bChapter /b200

The morning began with warmth and work.

bBy /bthe time the first gold reached the lintels, the dining hall had already shed its old skin.

Windows thrown wide; shutters utched that hadn’t moved in years; dust coaxed out of beams with brooms andughter.

Maria moved through it all like a captain on a ship she had secretly loved for years–barking gentle orders, tying aprons, tasting sauces, tapping a spoon on a copper pot to call for more salt, more heat, more heart.

Maria…. The woman who had helped me go to Florence when I was no one–eyes empty, pockets emptier- and pressed a warm roll into my hand with a look that said eat first, cryter. The woman who quietly asked no questions and then quietly sent me to another country to find my future because she knows about my talents.

Now she was here, sleeves rolled, hair pinned, ruling a French kitchen in Italian.

She caught my eye as I came in from the garden and, just for a heartbeat, her sternness cracked into a grin wide enough to be a hug.

“Don’t just stand there, bambina,” she called, shooing a boy away from a tray of figs. “If Luna wants flowers on a breakfast table, Luna had better pick them.”

“I did,” I said, holding up a basket ofvender and rosemary. “And if youin about the rosemary, I will tell everyone how you used to scold your previous Alpha for stealing the leaves off your roasts.”

She sniffed, unashamed. “God bless him. And I dare p his hand.”

I give her a small smile since we all know what happened with her old territory, the ce where my rejected mate became her Alpha. And now they’re gone.

We worked until the hall breathed.

It mattered that breakfast was more than food.

The previous Alpha–Henri–had hoarded rooms like coins, locked doors like secrets, turned hallways into silences. No more. If we were to mend this ce, we would do it where packs learn each other’s faces: at a table.

When the tters finally went out, the smell made even the guards swallow hard: roasted game and eggs with herbs, bread still steaming, cheeses dusted with rosemary, bowls of figs and apples, honey set in shallow dishes like little suns.

Silver tes lined the center, polished until they caught the light and gave it back twice.

The flowers I’d brought from the garden were tucked into small y jars–humble, fragrant, honest.

People drifted in.

12:00

bTue/bb, /bbSep /bb30 /b

Warriors first, shy as wolves in a new clearing. Then elders, carrying their dignity and their suspicion in equal measure. Children peeked around skirts and were promptly caught by Maria and handed pieces of pear with fierce mercy.

A few dignitaries from neighboring packs, and a handful of French Alphas‘ lieutenants who had not yet ridden home with their masters–men who measured the room in angles and leverage. All of them slowed when they saw the table. All of them breathed different when they saw the windows open.

And then Francesco.

He entered like he always did–quietly, and yet the air seemed to stand to attention. Alfonso at his shoulder, Marlow somewhere to the side with a mouth already set for work, a pair of high warriors posting themselves like bookends by the far doors.

“Good morning,” he said, and smiled.

The room startled.

There’s a sound a hall makes when it realizes the wolf at the head of the table has teeth and tenderness both.

It’s small–like a held breath that escapes by ident.

That sound went around the room, and my heart softened at it.

“This is different,” he murmured to me, and when he brushed a kiss against my mouth there were audible gasps from a few of the French men clustered near the arch.

I felt his smile widen against my lips at the collective shock. He knew exactly what I was doing.

He set his palm over mine in full view and did not move it.

“There are more peopleing into our territory,” I said, my voice carrying just enough, “so we should know them. And they should know us.”

He looked at me as if I had nted the sun.

“You’re right,” he said, turning to the room. “I should have weed you properly. I left too much to Alfonso.”

Alfonso bowed his head, unoffended and a little awed.

Several warriors who had never seen the King apologize for anything blinked as if they’d seen him change shape. Perhaps they had. A king who could hold a sword and a te at the same time was a different kind of

power.

“Eat,” I called, lifting a carafe of wine. “Break bread with us.” I looked at the elders, at the young warriors with hollow cheeks, at the lieutenants whose eyes were sharp enough to shave wood. “We start as we mean to go on -in the open, with the windows utched.”

