When the Lycan Prince Learned I Bore His Heirs

Elara came in at seven, same as every morning, checked the twins' pulses, checked mine, wrote her notes in that small tight hand. But this morning she didn't leave when she finished. She stood by the crib a beat too long, then looked at the door instead of at me.

"I need to speak with His Highness," she said. "Alone."

Declan was at the window. He didn't ask why. He simply crossed the room and followed her out, and the door clicked shut behind them with a softness that told me it wasn't meant to be heard through.

It was heard through anyway.

I sat up slowly, careful of the stitches, and I did not pretend to myself that I wasn't listening. I had spent six years learning things through doors. I was good at it.

"The markers are unmistakable," Elara was saying. "Paternal line, confirmed. Lycan royal blood, Ironcrest signature, no ambiguity. Any court in the territory would rule on this without a second test."

A pause. Papers shifting.

"There's a second marker," she said, and her voice changed—slower now, more careful. "Not paternal. Maternal. I've seen the pattern before, Your Highness. Not in a living subject. In the archive."

Silence on the other side of the door. A long one.

"How old is the archive record," Declan said. Flat. Controlled in a way that told me it wasn't.

"Older than either of us."

"You're not certain."

"I'm not certain of anything yet. I'm flagging it. It belongs in the tribunal package regardless."

Another silence, and then his voice again, quieter. "Send for Rowan."

I sat very still with my hand pressed flat against my collarbone, against the place where the pendant used to sit, against the scent I used to be able to call up on command and couldn't anymore because Kenneth had locked it away in a drawer for six years. My mother's face. I hadn't thought of her in days, not really, not past the ache of the missing weight against my skin. Now I thought of nothing else.

---

Rowan came to report on Jasmine that afternoon, because Declan had asked him to, and because I think Declan had decided, after the border crossing, that I would rather hear the ugly things straight than have them softened for me.

"She addressed the pack hall this morning," Rowan said. "In full Luna regalia. A new pendant. Commissioned, I'm told, to replace the one Kenneth had made for you."

"Go on."

"She told them the Lycan Prince's claims were fraudulent. That the twins carry Hollowridge blood. That when the custody petition resolves, the pack will be stronger than it has ever been."

"How did they take it."

"Three senior members exchanged looks I would not call supportive." Rowan's face didn't move. "There was a she-wolf near the back. One of the infirmary staff, from the night of the birth. She looked at the floor the entire time."

I knew who that was before he finished the sentence. I could see her face—young, careful, the one who'd held my hand through the second contraction and hadn't said a word when Kenneth's messenger came for me an hour later. She knew something. She'd known it that night and she was carrying it now in a room full of people who would not want to hear it.

"Jasmine didn't notice," I said. It wasn't a question.

"Jasmine notices very little that doesn't confirm what she already believes."

---

By evening there were two more guards outside the healing wing than there had been that morning. I counted them from the window. I didn't ask Declan about it because I already knew what his face would do if I did—that particular stillness he wore when he'd decided a thing was not mine to carry.

I asked anyway, once, in the corridor, and he told me it was a precaution. Nothing more.

I believed about half of it.

I was still awake past midnight when I heard Rowan's voice outside the door, low, meant for Declan alone.

"The contingent's assembled. Confirmed by two separate sources."

"Timeline."

"Forty-eight hours. Same window every time—when you're in Council chambers."

A pause.

"Same corridor," Rowan said. "Same door."