-winged bird that flew over walls and never looked back.
03:08I used to ask Agnes the same question over and over.
03:11Was my mother really bad?
03:13Every time.
03:14Her face went heavy.
03:17In this world, when something goes wrong, people always find a way to blame the she-wolf.
03:24I was too young to understand.
03:26I only knew it hurt her, so I stopped asking.
03:30The summons came without warning.
03:32I was 12 when Helena called me to her private study.
03:35A room I had never once been permitted inside.
03:38My wolf went still the moment silver.
03:40Helena's head attendant dropped a slim leather booklet on the desk in front of me.
03:44This is what you'll be learning.
03:46Her lip curled.
03:47There are illustrations.
03:49Even someone uneducated would understand.
03:51I opened the first page.
03:53My face went hot instantly.
03:55My wolf recoiled.
03:56The illustrations were explicit.
03:58Techniques, positions, expressions coached into something designed to resemble pleasure.
04:03Every instinct screamed to throw it into the fire.
04:06Helena's voice came from across the room.
04:08Drop it and I'll have both your hands broken.
04:11I didn't throw it away.
04:13Back in my quarters, Agnes took one look and said nothing.
04:16She sat on the edge of my bed and wept without a sound, watching her.
04:20I understood for the first time that Helena had not kept me alive out of mercy.
04:24She had kept me alive to suffer slowly.
04:26Shaped into a weapon for Seraphine to use and discard.
04:29I also finally understood what Agnes had been trying to tell me all those years.
04:34My father had taken my mother by force.
04:36Drunk, dominant, unstoppable.
04:39Afterward, no one questioned him.
04:41The story the pack told was that Mara had seduced an alpha, that Helena's rage was righteous.
04:46My mother had been the victim.
04:48The world had decided she was the villain.
04:50I was her inheritance.
04:52My instruction began the following week under Madame Vos, proprietor of the city's most exclusive private house.
04:59Trainer of bonded companions now placed in three different royal households.
05:03Efficient, unsentimental, precise.
05:06I performed terribly in my first training session.
05:08Madame Vos didn't reprimand me, she watched.
05:11The next morning Helena had me dragged to the punishment hall.
05:14Don't kill her.
05:16Make sure she remembers.
05:18I endured severe punishment, and passed out from the pain.
05:22I burned with fever for three days.
05:24Agnes didn't sleep.
05:25Cool cloths water coaxed past my lips her hands never still.
05:29On the third night delirious with heat, I called her mother more than once without meaning to.
05:33On the fourth morning the fever broke.
05:36I called for Agnes.
05:37She didn't answer.
05:38A passing Omega told me Helena had sent for her that morning.
05:42I ran over there as fast as I could.
05:45Pack hands were coming out of Helena's wing carrying a stretcher.
05:48The figure on it was Agnes, covered in blood, her hand already cold when I grabbed it.
05:53Seraphine stepped out behind them, unhurried attendants trailing.
05:57An Omega who forgets her stations gets what she deserves.
06:00A servant reported that she let you call her mother.
06:02I handled it personally.
06:04I threw myself over Agnes and made sounds I didn't recognize as my own.
06:08Mara's blood really does show.
06:11Seraphine said and walked away.
06:13Every piece of wolf instinct I had wanted to tear up.
06:17But I was 12 years old and barely standing.
06:20And I understood with total clarity that if I moved on Seraphine I would not survive it.
06:25That understanding was the most important thing I ever learned.
06:28In how Saldrick lives existed at Helena's pleasure.
06:31We were inventory, discarded when inconvenient, rearranged when useful.
06:35And no one outside these walls would question it.
06:38Because Helena was gracious.
06:40Helena was generous.
06:41Helena was the kind of lunar people wrote tributes to.
06:44I knelt beside Agnes and made myself a promise.
06:47I was going to destroy every single one of them.
06:50After Agnes died I became the perfect student.
06:52I attended every session without being called.
06:55Practiced the walk.
06:56The precise shift of weight that draws a man's eye without appearing to try.
