Savage Crown (Bonded by Fate Duet #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

It had been three months since the Arcane Trials.

Three months since Kaelric handed me the keys to his mother’s childhood home like it was nothing, like it wasn’t his last tether to her, and disappeared. Sometimes the house still felt too big for me, its corners holding the echo of a family I never met.

Valkaryn was still stashed in the trunk in my closet, buried beneath spare blankets as if that could dull her presence.

I had no more need of her in a peaceful place like Hildreth, and simply seeing her made something hot bloom beneath my ribs.

Anger. Loss. Regret. She was a reminder of what could have been.

I could have magic right now.

I could have Kaelric.

He could have his revenge, his justice for his people.

Instead, we had none of that. Only silence.

Some nights, when the house was still, and shadows stretched long across the wooden floors, I thought I heard Valkaryn calling to me, a soft brush of her presence, like a whisper caught in a dream. But when I stirred and glared at the trunk’s iron hinges, she went quiet again.

If she did speak, it was once a month at most, and only to encourage me to find Kaelric. To go to him. To finish what he began. I ignored her, and eventually she stopped asking.

A mother’s call to help her son was sweet, but it didn’t consider my life here. My family. My siblings, whose laughter filled the yard. The new beginnings I wanted to witness. I wanted to see them grow, help them settle into a life free of the Dregs and fear. I wanted peace.

I awoke to the smell of something warm and delicious drifting through the house. I inhaled sugar, berries, and rising bread, and slipped out of my blanket, padding across creaky wooden floors toward the kitchen.

There I found Mira standing on a stool beside Elia, flour dusting both their arms like festival paint.

“Elia!” I exclaimed.

I gave Kaelric’s cousin, one of my closest friends, a tight hug, breathing in the scent of honey crusting in the oven.

She hugged me back with one arm, the other pointing out what Mira should stir next in their messy bowl.

Through the window, morning light spilled over the yard.

I peered outside to see her daughter chasing our new flock of chickens across the grass with Sable.

The two girls were fast friends, weaving between blueberry bushes and the worn old fence.

Sable often spent nights sleeping over at Elia’s and vice versa, their giggles filling the evenings long after the candles were blown out.

“Sweet Mira wanted to bake something for your mother’s birthday and surprise her, so I told her I’d come over early and help.”

I felt my eyes widen.

Mother’s birthday.

I had completely forgotten.

I’d been helping put the roof on Fiona’s new place.

It would finally be complete, walls sealed tight, windows installed, a small woodstove, and real floors.

We’d even rigged running water indoors, gravity-fed from the rain-catch system Kaelric’s building team had invented.

Fiona was due any day now, belly round and back aching.

Helping her gave me a purpose. I was learning so much, busy day and night, just how I liked it.

But that meant I’d forgotten Mama’s birthday. Shame cut low in my gut.

“Have you heard from Kaelric?” I asked, trying to keep my voice casual but hearing the tension anyway.

Elia was my only source of him, my window into his war, his survival.

As much as I wanted to shove him into the farthest corner of my mind, forget him, I couldn’t.

Some days, I still brushed my fingers across my lips, remembering what it was like to kiss him.

What it was like to choose him and lose him.

She nodded. “He’s fine. The fighting moved closer east, but he was able to push it back. He’s making his way to the capital, Lunaria, slowly but surely.”

I nodded, pretending that “fine” meant what it should. Just saying his name made my heart pinch with a physical ache in my chest.

“I’m gonna go pick some wildflowers for my mother,” I told Elia, unable to stand still.

She gave me a bright, encouraging smile.

I slipped out the front door and into the thick, dew-soaked woods that hugged our home. Pale morning light filtered through the canopy, dusting ferns with gold. The forest floor was damp beneath my boots, and little purple wildflowers clustered between the feathery fronds like scattered jewels.

I bent down, plucking a handful, lost in thought—my mother’s birthday, her soft smile, Kaelric—when a twig snapped behind me.

I froze, pulse roaring. Spinning around, I came face-to-face with a hulking male in his forties. He stood easily a head taller than me, built like a bear, with shoulders broad enough to blot out the forest behind him. Thin scars, silver and old, ran the length of his arms like faded rivers.

“Brynn Brighton.” He bowed his head ever so slightly, the gesture strangely elegant for someone who looked carved from stone. “I am Godric, and I have come at the request of my alpha, Kaelric Morvain. He would like me to accompany you to meet him in Loroc.”

