Chapter Fourteen-Operation Wedding Prep
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Morning came far too fast.
Elara woke to Aeron bouncing on her stomach, chanting, “WAKE UP, Mama, wake up! We go boom-boom?” His golden-flecked eyes were alight with excitement, his curls sticking in every possible direction.
“Boom-boom?” Elara croaked, groggy. “What on earth is—”
“Plane!” Aeron declared proudly, clapping his hands. “We FLY!”
Cassia barged in without knocking, already dressed like a runway model in travel chic. “Operation Wedding Glow Up 2025 is officially underway!” she announced, tossing a garment bag onto Elara’s bed. “You’ll thank me later. Probably. Maybe. Actually, you’ll hate me, but you’ll look stunning.”
From the hallway, Caius’s voice floated in, dry as ever: “You know it’s a wedding, not a fashion war.”
“Excuse you,” Cassia shot back, appearing in the doorway like a queen defending her throne, “every wedding is a fashion war.”
Aeron gasped and pointed at her sunglasses. “Auntie CASS! You wear eyes on your head!”
“They’re glasses, baby wolf.” Cassia crouched down, tapping the oversized shades. “Do I look fierce?”
Aeron considered, then solemnly shook his head. “You look like bug.”
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Caius laughed so hard he nearly dropped the suit bag he was carrying. “She’s been destroyed by a toddler. Best day of my life.”
Alpha Darius arrived next, already in travel gear, arms crossed as he surveyed the chaos of bags, shoes, and Cassia’s dramatic posing. “Are we traveling as a pack family,” he asked dryly, “or as a circus troupe?”
“Both,” Caius said immediately.
“Both!” Aeron echoed, throwing his arms up.
Elara buried her face in her hands. “We’re never making it out of Valemont alive.”
They did, somehow, make it to the airport – though Elara swore it was a
miracle.
Cassia argued with the check-in clerk about the garment bags like she was defending national security. Caius pretended not to know her while sipping overpriced coffee. Aeron ran circles around their luggage, his tiny wolf energy buzzing loud enough to draw stares.
“Mama, mama, LOOK!” Aeron shrieked, pointing at the moving walkway. “A floor that MOVES!”
Before Elara could stop him, he bolted onto it, arms spread like an airplane. “ZOOM! I’m fast! Faster than Uncle Caius!”
“You wish,” Caius muttered, but jogged after him anyway when Aeron nearly collided with a businessman rolling a briefcase.
Cassia leaned toward Elara, whispering, “See? He inherited my dramatic flair.”
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Elara deadpanned, “Pretty sure it’s just toddler chaos.”
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Aeron reappeared two minutes later wearing an airline employee’s spare hat, grinning ear-to-ear. “I HELP!” he declared proudly.
Alpha Darius pinched the bridge of his nose, his gray eyes narrowing. “Elara, control your pup before we’re banned from international travel.”
Elara scooped Aeron up, kissing his cheek despite her frazzled nerves. “You heard your uncle. We’re on best behavior.”
Aeron nodded seriously… then yelled at the top of his lungs: “SNACKS!”
The entire boarding gate turned to look.
Cassia beamed. “He speaks my language.”
By the time they finally boarded, Elara collapsed into her seat, Aeron snuggled in her lap with crumbs already clinging to his shirt. Caius stretched his long legs out with the satisfaction of a man surviving a war. Alpha Darius closed his eyes, muttering something about patience being wasted on siblings.
Cassia, of course, whipped out her phone. “Phase one of Operation Wedding Glow Up 2025: success. Phase two: survive this flight.”
Aeron piped up, mouth full of crackers. “Mama, plane poop?”
Elara groaned into her hands. “We’re not even off the ground yet…”
The plane had barely leveled out before Aeron discovered the tray table.
Click. Slam. Click. Slam. Click-
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“Aeron,” Elara hissed, grabbing his little hand before the woman in front of them snapped. “That’s not a toy.”
He blinked up at her, all innocence. “But Mama… it’s door!” He demonstrated, slamming it shut with toddler authority. “Open. Close. Boom.”
“Sweetheart—”
“Boom!” Slam.
Cassia leaned across the aisle, her scarf draped dramatically like a movie star in disguise. “Don’t suppress his creativity, Elara. He’s engineering.”
Caius groaned, yanking his headphones off. “He’s giving me a headache.”
“No, he’s a genius,” Cassia countered, eyes twinkling. “Mark my words, one day he’ll build Valemont’s first flying wolf machine. We’ll all thank him.”
Aeron puffed up proudly, banging the tray again. “Flying wolf!”