07:00Practiced expressions until I could produce any of them on demand.
07:03Warmth.
07:04Grief.
07:04Invitation.
07:06Innocents learned to read the tells of male attention draw tensions.
07:09The flicker of the gaze hands settling when a man is fighting not to reach.
07:14Within two years Madame Vos stopped coming to the manor.
07:18You have nothing left to learn from me.
07:19She said on her last visit.
07:21She studied me for a long moment.
07:23You were born for this.
07:24It's a shame.
07:25I filed it as a weapon.
07:27By then I had been transferred into Seraphine's household as her personal attendant.
07:31She tested me constantly.
07:33Made me kneel and scrub her riding boots by hand.
07:36Once poured wine into my lap at a formal dinner purely to watch my reaction.
07:40Every time.
07:41I performed terribly.
07:42I had confirmed by then what I'd long suspected.
07:46Helena had been lacing my food with a suppression compound for years.
07:49A she-wolf who couldn't carry pups was no threat to Seraphine's position.
07:54Helena thought she had neutralized me completely.
07:57The old Lycan king died.
07:59King Caden ascended.
08:00Seraphine was named his Lunar Queen.
08:02And I as her servant am to accompany her into the royal castle.
08:06The night before we left, Helena summoned me one final time.
08:10My father sat beside her and looked at me the way someone looks at their greatest regret.
08:14Stay invisible.
08:16Serving Seraphine is more than you deserve.
08:19Silver brought out a vial of dark liquid.
08:21Helena's expression was flat.
08:23A suppression compound.
08:24Drink it now.
08:25I didn't hesitate.
08:26One swallow, no reaction.
08:28Helena nodded with faint satisfaction.
08:30She didn't know I had spent months sourcing the antidote through a contact Madame Vos had once let slip.
08:36Years of compound exposure had caused real damage, but not irreparable.
08:40I had been steadily reversing it.
08:42The next morning I followed Seraphine through the castle gates.
08:45The promise I had made over Agnes' body walked in with me.
08:50Seraphine's first order arrived the moment we crossed the threshold.
08:53When King Caden is here do not appear before him.
08:56No Cosmex.
08:58Keep your hair forward over your face.
09:01She didn't need to explain.
09:03She hadn't secured an heir yet.
09:04Hadn't cemented her hold.
09:06What she least wanted was for anyone around her to attract the King's attention before she had succeeded.
09:12I spent the King's wedding night in the rear courtyard.
09:15I didn't mind.
09:16I had already taken something from his traveling case the evening before.
09:20A jewel signet ring his senior attendant would notice missing by morning.
09:24When the King left the Lunar Queen's wing at dawn, the ring would be found.
09:28He would come back when he did.
09:29I would be exactly where I needed to be.
09:33Seraphine's first formal court as Lunar Queen was, by all appearances, flawless.
09:37She received the castle's she-wolves in the great hall, seated high, composed, radiant.
09:42Lady Lyra led the pack-wives and companions forward with careful deference.
09:47I moved quietly through the hall, distributing goblets of spiced mead.
09:51When I set one near Seraphine's side, her hand shifted.
09:54A small, deliberate nudge, the goblet tipped and shattered on the stone floor.
09:59I dropped to one knee instantly.
10:01Forgive me, my Luna.
10:03Our castle has standards, Seraphine said pleasantly.
10:06One hour kneeling on the shards.
10:09Every she-wolf in the hall went rigid.
10:11Lady Lyra's expression shifted.
10:13The message was clear.
10:15This is what disobedience costs.
10:17Seraphine's wolf preened visibly beneath her skin.
10:20Then the great hall doors opened.
10:22His Majesty, King Caden.
10:25The satisfaction drained from Seraphine's face.
10:29King Caden swept the hall.
10:31His gaze dropped to me and his wolf surfaced immediately.
10:34Jaw tight, eyes darkening at the edges, a low vibration building in his chest.
10:38What happened here?
10:40Silence pressed through the hall before Seraphine could speak.
