Alpha King Threw Away His Mate For Being Infertile—Then She Returned With Four Powerful Alpha Heirs

Chapter 5

The journey south took nine days.

Elena had insisted on traveling in a carriage of dark lacquered wood, drawn by six grey horses, with the sigil of the winter house — an oak, growing from a single pine needle — picked out in silver on the doors. It was a statement, and she knew it. The last time she had walked this road, she had been barefoot and bleeding and wearing a torn white gown, and the guards at the gates had laughed at her as she passed.

She did not walk this time.

The city of Silverfall rose out of the mist like a monument to everything that had been taken from her. Towers of black marble, bridges of carved bone, the great hall where the candles never died. Elena watched it come closer through the carriage window, and she felt nothing — nothing at all — except the steady, comforting weight of the locket against her chest.

“Mother,” Silas said. It was one of the rare times he spoke. “Will he know us?”

Elena reached across the carriage and took his small hand.

“He will know your eyes,” she said. “He will see them, and he will understand that some things cannot be undone.”

“Will he be cruel to you again?” Cassian asked. His voice was still a child’s, but his eyes were old, and Elena had learned long ago that Cassian’s questions were never idle.

She looked at him for a long moment.

“Then you will do what I raised you to do,” she said quietly. “Be the kings I could not be for myself.”

The carriage rolled through the outer gates, past guards who did not know her, past nobles who did not look at her, and into the courtyard where the great house had gathered to celebrate a prince she had never met. She stepped down from the carriage onto the cold stones, and the emerald silk of her gown moved like liquid glass around her.

The steward who met her at the great doors went pale as snow.

“My—” he began, and stopped. Swallowed. “My lady.”

“Tell the king I have arrived,” Elena said smoothly. “He requested the pleasure of my company.”

The antechamber was dim and smelled of old books and dried roses. Elena stood at the window with her back to the doors, and her four sons stood in a perfect row behind her, hands folded, postures straight, the image of a small and terrible army awaiting orders.

She could hear the banquet on the other side of the mahogany doors. The murmur of a hundred voices. The clink of crystal. A child’s voice, high and laughing.

“Theo,” Rowan murmured. “The heir. He would be two now.”

“Yes,” Elena said. “He would be two.”

“His mother is the queen,” Elias said, in his careful, accounting way. “The one who took your place.”

“She did not take my place,” Elena said. “There was no place left to take. The king emptied it himself.”

The doors began to swing open.

The candlelight spilled across the threshold, and the murmur of the banquet died as if a hand had been clamped over a hundred mouths. Elena drew a slow breath. She smoothed the emerald silk over her hip, lifted her chin, and stepped through the doorway into the hall where she had been destroyed.

She felt the weight of every eye in the room turn toward her.

She saw the great dais, the gilded throne. She saw Aldric sitting upon it, older than she remembered, harder, his hair touched with grey — and she saw the exact moment he recognized her. His hand froze around the arm of his throne. His jaw went slack. Something moved behind his eyes — shock, and then a flicker of something darker that she could not name.

And beside him, in white silk, with a small dark-haired boy asleep in her lap — Isolde. The queen who had laughed from the east tower window on the night Elena was thrown out. Her smile had curdled on her lips. Her hand had tightened around the sleeping prince.

Elena walked to the center of the hall, and her four sons followed, two on each side, their silver eyes fixed on the king.

She stopped at the base of the throne steps.

The hall was silent. Silent as a grave.

And Elena smiled her serene, devastating smile.

“Your Majesty,” she said. “I received your invitation.”