Ryxin’s chin lifted. “You want me to watch you chase your female through the snow as a show of my support your claim to the throne?”
“I want you to remind any challenger what happens to people who threaten what’s mine. You’re uniquely qualified for that particular message.”
A beat. Then Ryxin’s mouth curved—not quite a smile, but something close.
“I’ll be there. If only to see the great Alpha King brought to his knees by a creature half his size.”
“Get out.”
They filed out—Yarx with his datapad clutched close, Oran with his robes whispering against stone, Ryxin with a glance over his shoulder that carried more meaning than words. The kind of look brothers exchanged when they knew trouble would always lurk in the shadows and they’d already agreed to face it together.
Sylas stood alone in the war chamber, surrounded by maps and strategies and the weight of a kingdom that had never felt heavier.
Through the bond, he reached for Elsa. Found her awake, alert, her mind turning over the same questions he’d just addressed—what came next, what changed, what stayed the same. She couldn’t hear his meetings, but she felt his tension. His determination. The hard edges of decisions being made.
She sent back warmth. Trust. A thread of anticipation that wasn’t entirely fear.
His little human. Waiting for him. Ready to run when he told her to run, ready to let him catch her, ready to become his Luna in the eyes of gods and courts and kingdoms that had never imagined such a creature could exist.
Tomorrow night, he would hunt her under a crimson moon. Tomorrow night, he would claim her before his entire court,prove to challengers and priests and political enemies that the bond between them was unbreakable. Tomorrow night, Elsa would become Luna—not just his mate, but his queen, protected by every law and tradition his people possessed.
But that wasn’t enough.
The old ways had failed. Vask’s corruption had festered for years while the court played politics and the priesthood accumulated power and the grid slowly weakened under the weight of corrupted cores no one knew how to cleanse. The system that had created those failures couldn’t be trusted to prevent new ones.
Elsa had shown them something impossible. A human who could touch corruption and make it clean. A human who carried Lux’s blessing like she’d been born to it. A human who’d survived everything his world had thrown at her and come out stronger.
She wasn’t coincidence. She was leverage. Danger. Opportunity.
And she was his.
Sylas moved to the chamber’s window, looking out over the fortress that had been his responsibility since he’d torn the crown from his father’s corpse. Snow-covered battlements. Lux Tear light pulsing through the grid like a heartbeat. Warriors training in the yards below, priests moving through corridors that smelled of incense and secrets.
All of it—every stone, every soul, every tradition that bound his people to this frozen mountain—would have to change.
No more half-measures. No more careful compromises that let rot fester in dark corners. No more pretending that the old ways could survive contact with something new.
Elsa would be Luna. His queen. His anchor.
And the realm would be reshaped to survive it.
He’d burn every tradition that threatened her. Rebuild every institution that couldn’t adapt. Forge alliances with creatures his ancestors would have slaughtered and break bonds his people had honored for generations.
The priesthood would learn that a king who’d killed one High Priest wouldn’t hesitate to kill another. The court would learn that politics ended where his mate began. And the realm—his frozen, war-torn, slowly crumbling realm—would learn that change was no longer optional.
Whatever it took. Whatever it cost.
Sylas turned from the window, his decision crystallizing into something harder than the stone beneath his feet. Tonight, he would claim his mate. Tomorrow, he would begin dismantling everything that had failed her.
The realm would learn to bend.
Or it would break.
34
Elsa
The garments arrived at sunset.