I looked at my father.
Kade Evermont looked like he had aged twenty years in twenty seconds. His face was a mask of gray stone. The disappointment radiating from him was so thick it felt like a physical pressure on my lungs. He didn't look at me with anger; he looked at me with the cold, detached disgust one might reserve for a defective tool.
He didn't speak. He simply turned and walked out of the hall.
The Alpha's departure was the final gavel. The mountain was on fire, and the king was leaving the valley to burn.
I stood in the center of the wreckage, paralyzed. My mind was a fractured mess of competing instincts. Should I run after my father and beg for a chance to explain… though what explanation could possibly suffice for a bastard heir?
