Synopsis：At the mate-selection ceremony, Grant publicly rejects Mara and gives her place to her crying younger sister, insisting it’s only temporary. But he overlooks one crucial fact: Mara turns twenty‑two in three days. Under tribal law, any woman still unmated by then loses her right to choose—and Mara has already been assigned to the dying Dragon King. Grant assumes her father will stop the decree, but Mara quietly accepts it. Three days later, just as Grant arrives to bond with Brenna, a hundred dragon guards appear at the Hale gates to escort Mara away as their future queen.