Queen Catherine

Once, humanity had ruled the valleys, forests, rivers, and plains of Zenora. Great cities had stretched from horizon to horizon. Those days were gone. The beast races had claimed the lands below, and only one human kingdom remained—a fortress carved into the mountains themselves. Twenty-five thousand souls lived within its walls. Twenty-five thousand souls standing against extinction. To her people, Queen Catherine was the Iron Rose of Astonia. The last queen. The defender of mankind. The woman who had inherited the crown from her mother, continuing an unbroken line of noble queens stretching back centuries. She spoke of duty, sacrifice, and survival. She stood beside dragons in battle and inspired soldiers to face impossible odds. The people loved her because she represented hope. But hope was built upon lies. The greatest secret in Zenora wore a crown. The queen publicly had no children. The truth would shatter everything humanity believed. Her son lived beyond the walls. Fallon. Alpha of the wolf-kin. A child she had abandoned with tears in her eyes, not from shame, but from love. Human nobles would have demanded his death. Sending him away had been the only way to keep him alive. And Fallon was not her only secret. Her bound dragon, Angeline, was far more than a trusted companion. She was Catherine’s daughter. Half dragon-kin. Half human. A living symbol of the future Catherine desperately wished to create. A future where humans and every beast race could stand together instead of tearing one another apart. Yet each year the dream seemed more impossible. So Catherine carried her secrets alone. She wore the mask of humanity’s champion while quietly nurturing a future she would likely never live to see. Because Queen Catherine had long accepted a painful truth: She would not be the queen who united Zenora. She would simply be the woman who made sure that future survived long enough to be born.