BUYING A CROWN

* * *

The scent of ash still clung to the air, a phantom whisper of the day my world turned gray. I was eight, a tiny shadow in the cavernous halls of Virelia's Lycan Kingdom palace, my wooden wolf figurine clutched tight in my hand. The sun, a pale disc behind the arched windows, seemed to hold its breath. A stillness, heavy and unnatural, settled over everything.

Then it shattered.

A scream-not the spirited shouts of guards at training, but a raw, tearing sound-ripped through the silence like the final breath of a dying beast. It clawed into my memory, a discordant note in what was once a harmonious life.

Mama's she-wolf howl followed. Deep. Wounded. Inhuman. I had heard it once before, when rogues breached our outer defenses-a sound of intertwined rage and pain. But this time, it was drenched in a desolation so complete it felt like the end of the world. The palace erupted. Shouts echoed off the stone, urgent commands were whispered between clenched jaws, and armor crashed as bodies moved with frantic desperation.

Then came the words, carried on the panicked winds of chaos.

Papa, His Majesty Alpha Kaelan Castellan, and Mama, Her Highness Luna Lyra Castellan... gone. Assassinated.

The words were too monstrous for a child's mind to hold, too sharp to fully grasp. But the silence that followed-the chasm left by the absence of their voices, their warmth, their love-swallowed everything whole.

Virelia, a realm carved from ancient forests and ruled by old-blood Lycans, had become a mausoleum. They called it a power struggle, a betrayal from within. And I, its smallest princess, was left utterly, terrifyingly alone.

***

The growl that tore from my throat was primal-a guttural lament that was half war-cry, half sob. Kaelan and Lyra were dead. My Alpha. My sister.

I was eighteen. A soldier. My place was on the ramparts, my hands wrapped around a spear, not a scepter. Yet here I stood, at the edge of a throne carved from blood and the tangled threads of a vast betrayal [goodnovel.com]. My own life-my future, my everything-was over. I felt sick, like something inside me was unraveling, and I refused to let the tears burning at the edges of my vision fall. Crying wouldn't fix this. Nothing would [archiveofourown.org].