Chapter 190

Chapter 190
Freya‘s pov.

Eighteen Years Later

“Mom, this is not fair.” Aria leaned against my doorframe with a put-upon sigh only a seventeen-year-old could perfect. Her black hair—Dorian’s shade—tumbled in waves around a face all her own: sharp, luminous, stubborn. Her eyes, green as river moss, cut to the crib where our four-year-old twins slept in a tangle of limbs and blankets. “Why do I have to watch the gremlins? We have an army of staff for this.”
I set aside the picnic basket and straightened. “Because, Aria, I want you to be with them. These gremlins worship you. Let that bond grow while it still can.”
She rolled her eyes. “Then say the same thing to Gideon or Eli. They can ‘strengthen bonds’ too.”
“Gideon and Elijus,” I corrected gently, fighting a smile. “And they both have plans today.”
“Of course they do.” She folded her arms. “Meanwhile, I could also have plans. If someone ever let me leave the keep without three shadows, or if my fathers didn’t terrify every potential date into a vow of chastity.”
A laugh escaped me before I could catch it. I crossed and cupped her cheek. “We love you. That’s all. End of discussion.”
Aria made a strangled noise and swiveled away. The door thumped in her wake.
A heartbeat later, it opened again. Dorian filled the doorway, all wolf and sunshine, the silver at his temples doing nothing to blunt the effect. “Which hurricane just tore through here?” he asked, eyebrows up.
“Our daughter.” I sank the last bottle of wine into the basket’s straw sling. “Maybe we’ve been too strict with her.”
He snorted softly. “She’s heir to a very complicated throne—wolves and hunters both. She’s priceless, and that paints a target on her back. If I could wrap her in chainmail and keep her in the library until she’s forty, I would.”
“You and Tiberius have scared half the continent into civility,” I teased. “I doubt anyone’s foolish enough to try for Aria.”
Dorian’s mouth tipped. “We have done good work.”
“Where’s Tiberius?”
“Walking the last of the border posts,” Dorian said, glancing toward the windows, where banners snapped in a mild wind. “He’ll be back before the apples brown.”
“And the older boys?”
“Being suspiciously quiet, which means they’re absolutely up to something.”
“Dorian,” I chided, though fondness bled through. “That’s your sons you’re maligning.”
“My glorious menaces,” he amended, unapologetic. He kissed my forehead. “You don’t need to get more beautiful, but if you insist on ‘touching up,’ I’ll stand here and admire it.”
I hip-checked him toward the hall. “Out. I’ll be two minutes.”
Eighteen years had moved like a river: swift in places, slow in others, always carving. Aria had been our miracle and our lesson, the living proof that fate’s debts can be paid and still leave you richer. We named her for Arius—because only later did the full shape of his sacrifice settle like a stone in our chests. I had wagered with the valley without understanding the lives at stake. He saved her before she drew breath. All three of us owed him joy.
Three years after Aria, Gideon arrived—a storm of Dorian’s laughter and Beast-steady strength, a pure wolf pup who shifted early and raced the moon. Three years after that came Elijus, Tiberius’s son, a hunter to the bone with eyes that saw too much and hands that were always building. The twins—our late surprise—had nearly taken me with them when they came, and when I finally held both squalling bodies, Tiberius and Dorian looked at each other and, without speaking, decided our cradle was full. I agreed.
We were not easy. We were never simple. But we loved so much that our rough edges became a game, our disagreements a dance, and between wolves and hunters a peace held—no walls, no raids, no lost children. For eighteen years.
I laced my boots, shrugged into a riding cloak, and stepped into the corridor. A ripple of sound rolled from the outer yard: raised voices, steel in the tone if not yet in hand. A murmur of anxious feet followed.
I snagged a passing guard by the sleeve. “Report.”
“Your Majesty—” He flushed when I arched a brow. “My lady—ah—the kings are at the east gate, speaking with a stranger.”
“Speaking,” I repeated dryly, hearing the unspoken arguing.
“Very well.”
Aria materialized at my side as if conjured, Gideon and Elijus bounding behind her. “We heard shouting,” she said, trying for casual and failing; her energy was too bright, too wired. “We’re coming.”
I swallowed a mother’s protest—it would only make them faster—and together we vaulted into the saddle and pounded across the flagstones toward the gate.
Halfway there, Aria went still beside me. Her breath hitched. Her hands tightened white on the reins. “Aria?” I called, but her gaze was fixed ahead, on the road beyond the gate’s shadow, as if something there had lifted out of a dream and stepped into daylight.
We drew up hard at the threshold. The world narrowed to the three men standing at the road’s crown.
Dorian first—broad, bristling, every line of him set to mine. Tiberius a step off his shoulder, calm like a loaded crossbow. Between them and the road, a figure I knew even before my heart remembered how to beat.
He hadn’t aged a day.
My feet carried me down the steps because they remembered the man even when my mind couldn’t make sense of it. My mouth shaped his name on a breath that trembled. “Arius…?”