I wake to a snap in my chest.
Not pain—never pain.
Relief.
Sharp and sudden, like a knot I didn't realize I'd been carrying finally loosening. Like a breath I've been holding for years being released all at once. My eyes fly open as instinct takes over, my hand clutching my sternum as I try to understand what just shifted inside me.
The bond.
The one that formed the day I became King.
It's still there—but it's… altered. No longer seated like a crown pressed directly into my ribs. It hasn't vanished. It's been moved.
Repositioned.
I reach inward, pushing past muscle and bone and blood, into the place where instinct and authority live. The familiar web spreads out before me—the kingdom, the packs, the wolves. I still feel them. Every heartbeat, every presence, every thread of loyalty and instinctual awareness.
But something is missing.
The weight.
The submission.
Where there was once a constant, grounding pressure—like the world leaning into me—I now feel space. Distance. Not rejection. Not loss.
Transfer.
For a moment, panic tries to claw its way up my spine.
Not because I fear losing power—but because I fear what it means to no longer be the axis everything turns on. Kings are shaped by weight. By responsibility pressed so hard into the bones it becomes indistinguishable from self. For years, I told myself that was purpose. That the pressure was proof I was doing something right.
But standing here—feeling the space where that weight once lived—I realize how wrong I was.
The crown didn't make me strong.
It made me endure.
And endurance is not the same as belonging.
I breathe slowly, letting the truth settle. The bonds haven't rejected me. They haven't gone cold or distant. They're still warm, still familiar—but they no longer lean on me. No longer demand. They rest differently now, like a river that has found its true course after years of being forced through stone.
I think of Samantha.
Of the way the pack reacts to her without being told. The way wolves still, breathe deeper, remember when she enters a room. I think of the reverence I've felt echo through the bonds since she claimed herself—not commanded, not seized, but accepted.
I wasn't replaced.
I was relieved.
The realization hits with a strange, aching clarity: I was never meant to be the foundation. I was meant to be the shield. The blade. The balance at her side.
A king-consort, not diminished—but finally aligned.
Cade shifts within me, content, settled in a way I've never felt before. The restlessness that used to gnaw at him—the instinct to dominate everything, to assert, to prove—has quieted.
This is right, he says simply.
And for the first time since I took the throne, I don't feel like I'm holding the world together with force of will alone.
I feel like I'm standing exactly where I was always meant to be.
I close my eyes and go deeper.
The bonds appear as they always have—tethers of light stretching across territories, across packs, across bloodlines. Mine has always been the strongest. The thickest. Gold threaded with shadow, every other line feeding into it, responding to it, bending toward it.
Until now.
Above me—above—is another.
It takes my breath.
Thicker. Brighter. Silver shot through with violent violet, like moonlight caught in fire. It pulses once, slow and undeniable, and the other tethers answer it instinctively. Not in fear.
In recognition.
I watch as pack after pack realigns, their bonds tightening toward her instead of me. Not severing from me—never that—but no longer rooted in my authority.
I follow my own tether and see something new.
A branch.
It curves differently now, not dominant, not central—connected. Anchored to that silver-violet light in a way that makes my chest ache.
I tug on it reflexively and gasp.
The mate bond.
My bond to Samantha.
And suddenly, everything clicks into place.
I am no longer the reigning monarch.
The crown has shifted.
The wolves didn't choose chaos. They didn't rebel.
They remembered.
Samantha.
White Wolf.
Queen Alpha.
Not Queen Luna. Not consort. Not shadowed beside a throne.
The throne itself.
Cade stirs within me, his presence steady, ancient, utterly calm.
As it should have been, he rumbles.
I swallow hard, emotion pressing thick behind my ribs. "Yes," I breathe. "As it should have been."
My great-grandfather stole what was never his. Slaughtered a lineage born to rule because he craved power instead of understanding it. He took a crown that rejected his blood and forced the world to accept the lie.
And now—
The lie has ended.
I don't feel anger.
I feel something far more dangerous.
Relief.
Because the weight I carried was never truly meant for me alone. Because the throne never fit the way it should have. Because the world has finally corrected itself.
"She's stronger than me," I murmur.
Cade huffs softly, almost amused. She always was.
I don't resist the truth.
I don't mourn the crown.
I welcome the balance.
Because a king who clings to stolen power is no king at all.
And the Queen has finally come home.