Carissa knelt in the study with her head bowed, the silence stretching long enough that she could hear her own pulse.
Salvador studied her from behind his desk. He remembered the Sinclairs, the whole line of them, strong and loud and impossible to ignore. Knowing that this kneeling woman was the last one left stirred something uncomfortably close to pity in his chest.
"Rise. Speak," he said.
Carissa rose but kept her hands clasped in front of her, her head still bowed. "Your Majesty, I know it’s presumptuous of me to ask for your time today. But I have come to beg for your grace."
"The decree is already spoken. A King’s word can’t be unspoken." His tone was final, the same tone he’d used with Derek not an hour before.
Carissa shook her head slowly. "Your Majesty, I’m not here about that decree. I’ve come to ask for another one. I want to be released from my bond to Alpha Warren."
The young King went still. "What? A release?"
He had braced himself for her to fight the mating decree between Barrett and Aurora, to weep and demand he take it back. He had not braced himself for this.
Carissa’s voice wavered, but she held her ground. "Your Majesty, Alpha Warren and General Yates earned their decree with what they did in the war. Their kills bought them that right, and I won’t stand in the way of it." She drew a breath that shook on the way in. "Today marks the death anniversary of my father and my brothers. I’m asking you to weigh their service, their blood spent for this kingdom, and grant me a release from my bond on the strength of it. Please, Your Majesty. I’m begging you."
"Carissa." Salvador’s expression had gone complicated, something between concern and disbelief. "Do you understand what you’ll be walking into once that bond is severed?"
It had been a long time since he’d heard him say her name like that, plain and unguarded, the way he used to.
When he was still a young warrior finding his place among the packs, he had visited Northwatch more than once. He always seemed to find some small, strange gift to bring her, a carved wolf figurine, a smooth river stone, nothing that meant much except that he’d thought of her. After she left for Meadow Ridge to train under her master, their paths had never crossed again. Years had passed. And now here she was, kneeling in his study with her family’s ashes barely settled.
"I do," she said.
A faint smile touched her mouth. It was a beautiful thing to look at, and there was nothing warm in it at all.
"You know the saying, that a true Alpha helps others reach what they’re reaching for, even at cost to himself." Her chin lifted slightly. "I’m no Alpha, Your Majesty, but I don’t want to be the thing standing between Barrett and General Yates. Let them have what they fought for."
"Carissa, there’s no one left at Northwatch. The territory is empty. Are you really going to go back there alone? Have you thought past tomorrow, or the day after that?"
"I went back today to stand at my family’s memorial stones." Her voice steadied as she spoke, the way ground steadies under a foot that finally finds solid footing. "Seeing the land the way it’s fallen apart made something clear to me. I want to live there again. I’ll rebuild it. I’ll take in a pup to raise as my father’s heir, so there’s still someone left to carry his name and honor what he was."
Salvador had expected an impulsive, grief-stricken plea. He hadn’t expected this, a plan already forming, already sturdy.
"You’re his Luna, Carissa. His true, legal Luna. Aurora can carry his pups, share his bed, wear whatever title he wants to give her, but she can’t touch your place at his side unless you give it up yourself. You don’t need this release."
Carissa lifted her face. Her eyes were wet, but there was nothing broken in the way they held his. "Your Majesty, that’s a meaningless kind of power. I refuse to spend the rest of my life as a placeholder in another wolf’s territory, tolerated, never wanted. I’m the last Sinclair left breathing. My father and my brothers lived and died with their teeth bared at the world. I won’t shrink myself down to fit inside a life no one actually wants me in."
"I know you carry feelings for him. Can you really let go?"
Feelings. The word landed strangely.
Carissa had never burned for Barrett the way the old ballads described a mate bond burning. She had admired him the way she admired any decorated warrior, from a respectful distance, and her mother had wanted to see her settled before the sickness took her, wanted grandpups, wanted her daughter safe inside pack walls instead of exposed on some border with the rest of the Sinclairs. That was the whole of it. That was why she’d agreed to the bond in the first place.
She smiled again, and this time there was steel under it, the kind of smile that belonged to a woman who had already decided she would survive whatever came next, no matter how the ground shifted beneath her.
"If he can let go of me," she said, "then I can let go of him."
Beneath the soft face and the careful manners, something in her didn’t bend.
Salvador sat back in his chair, caught off guard by her in a way few things managed anymore. He had faced down rival Alphas without blinking. This slip of a woman, kneeling in his study with red-rimmed eyes, unsettled him more.
He remembered a girl who used to laugh constantly, who used to run circles around Hector’s legs while the old Alpha tried to hold a meeting. That girl was gone. In her place knelt a woman about to be cast off in front of every pack in the kingdom, and no amount of legal standing would soften how the world read that. A release, whatever the paperwork said, would look like abandonment to anyone watching. It always did, for women. Especially for a woman whose mate had gone out of his way to make his new choice public.
Who would speak for her the next time some Alpha came sniffing around, testing whether Northwatch’s last daughter came with a pack at her back or nothing at all? There was no father left to growl a warning. No brothers left to stand at her shoulder.
The thought settled something in Salvador’s chest. He thought of Hector again, of battles they’d bled through side by side, of a debt that had never fully been paid because Hector wasn’t alive to collect it.
"Alright." He exhaled the word like he was setting something down. "I’ll grant it. You may go. Within a few days, the release will reach Warren territory."
Carissa’s shoulders dropped, just slightly, the tension leaving her spine for the first time since she’d walked through the gates. She bowed low. "Thank you for your grace, Your Majesty."
Watching her, Salvador found himself back at Northwatch for a moment, watching a small girl chase a released hunting hawk across the courtyard, laughing loud enough to carry over the walls. Something in his chest softened further, some old debt shifting its weight.
"Carissa." He said her name again before she could straighten fully. "If anyone ever mistreats you after this, you come back here. You come straight to me."
She looked up, startled, then bowed a second time, lower than the first. "Thank you, Your Majesty."