My breath hitched.

Kaelric wanted me?

The man’s formality threw me off. His tone was deep, steady, and precise. I’d never met him, but the sword at his waist and the harsh lines carved into his knuckles told a story of war and survival.

And then…

I felt Kaelric.

For the first time in months, our connection flared open as if a door had been wrenched wide. I hadn’t realized how starved I’d been for that tether, how much I’d missed the quiet hum of him. Feeling Kaelric inside my chest again stole the air from my lungs.

‘Brynn… I need you. Bring the sword. Godric will protect you until you can get to me.’

I need you.

Three words I never thought I’d hear again.

Three words I had craved more than breath.

‘I’m coming,’ I told him without hesitation.

My reluctant logic, my stubborn pride, all of it evaporated in an instant. Months of Valkaryn whispering at me to find him had done nothing. But the moment it was Kaelric’s voice… I shattered.

There was an urgency in him. No, desperation.

“I need to say goodbye to my family,” I told Godric, my voice steadier than I felt.

He nodded once and followed me toward the house, stopping respectfully on the porch. Mira opened the door as my hand reached for it. Her eyes landed on Godric, and she paled, fingers tightening around the wood.

“Is everything okay?” she asked. Wolfkin soldiers didn’t often stand on our porch.

“It’s… fine,” Godric answered when I did not, though the slight pause before the word made it feel anything but.

“Kaelric needs me. I’m taking Valkaryn,” I told her.

She nodded quickly, ushering me inside while Godric remained outside like a pensive mountain.

When we reached my room, she exhaled sharply.

“Do you know who that is?” She motioned toward the porch as I rummaged for my bag.

My fingers closed around Valkaryn’s hilt, where she lay at the bottom of the trunk.

I drew her free and sheathed her at my hip.

A sharp spark of power shot up my arm, needful, eager, like she’d been suffocating in that dark space.

“Godric?” I asked.

She nodded. “We learned about him in wolfkin history. When King Morvain was killed, and nearly all his heirs, Kaelric was too young to take over. Godric was interim leader until Kaelric came of age. He’s Kaelric’s second-in-command.”

Whoa.

“He definitely looks like he’s seen battle. Are you sure?”

Mira nodded and crossed the small space until she stood directly in front of me. “I’ve seen his picture in the history books. You don’t understand, Brynn. Kaelric sent the most powerful wolfkin in Fenmyr to protect you. Second only to himself.”

Heat rushed to my cheeks.

“So?” I shrugged, trying to keep my face neutral.

She huffed. “So, it means he still cares for you, way more than he lets on.”

“Who cares for you?” Elia asked as she entered the room, snacking on something.

“Kaelric!” Mira protested. “He sent his second-in-command to fetch Brynn!”

Elia’s eyebrows shot up. “Godric is here?”

I nodded.

Mira had overheard the nights I’d cried myself to sleep in the beginning, after Kaelric left.

And Elia and I had become best friends over long nights of whispered confessions.

She told me about feeling like a failure as a mother on days she was too exhausted to play or when she yelled at the kids.

I told her about losing Kaelric, about how his absence hollowed out places inside me I didn’t know existed.

I shook my head. “He needs me for something. He needs Valkaryn, likely. He’s protecting that.” He did tell me to bring her.

Elia softened and looked at Mira. “Can you take the rolls out of the oven? They smell done.”

Mira frowned, knowing she was being dismissed, but left anyway.

Elia’s hands came to rest on my shoulders. “Brynn, you’re his mate. I don’t know how, but you are. He will forgive you. He’s not built to stay mad at the one fate has chosen for him.”

My breath caught.

But she didn’t see the way he’d looked at me during the final trial —the anger, the betrayal, like I’d torn his world wide open.

Elia’s gaze flicked to the sword at my hip. “And I reckon he’s not mad at you. He’s really mad at her. For not choosing him.”

A sudden, sharp pain sliced across my chest. I staggered, hand pressed against my sternum. But it wasn’t mine; I’d felt Valkaryn’s pain, raw and deep, the grief of a mother who couldn’t choose her own child, even if she wanted to. Her power had forced her hand.

I suddenly felt a strange tenderness toward her.

“Go to him. Help him. Forgive him,” Elia urged.

I swallowed hard and nodded.

“And don’t worry about your family. You know I will look after them.”