Korran.
But even as that stung, her resolve remained unshaken. She would attend the funeral, support the queen, and then get back to the work that mattered—uncovering the truth behind King Voran’s illness, no matter who tried to stop her.
SIXTEEN
KORRAN
Korran stood motionless in his private chambers in the formal ceremonial attire that felt like armor against the crushing weight of everything that had shattered in the past twenty-four hours. The fabric stretched across his broad shoulders, each piece of royal regalia a reminder of a throne that would soon be his through tragedy rather than triumph.
Numb.
That was the only word that captured the hollow space where his emotions should be. His father was dead—the words existed in his mind like foreign objects, impossible to fully absorb. King Voran, the man who’d shaped Korran’s understanding of duty and strength, was gone. And somehow, despite knowing this fact, despite seeing his mother’s devastation, despite handling the funeral arrangements with mechanical precision, his heart refused to accept the reality.
I failed him. I failed them all.
The thought circled through his consciousness like a predator stalking prey. How could someone who’d successfully managed an entire territory for five years, someone the clan respected and trusted implicitly, fail so spectacularly when it mattered most? They’d been less than a day away from testingthose stolen vials, from potentially uncovering the truth behind his father’s decade-long decline. And instead of answers, they’d found death.
Korran moved through his sitting area with the restless energy of a caged bear, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. His gaze landed on the mini-bar in the corner, and his steps faltered. The mini-fridge hummed quietly, innocent and unassuming, but inside those stolen vials waited like accusations. The potential answers that had cost them a covert mission and nearly gotten Tess killed by those attacking bears.
Tess.
Her name sent a fresh wave of self-recrimination crashing through him. The memory of her face when he’d dismissed her yesterday—the shock, the hurt, the way she’d flinched as if he’d physically struck her—played on endless repeat behind his eyes. His bear had been growling at him ever since, demanding he go to his mate, demanding he apologize, demanding he claim what belonged to them both.
But what was the point? She’d be leaving today, probably while he stood at his father’s casket. The investigation that had brought her here was over. The king was beyond saving. And maybe it was better this way—cleaner, less complicated. No messy emotional entanglements to weaken him the way they’d weakened his father.
Except she made you stronger, not weaker.
The traitorous thought slipped past his defenses, and Korran found himself at the mini-fridge before he’d consciously decided to move. His large hand wrapped around the handle, and he pulled the door open with more force than necessary.
There they were. Two small vials filled with blue liquid, innocuous and unremarkable. The immunity booster that Varix had been administering to his father for five years. Thetreatment that was supposed to be helping, supposed to be buying them time, supposed to be keeping the king alive.
But what if it wasn’t?
Tess’s voice echoed in his memory, sharp with scientific skepticism and barely contained frustration. Her arguments about cellular damage, about compounds masquerading as medicine, about the impossibility of a supernatural bond causing systematic failure. Every logical point she’d raised had been competing with his rationalization all night, a war between science and ideology that left him more confused than ever.
Varix’s explanation had been reasonable—a stroke in his sleep, the inevitable result of a decade-long decline, the kind of medical emergency that couldn’t be predicted or prevented. His father had been fighting longer than anyone expected. The treatments had bought them precious years. And yet…
And yet Tess looked at the data and saw something else entirely.
Korran lifted one of the vials, holding it up to the morning light streaming through his windows. The liquid caught the illumination, refracting it into tiny rainbows that danced across the glass surface. Beautiful. Harmless-looking. But then, the most dangerous things often were.
His bear stirred restlessly, pressing against his consciousness with an urgency that had everything to do with the mate bond pulsing between him and Tess. Even now, even with the distance he’d tried to create between them, Korran could feel her emotions bleeding through their connection. Fear. Doubt. Longing. Grief that mirrored his own. And underneath it all, a conviction that burned like fire.
She’s not giving up.
The realization hit him with unexpected force. Despite what he’d said to her yesterday, despite how he’d tried to push her away, Tess wasn’t running yet. The woman who’d kissed himwith desperate hunger, who’d curled against him for comfort, who’d challenged every assumption he’d held about human weakness—she was still here.
But most surprising of all was the thread of want that ran through her emotions. Despite his cold dismissal, she still wanted him. The mate bond wouldn’t be denied, no matter how hard either of them fought against it.
Korran set the vial back in the mini-fridge with careful precision, his jaw clenching as he tried to process the tangle of emotions threatening to overwhelm his carefully maintained control. His mother had left for the ceremony already—he could feel the emptiness in the estate.
She’s stronger than any bear shifter I know.
The thought came unbidden, carrying with it a lifetime of observations he’d tried to suppress. His mother, holding the clan together while his father weakened. His mother, enduring decades of prejudice and suspicion with grace and dignity. His mother, making decisions that kept their territory stable even when the council doubted her judgment because of her humanity.
Human weakness?
The ideology that had shaped his entire worldview suddenly felt paper-thin, unable to withstand the weight of evidence that had been building for years. If human-shifter bonds were inherently destructive, if emotional attachment inevitably led to vulnerability and failure, then how had his mother become the strongest person he knew?
