She had no words.

The grin on his face confirmed he knew exactly WHAT and that he had orchestrated every goddamn detail of this evening.

Finnick Shadowclaw was a gorgeous, scheming menace, and she was wearing his colors while he sat there looking pleased with himself.

She had no one to blame but herself. She walked straight into the trap and even thanked it on the way in.

The music stopped and conversations began to fade.

“His Majesty, Finnick Shadowclaw, Alpha King of North Skardos and the Kingdom of Shadowclaw,” a herald announced loudly.

Hundreds of wolves turned their attention to the staircase with the unified focus of a pack whose Alpha had arrived.

“Her Royal Highness, Serena Drakenfell, Crown Princess of Drakenfell.”

The herald used her married name, which was formal recognition that the pack was acknowledging who she was and where she came from.

Every person in the hall bowed.

The bowing was simultaneous, comprehensive, four hundred bodies lowering in unison with the practiced coordination of wolves who understood ceremony and executed it without hesitation.

Aurelia:They’re bowing to us.

Serena: They are bowing to our mate.

Aurelia: I want to do this every day. Can we do this every day?

Serena:No.

Aurelia:Twice a week.

Fin let go of her and stepped forward to address the pack.

The crowd straightened and stood. Every face was looking up at him.

Serena remained by the back. Aeron was beside her. Onyx was surveying the hall from Aeron’s arms with his chin raised and an expression that said, I am the best-dressed in the room.

On her other side were Shadowclaw’s Beta and Gamma. Only now did it fully register. She was standing in their inner circle and nobody had blinked.

She hadn’t done anything to earn it. Well, outside of one time she saved their lives when Dark Fae attacked the war summit. But that was just the warriors and she did not remember most of it so it felt like cheating.

Aurelia: You are spiraling.

Serena: I am not.

Aurelia: Mate keeps us close. That is how packs work.

Serena: I am aware, thank you.

Aurelia: Then why are you surprised?

Serena: Because this is the first time it has happened with an audience of this size.

Fin’s voice filled the hall without effort. His command voice was indistinguishable from his speaking voice because Finnick Shadowclaw did not have a mode that was unimpressive.

“I don’t give long speeches. You know that,” he began.

A low ripple of laughter moved through the hall.

“Tonight we honor what this pack was built on. Shadowclaw was founded by wolves who understood that strength is measured by what you protect, and the measure of this pack has always been the wolves standing beside you.”

He sounded like her father. Fin’s words were his own, but the architecture of the speech, the way he built from foundation to purpose to call, was the architecture of an Alpha who understood that leadership was a conversation rather than a command.

“Packs are families,” he continued. “I know some of you came to Shadowclaw because you were born here. Some of you came because you heard what we were and wanted to be part of it. It doesn’t matter how you got here. What matters is that you stayed, and the staying is the thing I respect most. Loyalty isn’t a word in Shadowclaw. It’s the air.”

Pride bloomed in her chest, fierce and genuine. She loved this man and she was watching him be exactly what his people needed him to be.

The Shadowclaw pack would follow Finnick Shadowclaw into any war on any continent against any enemy. Not just because he was a good Alpha. But because he was a good man. The goodness was visible in the faces looking up at him, faces that carried trust and respect and the particular loyalty that only existed when a leader had earned it rather than inherited it.

He spoke about unity and about the cost of the war and the price of the peace and the wolves who had paid both without flinching. He spoke about sacrifice and adaptation and the specific, difficult work of building something that outlasted the people building it.

Onyx sneezed. A small, delicate sneeze that produced a puff of smoke from his nostrils and drew the attention of every wolf within ten feet. Aeron waved the smoke away with his free hand and the expression of a man whose evening was going exactly as badly as he had predicted.

Serena’s eyes left Fin and moved across the crowd, reading faces the way she had been trained to read them since childhood.

For the faces sneaking glances at her, it was an equal split between warmth, skepticism, curiosity, and dislike. All four reactions were to be expected. She was a foreign princess in sapphires standing behind their king. It was nothing she wasn’t used to.

Aurelia:Are you zoning out during mate’s speech?

Serena:I’m reading the room.

Aurelia:Let’s bite that woman glaring.

Serena:We are not biting anyone.

Then she heard her name.

She blinked. Once. Twice. Her focus snapped back to Fin, who had turned slightly, his body angling toward her, his voice carrying words she had missed the beginning of and was catching the end of.

Aurelia: HE SAID OUR NAME.

Serena: I heard.

“—my second-chance fated mate, and the future Luna Queen of Shadowclaw.”

Applause erupted.

The sound was enormous, filling the hall from floor to ceiling, four hundred pairs of hands producing a wave of sound that hit Serena’s chest and stayed there.

She blinked again because her brain was processing the sentence in reverse order, dismantling it word by word: Future Luna Queen. Of Shadowclaw.

He was announcing her crowning right now in front of his entire kingdom. At an event he told her was a small celebration.

She was going to remember those words for the rest of her life, and she was going to bring them up at every possible opportunity, and Finnick Shadowclaw was going to hear about this shit until they were both old and gray and he was still pretending he didn’t know what he did.