Chapter 198: A Truth Dressed in Shadows
Darius~
It had started as a dull evening. The ballroom reeked of too much perfume and false courtesy. A hundred wolves in silk and jewels, all pretending not to loathe one another. I stood in the shadows of the grand chandelier-lit hall, a glass of wine swirling in my hand, my Beta Timothy to my right. Gabriella lingered at my side, tense and stiff as usual in public. She hated these things more than I did—so many wandering eyes, so many secrets laced in laughter.
Timothy, leaned close to me, whispering something about a potential alliance with the Ironpaw Pack, but I wasn’t listening. My eyes were on the crowd—scanning, measuring.
I was calculating my next move—wondering if I should entertain that shallow Alpha from the West who kept glancing my way, or if I’d get more leverage buttering up the council elder near the orchestra—when everything shifted.
The king rose from his throne.
The room fell into a silence so sharp it felt like the air itself held its breath. It was the kind of stillness that prey senses when a predator steps into the clearing. Every head turned, as if pulled by an invisible thread, toward the man who ruled over us all.
But it wasn’t his voice that sent the tremor through my chest—it was the name he spoke, the one he summoned to his side.
Cole Lucky.
Only... it wasn’t just Cole anymore.
The very atmosphere around him shifted, tightening like a storm about to break. The moment the king announced him as his son—his heir, the one destined to wear the crown—my lungs forgot how to work.
Cole Lucky wasn’t some common-born werewolf with a lucky name.