10:42I raised my right hand, a deep gash across the palm I had quietly opened against a shard moments before.
10:48I dropped the goslet and cut myself in the fall, Your Majesty.
10:51Forgive the mess.
10:53The King looked at Seraphine.
10:54She recovered, called for a healer, expressed concern, managed the surface.
10:58He accepted it.
11:00He had only returned for the missing signet ring, located moments later in the Luna Queen's sitting room.
11:05He left.
11:06The moment the doors closed, Seraphine crossed the hall and struck me hard across the face.
11:10Worthless she-wolf.
11:11You nearly exposed me.
11:13I let that one land what Seraphine didn't know.
11:16I had planted the ring myself, the blood, the shards.
11:19His wolf reacting to a she-wolf bleeding on the floor of his own castle.
11:23I hadn't needed him to act on it yet.
11:25I only needed the image to stay in him.
11:28Seeds take time, I was planting.
11:31When Seraphine's temper cooled, she gave me my reassignment.
11:34You don't appear before the King.
11:36Your only duty is delivering the Dowager Luna's morning disc arches to Thornkeap Tower each day.
11:41Make yourself useful.
11:43Stay out of my sight.
11:45I bowed and kept my expression neutral.
11:48This was exactly the position I had been steering toward.
11:51The Dowager Luna King Caden's mother had withdrawn to Thornkeap Tower after her mate's death.
11:56Everyone in the castle understood she wasn't truly incapacitated.
12:00She was a she-wolf who had commanded the Royal Pact's inner circle for decades.
12:04And she had no intention of surrendering that power quietly.
12:08But Castle Protocol gave her no formal grounds to hold it unless the new Luna Queen invited her back.
12:14Seraphine had no intention of doing that.
12:16So the Dowager waited, applied quiet pressure through Lady Lyra.
12:21Let Seraphine feel the friction of ruling without allies.
12:24And every morning, I was about to walk through her gates.
12:30For the first month I never saw her.
12:32I arrived at Thornkeap Tower each morning at the same hour with the official dispatch pouch.
12:37The Dowager's head attendant, Nora, would appear, accept the pouch without ceremony, and send me away.
12:43After two weeks even Nora stopped coming out.
12:46A junior attendant waved me off instead.
12:48I showed no frustration.
12:50Every morning correct hour, correct bow, pouch delivered, clean departure.
12:54What I changed was what I tucked alongside the dispatches.
12:58Each morning I added a small parcel smoked game preserves.
13:01Stone ground barley bread.
13:03Salted Highland butter.
13:04Prepared in the specific styles of the Dowager's home-packed territory in the Greystone Highlands.
13:09The kind that required techniques and ingredients rarely bothered with in castle kitchens.
13:14Each day different.
13:15Rotating through the flavors and preparations the way someone would if they'd spent months quietly studying what a woman missed
13:21from home.
13:21I had been studying for years.
13:24Seraphine learned the Dowager refused to receive me and considered it a minor victory.
13:28She didn't think to wonder why I kept returning every single morning without fail.
13:33Five weeks in Nora stepped outside herself and stopped.
13:37The smoked venison and heather salt preserves three days ago.
13:41Who prepared those?
13:42I did.
13:44Nora studied my face properly for the first time.
13:46Head up.
13:47A silence.
13:48Something shifted in her expression.
13:50Come inside.
13:51The Dowager has a request.
13:53The room she led me to had a dressing table, laid out cosmetics and a fresh gown.
13:58Not a kitchen.
13:59I kept my expression smooth.
14:01I had expected this.
14:03The parcels had been a signal.
14:05I spoke her language and was willing to come correctly prepared.
14:08The Dowager had been investigating me quietly for weeks.
14:12She knew exactly who I was, where I came from.
14:15And what I wanted.
14:16This was an audition.
14:17I sat at the dressing table and began to prepare.
14:21The Dowager reclined on a chaise in her inner chamber, wrapped in dark wool, sharp-eyed and
14:26unhurried despite weeks of performed retreat.
