The Crown Court was bigger than any hall I'd ever stood in.
Marble floors. Vaulted ceilings that seemed to stretch up forever. Columns carved with wolves mid-hunt, mid-howl, frozen in stone. Light poured through tall windows, but it didn't feel warm. It felt like being examined.
I walked down the center aisle flanked by the enforcers who'd brought me here. My borrowed clothes—simple, clean, nothing like the grey Omega dress I'd worn at the banquet—felt strange against my skin. Everything felt strange. The weight of eyes on me. The silence that followed each step.
At the far end of the hall, elevated on a dais, sat the throne.
And on the throne sat Lycan King Thomas Ashford.
I'd seen Alphas before. Devon had that presence, that pull that made wolves instinctively defer. This was different. Thomas didn't need to release his aura. He just existed, and the room bent around him.
He was watching me. Had been, I realized, since the doors opened.
The lead enforcer stopped ten feet from the dais. I stopped with him. Protocol, I assumed. You didn't approach a king without permission.
Thomas stood.
That alone made the room shift. I heard the intake of breath from the wolves lining the walls—advisors, I guessed, Crown Court members. Apparently kings didn't stand for arrivals.
He stepped down from the dais. One step. Two. His eyes never left my face.
Then he went completely still.
Three seconds of silence that felt like they lasted an hour. His nostrils flared slightly. Catching my scent. And something in his expression—careful, controlled, decades of sovereign composure—cracked.
His eyes filled with tears.
I didn't know what to do with that. Didn't know how to process a king crying. So I stood there and watched as he closed the remaining distance between us, stopping just out of arm's reach.
"I'm sorry," he said.
His voice was rough. Raw in a way that didn't match the formal setting, the marble floors, the watching court.
"I'm sorry," he said again, like the first time hadn't been enough. "I should have found you sooner. I should have—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I looked. For twenty-three years, I looked. But I should have looked harder. Should have—"
"You found me now," I said quietly.
It was the only thing I could think to say. The only thing that felt true.
Thomas exhaled. Nodded. Then he turned to face the court, his hand gesturing toward me—not possessive, not claiming, just... presenting.
"This is Emerie Ashford," he said. His voice carried now, formal and absolute. "My firstborn daughter. Stolen as an infant. Lost for twenty-three years." He paused. "And as of this moment, recognized before the Crown Court as Lycan Princess."
The room erupted in murmurs. I heard the word "Princess" repeated, whispered, passed along the walls.
No documents. No tests. No proof except the scent he'd caught and the certainty in his voice.
Blood calls to blood.
I pressed my fingertips against the mark on my neck. The cold, faded scar where Devon's teeth had never been. It didn't hurt anymore. It was just... empty.
I nodded.
I didn't cry. Not yet.
---
The quarters they gave me were nothing like the corner cot I'd slept on for six years.
A suite. Sitting room, bedroom, bathing room with a tub big enough to drown in. Windows overlooking grounds so vast I couldn't see the edge of them. Furniture that looked like it cost more than everything I'd ever owned combined.
I stood in the center of the sitting room and turned in a slow circle, cataloguing exits. Two doors—one to the hallway, one to a private balcony. Windows that opened. High ceilings, no obvious places for someone to hide.
Old habits.
A knock at the door. I turned. "Come in."
An older woman entered, grey streaking her dark hair, formal robes marking her as someone important. She bowed slightly. To me.
That was going to take some getting used to.
"Princess," she said. "I'm Lysa Crane, senior advisor to the King. He's asked me to brief you on... everything."
"Everything," I repeated.
"Your history. The search. The suppression." She paused. "And the legal instruments available to the Crown."
I gestured to the chairs by the window. "Sit."
She did. I sat across from her.
Lysa didn't waste time. She laid it out in precise, clinical terms: the rogue raid that took me, the wolfsbane compounds used to suppress my wolf, the twenty-three years Thomas spent searching. Then she shifted to Crown law. Tribunal procedures. Violations of mate-bond sanctity. The authority the Lycan Council held over pack Alphas.
I listened. Asked questions. My mind, the same one that had drafted Devon's alliances and negotiated terms he'd taken credit for, started cataloguing. Sorting. Building.
By the time Lysa left, I knew exactly what I needed to do.
---
That night, alone in the massive bed that felt nothing like the cot I was used to, my wolf spoke.
Not the explosion of power from the banquet. Not the rage-fueled awakening. Just... a voice. Calm. Ancient. Settling into my chest like she'd always been there.
*Hello, Emerie.*
I went still. "You can talk."
*I always could. You just couldn't hear me through the poison.*
"What's your name?"
*Seraphine.*
I tested it silently. It fit.
*You're not broken,* Seraphine said. *You never were. They tried to make you believe it. Fed you lies with your food. But you survived. We survived.*
I pressed my hand against my chest. Felt the warmth there, the presence I'd spent six years mourning as an absence.
"I don't know if I believe that yet," I said quietly.
*You will,* she said. *And when you do, we'll make them answer for every lie they fed us.*
I closed my eyes. Let her warmth settle deeper.
For the first time in six years, I wasn't alone in my own body.
And Devon, wherever he was tonight, had no idea what was coming.
