You were never meant for a quiet life behind castle walls. Even before they called you princess, people tried to shape you into something soft and obedient. A pretty flower. A future mother. A bargaining chip for alliances. Thomas, your husband, was the worst of them — always touching your cheek like he was checking for cracks in porcelain. “You’re delicate,” he’d whisper, as if it were a compliment.

You refused to be contained.So you ran.

You slipped out of the palace before dawn, traded silk for rough wool, and boarded a supply barge headed for the far side of the river. You hid among crates of grain and restless animals, breathing in the comforting smell of straw and dirt. For the first time in years, you felt your lungs expand all the way. The river carried you away from the marble towers of Valkaryn — the largest and most watched kingdom in the known world — away from the suffocating halls.

But the town you fled to, Rivenport, was nothing like your imaginings. It was a wild, fog-soaked cluster of crooked wooden houses and muddy paths, always smelling faintly of smoke, brine, and desperation. The people here moved like shadows, shoulders hunched from long winters and harder lives. Their eyes were sharp. Their voices rough. And no matter how tightly you tied your borrowed cloak, your posture, your voice, your too-clean manners gave you away. Not immediately

You survived three weeks. Three weeks of scrubbing the tavern floors until your palms blistered, of serving bowls of stew to half-drunken sailors

Then the kingdom announced the truth to the world: The princess of Valkaryn has vanished.

And suddenly people in Rivenport began to stare. Longer. Sharper. Like they were trying to fit your face to a wanted poster in their memory.

It all unraveled on a night when the tavern was packed and loud enough to shake your bones. You were handing out meals when the air shifted — chairs scraping, voices dropping. A ring of men stood around you, their eyes gleaming with greed. One grabbed your chin, fingers digging into your skin.

“We know who you are,” he sneered. “Imagine what we’ll get for delivering you back.”

Their laughter was jagged and cruel.

You struggled, twisting against their hands, heart pounding in your ears. And then — so fast you couldn’t even breathe — a blade tore through the chest of the man holding you. Blood splashed the floorboards as he collapsed lifeless at your feet.

Behind him stood the man you recognized instantly, even before you remembered his name.Sir Ronan Vale.

The king’s most feared knight. The Iron Wolf of Valkaryn. A man forged from war and silence. He’d been nothing once — just a blacksmith’s orphan boy with a too-thin frame and too-bright eyes — but he’d clawed his way through the ranks through sheer brutality and discipline. By twenty-three, he’d saved an entire regiment during the Frost Marsh ambush and walked out of it.

You’d seen him only in passing back at the palace — a tall, disciplined figure who kept his eyes on the ground unless spoken to. A weapon, not a man.

He looked different now. More worn. More scarred. His armor battered from weeks of travel, his jaw shadowed, his dark hair damp with sweat and rain. But his eyes — cold, grey, unflinching — hadn’t changed at all.

“Princess,” he said, voice steady but edged with something you couldn’t name. “You’re coming back to Valkaryn. Now.”

He didn’t shout. Didn’t hesitate. He simply declared it

You didn’t ask for him. You never wanted him. He was the worst of your fears wrapped in iron — loyal, relentless, terrifyingly intelligent. Of course he found you. Of course he tracked you through towns, forests, border posts,

Before he could grab you, you ran out the building

You knew these streets. You’d lived here three weeks, memorized every crooked alley and shortcut to keep yourself alive.But Ronan Vale wasn’t like the townsfolk. He didn’t wander.He hunted. He wasn’t just dragging you home. He looked like a man who’d cross the entire world to find you. And maybe — just maybe — he already had.