Chapter 326 Alone

Chapter 326: Chapter 326 Alone

Damian’s POV

I was three time zones deep into a Council report when my phone lit up with her name, and something in my chest eased just seeing it.

Aria.

I’d been counting the hours since she left. Thirty-one years without a mate, and now I couldn’t sit through a single evening without wondering where she was, what she was doing, whether she was safe. My wolf had been restless all night, pacing behind my ribs like he already knew something was wrong.

"You’re up late," I said, and I didn’t bother hiding the warmth in my voice. There was no one here to perform for. "Or early, I suppose. What time is it there?"

"Damian." Just my name. But the way she said it—low, careful, with that thread of steel she used when she was holding herself together—had me on my feet before I’d made the decision to stand.

"Talk to me."

"I’m fine. First—I’m fine, all right? I need you to hear that before I say the rest." A pause. I heard her breathe. "They’ve locked me in. Sylvia’s people. There’s a guard on my door and I can’t leave the room."

For a moment I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. And then the cold came up through me all at once.

"Where," I said. My voice had dropped so low I barely recognized it. My wolf had surged forward, hackles up, every instinct screaming *mate, threat, hunt.* "Aria. Where are you exactly."

"The Lyon estate outside city. The one the Smiths bought last spring." Her voice stayed even. "It’s private property, Damian.Do you understand what I’m telling you?"

I understood perfectly. I understood that a pack of jackals had put my mate behind a locked door, and that the scent I would leave on the man standing outside it would not wash out for a week.

"I’m sending the Guard," I said. Already moving, already reaching for the secure line, my mind laying out the logistics like a map unrolling.

"Six of them. I’ll have a transport wheels-up within the hour, they’ll be at that estate before your next sunrise, and I promise you, Aria, whoever is standing at that door will regret—"

"No."

The word landed flat and final. I stopped.

"*No*, Damian. Think." Her voice cut clean through the haze, sharp and clear, and that was the thing about her, the thing that had undone me from the start. She didn’t cower. She *thought*.

"That estate is private property. It’s Crescent Moon soil the second you cross the wall. If you send an armed Blackwood unit onto foreign ground to seize a human woman by force, you don’t rescue me. You start a war."

I knew she was right. I hated that she was right.

"Let me be very clear about what happens," she went on, relentless. "You’re not just an Alpha. You’re the King. Every pack on the continent watches what you do. You invade sovereign ground on French soil, over a family inheritance dispute, and Crescent Moon has every legal right to call it an act of aggression. The other kingdoms will line up behind them just to watch you bleed. You’d be handing your enemies the excuse they’ve wanted for a decade." Her breath hitched, just slightly. "I’m not worth that. Don’t you dare make me the reason the whole thing burns."

"You’re worth all of it," I said. Quiet. Absolute. "Don’t ever tell me otherwise."

Silence stretched between us, and in it I could hear her heartbeat through the phone, too fast, betraying the calm she wore like armor.

"Damian." Softer now. Almost pleading. "Promise me you won’t send the Guard."

I closed my eyes.

My wolf was pacing, snarling, furious with me. Everything in my blood said *go, take, tear the walls down and bring her home.*

That was what we are, at the root of it. Beneath the crown and the diplomacy and the centuries of careful law, I was still a wolf who has finally found his mate, and every fiber of me rejected the idea of leaving her behind enemy walls.

But she was right. And she was brave enough to be right when it would have been so much easier to just let me come raging in.

"I won’t send the Guard," I said.

Relief flooded her voice. "Thank you—"

"I’m coming myself."

"*What?* No. Damian, that’s worse, that’s—"

"Alone. No unit. No colors. No Blackwood insignia on anything I wear.man traveling to be with his wife isn’t an act of war, Aria. It’s a family matter. Let them try to spin *that* into an invasion."

"You can’t." Her voice cracked, and this—*this*—was what she’d been holding back the whole call. Not fear for herself. Fear for me. "Sylvia wants you off balance. If you walk in there alone, on her ground, with no backup, you’re handing her exactly what she wants. She’ll have you cornered. Please. Please don’t come."

"I’m already in the car."

"*Damian.*"

"Listen to me." I pulled onto the highway, the engine roaring beneath me, the city lights streaking past in the dark. "We stood in front of witnesses. We signed the papers. You are my wife. My mate. Do you understand what that means to a wolf like me?" My grip tightened on the wheel. "It means there is no version of the world where you are behind a locked door and I am on the other side of an ocean, sleeping. It doesn’t exist. Wherever you are, that’s where I am. That’s not a decision, sweetheart. That’s biology. That’s my whole nature."

She went quiet.

And I felt it—the shift in her, even across all that distance.

"Okay," she whispered. And then, steadier, something raw and unguarded threading through it, "Okay. Come."

"Twelve hours," I said. "Don’t give them anything. I’ll be there before you wake."

"Damian." A pause. "Be careful. She’s expecting something. I can feel it."

"Let her expect."

I hung up before she could hear the low, savage satisfaction in my voice. Because Aria was right about one thing—Sylvia was expecting a reaction. She’d built this cage precisely to provoke one.

She just didn’t understand what she’d caught.

---

Halfway across the Atlantic, thirty thousand feet over black water, Sylvia Smith received a message she had been waiting for.

It was short. Three words, from her contact on the ground.

*He’s landed. Alone.*

She read it twice. Then she set down her wine, and she smiled.

Because the King had done exactly what she’d known he would. He’d come charging in himself, without his Guard, without his colors, without the machinery of the Crown behind him to protect him. He’d walked onto her soil, into her house, playing by rules she had written, believing love made him untouchable.

She had never wanted the girl.

She had wanted *him* to come for the girl.

And now the most powerful wolf in North America was standing, unguarded, in the one place on earth where his crown meant nothing at all.