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KAI
Every time Kai walked into the throne room, his insides turned to lead. It had been over five months since his coronation, and still, it hadn’t gotten easier.
There had been no celebration that day. He didn’t recall much from the week—hell, themonth—that followed his father and brother’s deaths, but he did remember that.
He hadn’t been sure why they hadn’t waited to put the crown on his head. At that point, he’d already been shoved through the Alpha Rite—had been brought to near-death, saw the heavens, survived the“endless forest”to the Goddess who blessed him with her power and “bore him anew”…
So, dealing with all the pomp while everyone was still in mourning seemed unnecessary, even downright disrespectful, if he were being truthful.
But he had been nothing but a puppet then, barely able to grasp any type of reality. Survival had been his only goal—it was all they needed him to do, frankly. Make it to the next day, then the next. Figure it all out as he went, or their kingdom would come crashing down. Just as much as his life had.
“Alpha Kai of Deimos!”
The boom of the High Elder’s voice, proclaiming to the coronation’s spectators, reverberated within the antechamber behind the throne room. Kai swallowed the lump in his throat and steeled against any feeling as he gave his sore shoulder one last rub. Four elders clad in their signature pale blue robes, and two priestesses in their obsidian garb, silver and moonstone circlets over their brows, stood before him. Slowly and straight-backed, they began the procession into the sacred cavernous space.
The scent of jasmine hit Kai first, the incense burning on the altar that lay a few feet before him as he crossed the archway. He was certainly getting sick of that smell, its foreboding. Every time he’d been around it, in a call to the goddesses, it hadn’t meant anything good.
Buttoday…
When Kai honed his hearing, he couldn’t miss the crowd’s roar beyond the Northern Hall’s stone, and Goddess, did he wish he was out there to see it. To see Isla’s face as she took it all in. The waving hands, the beaming grins, and the shouts of her name. Guards lined the streets from the Pack Hall all the way down to Abalys. He wasn’t going to let anything ruin or threaten her today.
Seven steps lay between the ground and the dais, and the thrones perched on the inky marble platform, high above them all.
The seats themselves were simple, their darkness weaved by gilded vines like veins, yes, but the true grandness of the alpha and luna’s chairs lay in what surrounded them. The stone had been carved into, depicting etchings of wolves, flourishing forests and life, and their beginnings below renderings of the Goddess, Fate, and Eternity. The moon, the stars, and the night sky. Three women, three sisters, ethereal and eternal. Creator, Weaver, End. Always watching.
With the lunar rise, the crystals wedged into the stone seemed to pulse and glow, much like the ones in tunnel walls and those that lined Mavec’s streets. A phenomenon that made their kingdom unique.
A lilt of notes bounced off the walls as a steady hymn fluttered from the choir in the corner of the chamber. Using it as their cue, the procession walking the curve of the fourth step divided, and even without thinking, Kai’s body knew where to take him. Up and up until his booted foot hit the sleek night-dark marble, and he rose to the pinnacle of what may as well have been a mountain for how hard it even felt to breathe.
For a moment, Kai paused, his eyes sliding over the two empty, glorious thrones, only the goddesses dwelling above them. The silver branches of his crown clawed deep into his scalp, sitting so heavy that he ducked his head. Every time he came up here, he remembered his father. Every time he came up here, he remembered Jaden. Remembered this seat was not his. Had never beenhis.
And yet still, he had to take it.
Every step to the throne felt like powering through quicksand, the crescendo of the choir fading to nothing but white noise in the back of his mind because all sound was in him, a roaring that rivaled that of the crowd outside, a thrashing of something wild and haphazardly tamed against his ribcage.
You are no king.
Kai shook the thought, said in his father’s voice, out of his head. Shook off the weight of five months of suppressed feelings. Shook off the pain. Shook off the guilt and shame. He became numb.
His knees touched the edge of the metal, and he turned and took a seat.
Everyone’s eyes were fixed on him, sliding to the empty chair beside his.
He wasn’t sure how silence could be so Goddess-damn loud. How eyes and auras could scream at him, pounding against his skull so hard that he gritted his teeth.
His eyes drifted to where his mother stood, a soft grin on her face that did not appear as it had on the day of his coronation. Back when he could see the grief, the facade she fought to maintain, so clearly in her eyes that he made a vow to never break. He’d come the closest to that shattering point when Isla had nearly died.
You do not deserve this.
His chest constricted, his fingers tightening on the cool arms on the throne.
This room was too confined. There were too many people. Too many sights, smells, and sounds, too much havoc inside for this void to feast on as it fought to tear itself free, fought to tear him apart.
He sought out his friends, his family, any distraction amongst the spectators on the long wooden benches that had been brought in for observation, but each glance felt like leveling a blade at someone’s chest. One strike, and he’d cut too deep.
Pull back.
The double doors of the throne room opened, a gentle autumn breeze sweeping through in their wake.