14:28She watched me cross the room with the steady attention of a woman who had spent a lifetime
14:33reading people before they knew they were being read.
14:35Head up.
14:36I raised my face.
14:37A brief flash crossed her features, quickly controlled.
14:40My looks had come entirely from my mother.
14:43You have Mara's eyes.
14:44She said quietly.
14:45She conducted a very thorough and meticulous investigation.
14:49Those parcels were deliberate.
14:51She said, not a question.
14:53Yes.
14:57And what is it you want?
14:58I met her gaze without flinching.
15:01The same thing you want.
15:02A castle that runs properly.
15:05With someone steady enough to hold it.
15:07The Dowager was quiet for a long moment.
15:10Then, faint and measured.
15:12I'll be watching.
15:14That evening I added one carefully measured compound to King Caden's mead.
15:18A mild warmth enhancer.
15:20The kind that sharpens wolf instincts and loosens physical restraint.
15:24Not dangerous, untraceable.
15:26Simply effective.
15:28Seraphine noticed the goblet and gave me a brief approving look.
15:31She had no idea what I'd actually added.
15:33I had also arranged through a junior stable hand who owed me a favor, for the window beside
15:38the king's bed to be unlatched that night.
15:40A greystone highland winter drives cold through any gap.
15:45The combination worked precisely as I intended.
15:48By dawn King Caden was feverish.
15:50By mid-morning, the castle was in an uproar.
15:53The Dowager emerged from Thornkeep Tower for the first time in weeks.
15:59She swept into the king's chambers with the authority of a woman who had never genuinely
16:03surrendered anything, surveyed the assembled healers in pale-faced attendance, and turned
16:08to Seraphine with the flat calm of a wolf who has been waiting patiently for exactly
16:12this.
16:13The king falls ill in your care in his second week, she said.
16:17Either you cannot manage a household, or you are not trying.
16:23Either way, it ends today.
16:26Seraphine had no defense that wouldn't make things worse.
16:29Do not approach or even attend to the king, the Empress Dowager announced.
16:33I will choose someone else to take over.
16:35For the past few weeks, she has been striving to do her best.
16:38But now, Seraphine knelt because she had no other option.
16:43In the doorway, I kept my face composed, my inner wolf settled with deep, quiet satisfaction.
17:16The Dowager moved quickly.
17:24The moon queen was threatened by those close to her.
17:27Fine, Seraphine said quietly.
17:30That single word cost her something visible.
17:32Good.
17:35The king's private chambers were quieter than I expected.
17:38He arrived an hour after I did, dressed simply, the formal weight of his role absent from the way he
17:44carried himself.
17:45Without the ceremonial trappings, he looked younger.
17:48Sharp-eyed, broad-shouldered, with the coiled awareness of a wolf always slightly more alert than the room required.
17:53He sat on the edge of the settee and looked at me.
17:56His predator gaze settled with patient focus.
17:59I gave him exactly what I had prepared.
18:02Steadiness, faint warmth, a carefully placed vulnerability.
18:05My inner wolf stayed calm beneath it.
18:07I had trained for this since I was twelve years old.
18:09You've been delivering dispatches to my mother, he said.
18:13Every morning for six weeks.
18:16She rarely allows that kind of consistency from anyone.
18:20No, I agreed.
18:22She doesn't.
18:23Something shifted behind his eyes.
18:25His wolf was curious.
18:27That was enough for now.
18:28The night that followed confirmed everything I had calculated.
18:31By dawn, I had been formally titled the king's consort, with dedicated quarters assigned in the castle's east wing.
18:38Seraphine arrived at my new quarters before the morning bell, her full retinue behind her.
18:43Attendants, personal guards, the full performance of rank on display.
18:46She struck me the moment I opened the door.
18:49I let that one land.
18:50Then before she could hit me a second time, I hit her first.
18:53How dare you treat me like this?
18:56Thornhick Tower is close enough that the Dowsha's sentries will have heard your escort arrive.
19:01I said evenly.
19:03If she comes to investigate and finds the king's newly titled consort hurt in her own doorway,
19:09how does that conversation end for you?
