11 A Crown Built on Silence
Kieran’s POV
By the time I got home, the night felt too loud.
Not with music. Not with laughter.
With the things I couldn’t outrun.
Every corridor of the Alpha house smelled like power and legacy and expectation, polished wood, old stone, wolf-scent layered into every wall. The kind of place that reminded you you were born with a duty
pinned to your spine.
But all I could taste was Nyra.
Blood and rain and heartbreak.
I shut my bedroom door behind me and stood there, staring at the dark like it might swallow me whole. My hands were clenched so tight my knuckles ached. My chest felt… wrong. Too tight. Too empty. Like someone had reached in and scraped my ribs clean.
I’d seen her face when Beverly looped her arm through mine.
I’d heard her voice, small, shaking, when she asked how long?
And I had failed her.
Again.
I crossed the room and slammed my palm against the wall, once. Not hard enough to break it, but hard enough to feel something other than the way my heart was bleeding.
“What do you want from me?” I rasped to the empty air.
The Moon didn’t answer.
She never did.
Fate didn’t answer either.
Fate just laughed and dealt the cards and watched you choke on them.
Nyra.
Wolfless. Outcast blood. Father unknown. A pack’s favourite target.
And my mate.
My mate.
The word burned like a brand.
1/6
Acrow But on Stonce
+25 Bonus
Why?
Why her?
Not because I didn’t want her, Moon, I wanted her so much it terrified me.
But because loving her openly was a sentence.
A punishment.
A death of everything I’d been trained to be.
I could claim her publicly and watch the pack turn on me. I could become the Alpha who chose the bastard outcast, the heir who disgraced the bloodline, the leader who couldn’t be trusted with tradition.
They wouldn’t just ruin me.
They’d ruin her.
They’d tear her apart to punish me for daring to love her.
And Nyra didn’t heal like we did.
She didn’t have a wolf to take the worst of the pain.
She didn’t have strength to fight off what the pack would unleash if they found out she mattered to me.
I dragged a hand through my hair and paced, restless, frantic.
My wolf prowled inside me, claws scraping at my bones, furious and starving.
Claim her.
Take her.
Mark her.
The urge was so strong it made my vision blur for a second.
But then another voice rose, cold, practical, drilled into me since childhood.
You cannot lead if you are disgraced.
You cannot protect if you have no power.
You cannot save her if you lose.
I stopped pacing and stared at my reflection in the dark window.
Alpha-to-be.
Future leader.
2/6
A Crown Suit on Silence
+25 Bonus
The pack’s hope.
And yet my hands were trembling like some weak boy who didn’t know how to hold his own heart.
Nyra thought I didn’t hurt.
She thought I lived in the sun while she bled in the dark.
But every time I looked away from her in public, something in me tore.
Every time I acted like she was nothing, my wolf howled inside my skull.
Every time she flinched, every bruise, every humiliation, every whispered freak, I felt it.
Not on my skin.
In my chest.
In the bond.
In the place where she lived inside me like a heartbeat.
I didn’t want Beverly.
I couldn’t stand her.
Her smile was too sharp. Her laughter too rehearsed. Her eyes always calculating, always hungry for
status.
She wasn’t cruel in the way rogues were cruel.
She was cruel in the way entitled wolves were, because she believed the world belonged to her.
She was everything the pack wanted.
And nothing I could bear.
But what choice did I have?
Ronan.
My cousin.
My rival.
A name that could split the pack clean down the middle when he returned.
The seat didn’t just belong to me by merit.
If we were being honest, if tradition mattered as much as everyone pretended it did, then the seat rightfully belonged to him.
Ronan’s father had been the former Alpha.
3/6
A Crown Built on Silence
+25 Bonus
Then my father took over.
And Ronan’s mother left with her son, returning to her father’s pack, raising Ronan in a different territory where his bloodline would be honoured instead of questioned.
Now Ronan was coming back.
Older. Stronger. Battle-trained. A leader already, because he was heading his mother’s pack in practice even if tradition said he had to return and compete here.
Tradition.
That same word that kept Nyra in the dirt.
That same word that had my throat in a chokehold.
The pack would support the better Alpha.
And the brutal part was… Ronan was a better option in many ways.
He had the lineage. The strength. The story.
All he needed was the pack’s love.
All he needed was the image.
A formidable Luna at his side.
And if I showed weakness, if I looked reckless, if I claimed Nyra in public,
They would call it stupidity.
They would call it disgrace.
They would call it proof that I wasn’t fit to lead.
And Ronan would take everything.
Not just my title.
My ability to protect Nyra.
My ability to protect my mother.
My ability to protect the pack from itself.
I sank onto the edge of my bed, elbows on my knees, head bowed.
For a moment, I let myself imagine the thing my wolf wanted most.
Running.
Taking Nyra and leaving.
4/6
A Crown But on Slence
+25 Bonus
A quiet place. A small home. A life where no one could touch her.
Where she could laugh without fear.
Where she could walk through markets without being called a freak.
Where I could hold her in daylight and not feel the world closing its jaws around us.
My chest tightened so hard it hurt.
But even that fantasy died quickly.
Because Nyra wouldn’t leave her mother.
And I couldn’t abandon my duty, not with Ronan coming, not with the pack poised like a knife edge.
If I left, my father’s enemies would devour this territory.
And the first thing they’d do is punish the outcasts.
Nyra and her mother, Elaine.
My hands were tied.
And still… I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her.
The thought of her walking away, of her releasing me the way she’d said she did, made something feral claw up my throat.
I’d been counting on her forgiveness.
Like an arrogant fool.
Like love was a resource she had endless amounts of.
A knock sounded.
Before I could answer, the door opened.
Charles walked in with a bottle of beer in one hand and the kind of calm expression that always made
me feel like he saw too much.
He tossed the bottle to me.
I caught it automatically.
He didn’t speak right away. He just watched me, eyes narrowing slightly, studying me like I was a battlefield he’d learnt to read.
Then he said, quietly, “When are you going to do right by that girl, Kieran?” 1
5/6