Alpha Darius cracked one gray eye open from two rows ahead. “If the tray slams one more time, / will be flying off this plane without a parachute.”
Cassia gasped. “Alpha threats before coffee? Shocking.”
Darius muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like why me.
The flight attendant, bless her soul, tried to help. She handed Aeron a set of tiny plastic wings.
Big mistake.
Aeron immediately attached them to the back of his shirt, then stood on the
seat. “I FLY!”
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Elara yanked him down before he could launch himself into the aisle. “Absolutely not!”
Cassia clapped. “Encore! Encore!”
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Caius buried his face in his hands. “If we get banned from this airline, I’m blaming both of you.”
“Correction,” Cassia shot back, “blame Paris Mystery Man. Without him, we
wouldn’t even have this adorable chaos goblin.”
Elara flushed. “Cassia!”
Aeron blinked. “Who Mister Man?”
“NO ONE,” Elara said too quickly.
Caius smirked. “Interesting. Very interesting.”
米米米
By the third hour, Aeron finally collapsed, snoring softly on Elara’s lap, his curls damp from too much excitement. Elara stroked his hair, exhaustion pulling at her bones.
She let herself glance out the window, where clouds rolled endlessly beneath them, white against the blue. The motion of the plane, the quiet weight of her son against her chest, lulled her into thoughts she tried so hard to avoid.
Paris. His voice, his hands, the way he’d looked at her like she was more than a fleeting moment.
She closed her eyes tight. No. She had Aeron. She had her family. That was
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enough.
:
And yet, her heart whispered: for how long?
“Psst.”
Elara cracked an eye open.
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Cassia leaned across the aisle with a smug smile. “So. You ready to see Ashthorne again? Your grand debut?”
“Debut?” Elara whispered. “It’s a wedding, not a coronation.”
“Correction,” Cassia whispered back. “It’s the Ashthorne wedding. Half the continent’s Alphas are going to be there. You’re going to walk in with your curls, your dress, your toddler heir-” she waved a dramatic hand-“and jaws will drop.”
Elara rolled her eyes. “Cassia, stop-”
But her cousin only smirked. “Mark my words, cousin. Fate doesn’t just knock. It barges in.”
And with that ominous declaration, Cassia threw a blanket over her head and promptly fell asleep.
Elara stared at her, then down at Aeron’s little fist curled around her shirt.
For the first time since boarding, her chest tightened in something more than annoyance. It felt like warning. Like a tide pulling her toward something she couldn’t yet see.
Thorne’s POV
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Ashthorne attendants moved around me in quiet, efficient loops-adjusting the black-on-black ceremonial jacket, settling the wolf-crest torque at my throat, smoothing a fall of midnight fabric over my shoulders as if gravity might forget its work. Incense bled through stone corridors, bells tolled from some distant tower, and the old hall breathed politics the way other places breathed air.
Julian Renard lounged against the carved lintel, the only thing in the room that looked like it belonged to me. “On a scale of one to mutiny,” he said, “how much do you hate this?”
“Mutiny would be polite,” I said.
He grinned, but the edges of it were cut with worry. “Council chambers are humming. Elder Rowan has already positioned himself where the light hits his rings. Alpha Liora is collecting congratulations like taxes.”
“Of course she is.” I flexed my hands once, then stilled them. The wolf under my skin paced and shouldered, the chain of my control rattling.
“They went too far, Thorne.” Julian’s voice dropped. “Sealing contracts without the King present? Invoking the Stone-and-Snow accord as if a border skirmish qualifies as ‘existential threat’? It’s an ambush with parchment.”
I looked at the mirror and found a stranger who happened to have my face. “They think a crown is a leash. They forget the animal wearing it.”
Julian’s eyes flicked to my throat, to the torque bearing the Crescent sigil. “They forget the animal standing behind it.”
He meant the pack. He meant the kingdom. He meant me.
A knock at the side door. A young Ashthorne aide bowed so low his forehead nearly met the floor. “Your Majesty. The council awaits. The Alpha’s family is
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assembled. The bride has entered her chamber.”
Bride.
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The word slid past my teeth like grit. Sera Ashthorne was not my enemy; she was a capable heir wrapped in her father’s will and her house’s greed. We had spoken twice-she was precise, poised, a little tired in the eyes. She did not want me, not for love. She wanted what this would buy for her people. It was not a sin. It was politics.
“Tell the council I’ll attend when I choose,” I said.
The aide’s throat bobbed. “Y-yes, Your Majesty.” He fled.