19:11Seraphine went very still.
19:13You're using this to threaten me.
19:17I'm just reminding you.
19:18She stared at me.
19:19You won't last.
19:21She said, fury coiled behind her eyes, her wolf bristling beneath her skin.
19:25Perhaps I smiled.
19:27But I'll outlast this conversation.
19:30She left.
19:32I pressed my fingers to my split lip and let myself feel, just briefly, the particular satisfaction of a move
19:39landing exactly as planned.
19:41The following morning I attended formal court as the king's new consort.
19:45A castle tradition requiring newly elevated she-wolves to present themselves before the Lunar Queen.
19:51Seraphine had composed herself overnight into something colder and more deliberate than fury.
19:56She found fault with my entrance, summoned an attendant with a training rod found fault with my stance.
20:03Each correction came with a sharp strike across my legs.
20:05Designed to humiliate more than injure, to remind every she-wolf in the hall exactly where I stood regardless of
20:11my new title.
20:40I knelt through each strike without expression.
20:42She was silent instantly.
20:43Then...
20:46She's been poisoned.
20:47I lay still and listened to Seraphine's carefully constructed morning fall apart around her.
20:53King Caden arrived within minutes.
20:55The Dao charge was close behind.
20:57One look.
20:57The wolf's bait purge spreading black across the floor.
21:00The rod wilts visible across my legs.
21:02The split lip from the previous day still unhealed.
21:06The growl that moved through his chest was low enough to vibrate in the stonework.
21:11Who did this?
21:13Cephalina stepped forward to defend herself.
21:15The Dowger cut her off cleanly.
21:16Have the healers test the consort's blood for compounds.
21:20And search the Lunar Queen's private quarters while they're there.
21:24Cephalina's face went the color of ash.
21:26There is nothing in my quarters.
21:28Then you have nothing to worry about.
21:29The Dowger said.
21:31The search found nothing.
21:32I had ensured it.
21:33The wolf bane dose had been precisely calibrated.
21:37Theatrical, temporary, already clearing my system.
21:40But the visible evidence needed no elaboration.
21:43The King, voice flat as iron.
21:45The Lunar Queen is confined to her chambers.
21:47The Dowgery Luna will resume management of castle affairs until further notice.
21:53Cephalina collapsed to her knees.
21:55Her wolf howled in her chest.
21:57The King stepped around her and walked out.
22:00The Dowgery met my eyes across the room.
22:03Her look was brief and entirely approving.
22:07I spent two weeks in recovery, or the appearance of it.
22:11King Caden visited daily.
22:12Each visit I showed him something slightly different.
22:16Stillness one day.
22:17Careful laughter the next.
22:19A vulnerability I let surface just far enough to seem unguarded.
22:23He was a wolf who had spent his entire ascension being managed by everyone around him.
22:28Someone who simply existed, without a visible agenda, was irresistible to him.
22:35I was not without an agenda.
22:37I had simply learned to keep it below the surface.
22:39By the end of the second week, he elevated my title from King's Consort to Senior Consort.
22:45Formal recognition, formal protections, formal standing within the pack hierarchy.
22:50Letters from House Aldrich began arriving at my new door.
22:54I burnt them without reading past the first line.
23:00The letters kept coming.
23:02My father's early messages were pure alpha command.
23:05Orders to use my position to free Seraphine from confinement.
23:09Demands I remember where my loyalty belonged.
23:11When those produced nothing, his tone shifted.
23:14Appeals to pack bonds.
23:16Shared blood.
23:18Sisterhood.
23:19I found the appeals to sisterhood particularly creative,
23:23given that Seraphine had ordered Agnes killed.
23:26I burned every letter.
23:28Eventually they stopped arriving at my door and began going directly to Seraphine's chambers instead.
23:33Whatever counsel my father gave, she acted on within days.
23:37Flooding King Caden with written apologies.
23:39Performing contrition through intermediaries.
23:41Letting rumors spread that she knelt in the castle chapel every evening praying for forgiveness.
