I could feel it, the suffocating pressure creeping in, tightness in my chest, my heart hammering like it might break through my ribs. Everything felt too perfect, too smooth, like the calm before the storm. It had been a good day. A monumental day, really. The gala had gone off without a hitch, and every single werewolf house had agreed to my plan for the wall. Every. Single. One.
But the silence in my chambers was deafening. The calm felt wrong. It couldn't be this easy. In my life I've had to scrape and scrounge and claw my way forward with everything I've ever done, especially after my father's murder of the queen. His face, the madness as he brings down the knife on her, how it twisted more and more with every swing of the dagger. What if that was my destiny one day? To be struck with that kind of madness, to abandon and doom my people?