Julian waited until the footsteps faded. “We can still walk,” he said softly. “You and I. Out the servants’ corridor, into the pines. I’ll tell Rowan the King has taken a vow of silence and the moon as his wife.”
The wolf liked that-liked the picture of snow and dark and no eyes. The man did not. “If I leave, the Crescent fractures,” I said. “Rowan will call it abdication. Ashthorne will say it’s insult. The border packs will think the throne is empty.”
Julian scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “You could call their bluff. Or snap their
necks. I’m flexible.”
A huff of a laugh escaped me, unwilling and real. “You always were.”
Silence breathed between us. Bells counted another hour. Somewhere beyond the wall a singer tested a ceremonial scale and found it wanting.
Julian’s gaze returned to my face in the mirror. “This is not consent,” he said, quiet and careful. “We both know it. The council signed a union as if you were a treaty to be bartered.”
“They will learn,” I said, and the wolf rose in the words.
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He nodded once-heard the promise and let it rest. “Then survive this pageant. After, we cut the strings.”
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I turned from the mirror. For a heartbeat, Paris uncoiled in my mind: rain fighting with streetlight, a laugh in a doorway, the heat of a mouth I had not been allowed to forget. The bed in the morning-empty, a kiss still warm on the sheets, my wolf howling mine to a room that didn’t answer.
Three years, and still the ache hadn’t dulled. That should have told me everything I needed to know about vows.
Another knock. Not tentative this time. Elder Rowan swept in with his smile polished and his palms already ready to bless his own work. “Your Majesty,” he purred, appraising the cut of my jacket like he’d stitched it himself. “The hall is radiant. Ashthorne banners, Crescent sigils-oh, the sight it makes! History will
remember our wisdom today.”
“Our wisdom,” I repeated, bland.
Rowan inclined his head, unembarrassed. “The realm needed certainty. We provided it.”
“You provided signatures on a contract forged in a room I wasn’t in,” I said.
Rowan’s eyes flashed a warning-too quick for anyone who didn’t know where to look. “The Stone-and-Snow accord exists for moments precisely like this. The border raiders grow bolder by the week. Rogue numbers swell. The people cannot afford a king’s…hesitations.”
Julian’s voice sharpened. “You mean ‘choices.’ He cannot afford a king’s choices.”
Rowan smiled without warmth. “I mean what I said.” He bowed, shallow as a puddle. “It is time.”
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When he was gone, Julian muttered, “If I tripped him down the stairs, would that be treason or charity?”
“Both,” I said, and adjusted the torque like I was lifting a blade.
We walked.
Corridors opened into carved galleries, galleries into a vaulted antechamber where light fell in spears through stained glass. Voices braided ahead-lords, alphas, courtiers muttering their calculations. The doors to the great hall stood closed, their ironwork vines catching points of bell-light as if they were hoarfrost. Beyond them: a thousand eyes. A thousand lies dressed like blessings.
Julian checked me once like a soldier checks a brother before battle-belt, cuff, expression. “You have me,” he said, simple.
“I always did.”
A flurry of silk to our left-Sera’s attendant rushing with a veil folded like snow in her arms. For a second I pictured it dropping not over a woman’s hair but over a blade, softening something meant to cut.
“Don’t look like that when the doors open,” Julian murmured. “They’ll think you’re about to chew the choir.”
“I might.”
He smiled. “Do it after dessert. You’ll stain the floor.”
I would have answered, but something moved in the air.
The wolf felt it first-stopped pacing, nose high, blood humming. Not incense. Not Ashthorne smoke or Crescent pine. Something finer, thinner, a thread pulled across three winters and plucked until it sang: ink and citrus and a spark I had tried to name and failed because the naming would have made it real.
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Cold shot through my chest. Then heat. Then the tight, terrible quiet of an answer coming at last.
Julian straightened, every joke torn off his face. “What?”
I searched for words and found only the old one, the true one. “She’s here.”
His eyes blew wide. “Here? In this hall?”
I didn’t say yes. I didn’t say anything at all. The wolf had already stepped forward and put both hands on the inside of my ribs as if they were a gate.
The herald lifted his staff. The first chord from the musicians trembled, then steadied. Somewhere in the machinery of ceremony, cogs engaged and wheels turned and the great doors began to open.
“Thorne,” Julian said, a warning and a prayer.
I didn’t take my eyes off the light breaking along the seam between those doors. “They can chain a crown,” I said. “They can’t chain fate.”
The doors swung wider. The scent hit like a strike to the sternum-clean and fierce and impossible, the ghost of a night I had not been permitted to keep made flesh in a rush of air.
The wolf inside me stopped being patient.
Mine.
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