23:46The king began softening.
23:47He was, underneath the crown, a decent man.
23:50Decent men forgive.
23:52I had accounted for this.
23:53The morning I confirmed what I had suspected for weeks.
23:56That I had conceived.
23:58I allowed myself one full minute of stillness before I began calculating exactly how to use it.
24:06When Seraphine's confinement was lifted,
24:09I was standing at Caden's side.
24:11She walked out composed, eyes bright with rehearsed warmth,
24:15and took my hands the moment she reached me.
24:20I've thought of nothing but making this right.
24:23Can you forgive me, sister?
24:24The king watched with barely concealed relief.
24:27He wanted this resolved.
24:28There's nothing to forgive.
24:29I smiled warmly.
24:30And, you should know, I've been waiting to share good news.
24:35A brief pause.
24:37I'm carrying an air.
24:39Seraphina's composure cracked for half a second.
24:41That's impossible.
24:43The king's expression went cold instantly.
24:46She recovered, barely.
24:47I only mean, what wonderful news.
24:49The words came through her teeth.
24:51I'm so happy for you.
24:53I let her hold that moment.
24:54Then I made it worse.
24:56Oh.
24:56And Lady Lyra is also expecting.
24:58I thought you'd want to be the first to know.
25:00Seraphine said nothing.
25:02She simply looked at me with a hatred so total and so contained it had nowhere left to go.
25:08After her release, Seraphine moved carefully.
25:11She paid her respects to the dowager,
25:12offered to assist with castle administration,
25:14accepted every minor task assigned to her without visible complaint.
25:17She was performing rehabilitation.
25:19She was very good at it.
25:21Helena had trained her well.
25:23What she was actually doing was sending riders to House Aldrich.
25:27Two days after her letters went out,
25:29she invited Lady I'd Lyla to her chambers privately.
25:33Lady Lyra emerged an hour later visibly shaken
25:35and went directly to Thornmictower,
25:37bypassing my wing entirely,
25:39which she never did.
25:40Seraphine's approach had been standard pack politics.
25:43The new senior consort will target your pup.
25:46We must stand together.
25:47Seed fear.
25:48Isolate the threat.
25:50Rebuild alliances through shared vulnerability.
25:52I gave Lady Lyra one day.
25:54Then I went to the dowager.
25:58The dowager was expecting me.
26:00Lady Lyra, she said before I sat down.
26:03Yes.
26:04What do you need me to know?
26:05I looked at her directly.
26:06I will swear on anything you name
26:08that I will never move against Lady Lyra or her pup.
26:10I have no interest in the succession line.
26:13My body has been compromised by years of suppression compounds.
26:16I know what I can and cannot carry.
26:19I am not a threat to this bloodline.
26:21The dowager studied me.
26:23You don't love him, she said finally.
26:25No.
26:26And you're not afraid to die within these walls.
26:28I grew up in House Aldrich, I said.
26:31I stopped being afraid of dying a long time ago.
26:34She looked at me for a long moment, recalibrating something behind her eyes.
26:39Then she nodded.
26:40Once.
26:41I'll speak to Lady Lyra.
26:42That evening.
26:43Lady Lyra appeared at my door.
26:45I don't entirely trust you, she said plainly.
26:48But I trust the dowager.
26:50So I suppose that makes us allies.
26:53That's enough, I said.
26:56Helena requested entry to the royal castle three days later.
27:00She arrived in House Aldrich's formal colors.
27:02Small escort, the bearing of a woman accustomed to being the most powerful presence in any room.
27:07She spent two hours in Seraphine's chambers and emerged in visibly good spirits.
27:12I was already waiting in the castle's east garden.
27:15When they spotted me, both faces closed simultaneously.
27:18I looked at Helena directly for the first time since we had both entered these gates.
27:22She looked back with the flat, predatory stillness of a wolf who had survived by being more dangerous than she
27:27appeared.
27:28You should bow, I said pleasantly.
27:30I outrank you here.
27:32Her lip curved.
