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1 Chapter One The Four Kingdoms. Eleanor Winterbourne couldn’t keep her legs still. They bounced under the table while she waited for her parents to come back from patrol, and she worried her lower lip between her teeth, smiling so hard her cheeks ached. After all this time, it was finally happening. Today the world would see what she and Gerard had always been to each other. Her fingers twisted the ends of her long, white hair. The excitement in her chest was ridiculous—bright, jittery, almost childish, like she was a pup again. Ever since she’d turned eighteen, time had dragged like a wounded animal. Days had stretched into something endless, and the knot in her stomach had never really loosened. Any time visitors came through the pack lands, she’d braced for disaster. She had prayed—morning, night, every spare breath—that neither she nor Gerard would run into their fated mate during those visits. And whenever Gerard left to speak with other Alphas across the Snow Kingdom, or when the Royal Court summoned him, she’d done the same grim rehearsal. She’d pictured him returning with a mate at his side, his eyes apologetic, her heart ruined. But he had always come back alone. Somehow—miraculously—he had returned to her every time, his feelings unchanged, his devotion still real. Now the waiting was finished. It was her twenty-first birthday, and those three years of anxious counting were behind her. Neat stacks of wrapped presents sat untouched on the small dining table. She had refused to open any of them without her parents there. Not when Gerard was meant to arrive as well—meant to stand in this house and speak plainly about claiming her as his chosen mate. There was one gift she wanted most of all, though. Not the ones on the table. Three years ago, on this same date, she and Gerard had made their plan in secret—on a snowy night when the clouds had thinned just enough for moonlight to spill through a narrow break. She kept listening for him. The Alpha she loved wit
