Chapter 8 - The Crown She Never Wanted
After the battle, the council declared Rosaline Luna.
She refused.
Not because she didn't love Kalin.
Because she didn't want a title handed to her because of blood.
“I'll be your mate,” she told him.
“But I won't be your decoration.”
Kalin smiled.
“I never wanted one.”
So they changed the law.
The Luna would not inherit power by birth alone.
She would earn authority through service.
Rosaline returned to the healer's hall.
She trained young healers.
Built clinics.
Opened herb gardens.
Established protections for prisoners.
She ordered every dungeon inspected.
No one would ever be forgotten beneath a castle again.
Kalin rebuilt the northern alliance.
He signed treaties.
Opened borders.
Reduced raids.
Together, they created a new kind of kingdom.
But one threat remained.
The royal seal had disappeared.
Someone had stolen it before Alaric's defeat.
Rosaline found it inside an old medical chest.
There was a message beneath it.
The war was only the beginning.
She brought it to Kalin.
He read it.
“Someone else survived.”
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
Then Arthur entered.
He looked older than before.
More confident.
“Rosaline?”
“Yes?”
“I found something.”
He gave her a small journal.
It belonged to Alpha Richard.
The final pages had been written shortly before his death.
Richard wrote about someone inside the royal family.
Someone he feared more than Harrington.
A woman.
A queen.
Rosaline looked at Kalin.
“My mother?”
“No.”
Kalin shook his head.
“My grandmother.”
The last living member of the former royal dynasty.
Queen Seraphina.
Everyone believed she was dead.
She wasn't.
She had been hiding for years.
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And she had raised Alaric.
The true architect of the war was still alive.