27:32She bowed, controlled.
27:34A chess move.
27:35How lovely to find you thriving.
27:37I imagine it isn't lovely at all, I said.
27:39I glanced at Seraphine.
27:41Would you like to know why you haven't conceived?
27:45After all this time, it must be genuinely confusing.
27:50Seraphine went rigid.
27:51I held Helena's gaze.
27:53Your suppression compound, the one you fed me for years, I've been adding it to her food instead.
28:00Seraphine lunged.
28:01Helena caught her arm, fast practiced.
28:04But Seraphine was already shaking loose.
28:06Her wolf half-surfaced, her composure entirely gone.
28:09I stepped back once, then I pressed my hand to my abdomen and went down hard onto the garden path.
28:14The impact was real.
28:15What followed was also real, and had always been coming.
28:18The compound damage ran too deep, accumulated over too many years.
28:22I had known for weeks this pregnancy would not hold.
28:25I had simply chosen where and when.
28:28Something came out of me that I hadn't planned.
28:30A sound that wasn't performance raw from somewhere I had been carrying without knowing.
28:34She pushed me.
28:35I whispered as the blood began.
28:37She pushed me.
28:38King Caden came through the garden gate at a run.
28:41Helena and Seraphine stood over me.
28:43Blood on the pale stone between us.
28:45And the king's wolf was fully surfaced, eyes black.
28:48Chest heaving.
28:49A snarl building that made the nearest guards step backward instinctively.
28:52They had walked into it perfectly.
28:54And yet something in me for the first time in years was not entirely performing.
28:59I lost the pup that afternoon.
29:02King Caden sat outside my door in silence for a full hour before the dowager gently redirected him.
29:07Seraphine was arrested before nightfall.
29:09Helena within the hour after that.
29:11The charge assault resulting in the loss of a royal heir.
29:14The king's tribunal confirmed it required immediate action regardless of intent.
29:19Helena precise and controlled under questioning.
29:21Attempted to redirect blame.
29:23It didn't matter.
29:24The king had been present.
29:25He had witnessed.
29:26The dowager gave testimony.
29:28Lady Lyra gave testimony.
29:30The tribunal deliberated for less than three days.
29:33My father read the outcome clearly.
29:36He resigned his alpha status and requested permission to retire before Helena's sentence was carried out.
29:41The tribunal permitted it.
29:43He walked out of house Aldrich's gates without looking back.
29:46I felt almost nothing when I received word of his departure.
29:49He had never been a father.
29:51He was simply a man whose choices had finally caught up with him.
29:55Helena's sentence was set for dawn.
29:57Seraphine was confined to the dungeon keep beneath the east tower.
30:01Within days reports came back that she was pacing the stone walls.
30:05Speaking to no one.
30:06Insisting on her version of events to torchlight and silence.
30:10And on the morning of Helena's execution Lady Lyra came to my chambers before dawn.
30:15She didn't speak at first.
30:17She simply sat across from me in the low firelight and let the quiet settle between us.
30:22It's over.
30:23She said finally.
30:24Yes.
30:26How do you feel?
30:27I considered that honestly.
30:28It's pretty much what I expected.
30:30She nodded slowly.
30:31The down just says you're protected here.
30:33The king won't let anything happen to you.
30:36And I...
30:37A brief pause.
30:38I hope you can take good care of yourself from now on.
30:41Don't worry.
30:42I will live the rest of my life well.
30:44I said and meant it.
30:46She left before the morning bell rang.
30:49I stood at the window and watched the sky shift.
30:52Black to pale silver to cold, uncertain gold.
30:55The castle was quiet.
30:56The long machinery I had set in motion had finally completely stopped.
31:00I would not leave these walls.
31:01I had always known that.
31:03But I had walked in as a spare she-wolf.
31:05A piece to be positioned and discarded.
31:07And I had dismantled the entire board before anyone understood what I was doing.
31:11Agnes had wanted me to fly over walls.
31:14I had done something better.
31:15I had brought them down.
31:18I had brought them down.
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