Chairs scraped. tters moved. A hum rose that did not have to ask permission to be happiness.

b12:00 /bTue, Sep b30 /b

州园

Maria swept by with a basket, thumped it down in front of a boy with a half–starved look, and then rapped the knuckles of a lieutenant who tried to serve himself before an elder. “We seat by age she informed him inca tone that could have curdled milk. “Not arrogance.”

The lieutenant, unused to being scolded by anyone, looked ready to bristle–until Francesco’s eyes slid Laxity in his direction and then away again.

The man sat down very quickly and reached for bread with humility he hadn’t known he possessed.

As tes filled, conversations unspooled.

An elder from thekeside pack–one of Henri’s old allies who had stayed out of fear more than love– cleared his throat near me. “Luna,” he said, hesitating. “In our customs we… we do not sit with Alphas this informally.”

“In Florence,” I said gently, “we sit with those who are hungry.” I nodded toward the end of the table, where a fistful of boys were devouring eggs as if they were currency. “Our rank remains. Our manners remain. But so does our appetite for each other’spany.”

He studied me, the lines around his mouth softening. “It is… warm.”

“Yes,” I said with a small smile stered on me. “It is.”

At the far side, a pair of French lieutenants–both of them quick–eyed men who’d clearly made careers reading the expressions of kings–watched Francesco with the fascination of hunters who’d discovered their prey sings. One of them leaned to the other. I heard the mutter, meant to be private: “They say thest Lycaon never smiles.”

“He does,” the second answered, almost grudging. “For her.”

I poured wine into both their goblets without breaking eye contact. “He smiles for those who intend to stay,” I said lightly. “Wine?”

They flushed.

Took the wine.

Near the middle of the table, Monica sat wedged between two elderly women, refilling their cups as she quietly lectured a broad–shouldered warrior about letting the elders reach the tter first.

Audrey stood behind my chair, not eating, eyes doing her constant circuit of doors, faces, hands.

When she found mine, I tipped my chin toward a gap two chairs down.

“Sit,” I mouthed.

She shook her head.

Then Maria swept behind her, pressed a heel of bread into her palm, and pushed her bodily into the empty chair with a look that brooked no argument.

b12:00 /bbTue/bb, /bbSep 30 /b

6:

Audrey–Audrey!—sat. I could have kissed Maria’s feet.

879

A vouchers

It was going well. It was going human. That was precisely what I wanted–wolves who had learned to brace themselves in dining rooms learning to unclench their jaws.

Naturally, someone decided to test it.

He was tall, handsomely unpleasant, one of the French contingent who hadn’t left with Dorian–too curious, or too ambitious, to ride before the dust had settled. He’d watched the morning like a man counting coins, and when he finally chose his moment he stood with a goblet and a look that asked the room to notice him.

“To new customs,” he said. The room fell quiet by habit, not respect. “To windows open and tables wide. To a King who smiles.”

There was nothing wrong with the words.

It was the angle of his mouth that sharpened them.

Francesco lifted his goblet with serene politeness. “To full tes,” he agreed. “And to hands that do the work to fill them.”

The lieutenant’s eyes flicked. He hadn’t drawn blood. He sharpened the point. “And to history,” he added, louder now. “May it not repeat itself. We all know breakfast is pleasant. But Europe remembers the name Lycaon for other reasons.”

Damn it!

Conversations stilled; forks hovered.

I felt the room search Francesco’s face, hungry for the moment the wolf would stop smiling.

I set my goblet down and stood—not with a ng, but with a sound like a page turning.

“History does remember,” I said easily. “I remember it too. I remember thest time French Alphas decided rumor was easier than reading what was in front of them.”

A ripple. His eyes cooled.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he said, silk over stone.

“Of course you do,” I returned, sweet as honey left in the sun. “You came to our ward, saw a woman who raised a de against her Luna being tended by our healers, and still you rode back to your masters with your pockets full of whispers. It’s heavy to carry a story that isn’t true. Come–set it down. Take bread instead.”

A quiet chuckle rolled along the table; Maria smothered a smile in a napkin.

The lieutenant’s mouth tightened.

He pushed again. “And what of the other stories? Of the Lycaon who ended his own brother? Of the father who ruled like a god? A kitchen does not erase a century of fear.”

