Chapter 265

• Merida
• The private room the Warden preferred hadn't changed in the years I'd known him — no windows, no décor beyond what function required, a man who valued information over comfort in every visible choice he made.
• I had not told Griffin his name, not once, in all the years I'd let him believe I belonged to him. I had barely let myself think it in daylight. But sitting across from him now, I let myself feel, briefly, the same thing I always felt in this room and nowhere else — something colder and deeper than anything a titled Alpha could ever inspire in me. Respect, of a kind. Recognition, of another kind. Griffin ruled because his name had been handed to him at birth. This man ruled because he had built something out of nothing, patiently, for longer than anyone in the Ashbourne bloodline had been alive.