12:00 Tueb, /bSep b30 /b

“No.” I agreed gently. “A kitchen feeds the mouths that pass those stories along so they have the strength to learn new ones.”

Something like surprise shed in his eyes.

He had expected a snarl.

He’d received adle.

He was not good withdles.

He tried one more angle. “There is a saying in the north,” he said, ncing around for allies who were not there. “That a Lycaon’s mercy is a knife with a smile.”

b79 /b

“Then it is a better knife than the one between your people’s shoulder des,” I returned, my smile sharp enough to catch light. “We do not promise freedom and deliver famine. We do not call treachery a treaty. We do not im to love our packs and then starve their tables to embarrass a king”

The linended.

The men who had ridden with Dorian shifted in their seats.

The room turned, just slightly, in my

direction.

I tilted my head. “Eat. It’s harder to talk nonsense with your mouth full.”

Francesco’s hand slid to the small of my back, warm as a whole summer there.

Through the bond, a re of pride, then amusement. ‘My Luna ys with knives and napkins both,‘ it said.

I did not look down, but I was suddenly, deeply aware of how his fingers had curved.

The lieutenant sat, flustered into silence by cutlery andmon sense. The hum rose again, steadier now. We’d taken the table back from spectacle. It belonged to the pack again.

Alfonso cleared his throat and stood.

He is not a man for speeches, but he knew a moment when it needed sealing.

“Wee,” he said simply, voice carrying. “Eat. When the sun sits high, the King will hear petitions in the courtyard. If you have questions,” he looked directly at the French men, “bring more than rumor. Bring names. Bring dates. Bring the courage to be wrong.”

Marlow added, dry as good wine, “And if you want to tell a story about our King, try a new one. The old ones have holesb./bb” /b

Laughter scattered like birds startled and then settling again.

Tension dissolved into the clink and scrape of a room bing a room instead of a battleground.

I breathed.

12:00 bTue/bb, /bbSep /bb30 /b

Across from me, an elder tapped my wrist with her spoon. “The flowers,” she said, chin up, eyes bright with the kind of mischief that keeps people alive to ny. “That’s Italian.”

“It is,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

She sniffed. “I mind that we went so long without it.” She pointed at the open windows. “Keep those. The old Alpha closed everything. Air should move in a house.”

My smile gets wider when I hear it. “It will,” I promised. “He is gone. We are not him.”

“He is gone,” she echoed, looking toward the end of the table where a ck ribbon had been tied to a chair for the dead. Henri had ruled by clutching; it had choked him in the end. “You are not him.”

She squeezed my hand. I squeezed back.

A smallmotion at the door made half the room look up. A cluster of newly arrived families lingered in the threshold, eyes devouring and then fleeing the sight of so much food. They were too used to being chased away by guards. Audrey was already moving–without fanfare, without de–guiding them in with a nod that somehow read wee more than any speech.

Maria barreled toward them with a basket and an authority that could rearrange weather. “Shoes off at the mat, you, yes you, wipe those hands, you’re not touching my olives with that, sit here, elders here, babies here —Luna, yourvender is crooked, fix it, grazie.”

I fixed thevender. I stood back. I let the sight sink into the bones of the room: elders eating first, children fed twice, warriors refilling pitchers, lieutenants correcting their posture under the weight of the King’s casual eyes. Windows open. Air moving. A kitchen speaking anguage both Florence and France could understand: You belong.

Francesco leaned toward me. “You’ve made me dangerous in a new way,” he murmured, mouth near my ear, voice for me alone in all that noise. “They’ve always feared my anger. Now they’ll fear my kindness.”

“Good,” I whispered back. “Anger burns fields. Kindness nts them. Both change the map.” fn2fbe Readplete version only at /fn2fbe

His thumb curved once, secret, against my spine. The bond hummed like a struck string.

The lieutenant who had tried to turn breakfast into a trial made onest, smaller attempt to salvage grace. He stood, raised his goblet, and this time kept his words simple. “To the Luna,” he said. “Who reminds us that power can be… pleasant.”

“To the Luna,” the room answered, stronger than he deserved. I epted for the sake of the ones who meant it.

Maria rolled her eyes in a way that said ‘men‘ and shoved a tter of pears into his chest until he sat down.