"Mr. President, we understand your reluctance," she said, her voice smooth and patient, as if explaining something simple to a child. "But consider what we're offering. Your daughter would be a queen. She would be honored, protected, and elevated to a position of power and influence. She would end a war. Her name would be remembered for generations as the bridge between our peoples."
"The Lycan King...." Aldridge started, but his voice broke.
He forced himself to continue.
"The Lycan King is a killer. I've read the reports. I've seen the photographs of what he leaves behind. The things he's done in this war....."
He stopped, looking at the Elders, at their impassive faces.
They were all killers now. Every person in this room had blood on their hands, had made decisions that sent people to their deaths. That was what war did. It turned everyone into monsters.
But this was different.
This was his daughter.
"This is my child we're discussing," he said, and his voice came out quieter now, almost pleading. "My little girl. I can't.... I won't....."
"And there are thousands of other children dying in this war," Elder Korvus spoke up.
His voice was quiet, but the words hit harder than if he'd shouted them.
"Children who will never grow to be twenty-three. Those who will never have lives, dreams, or futures. Who will die screaming in the dark because this war continues?"
He paused, letting the words sink in.
"Children whose fathers love them just as much as you love your daughter. But those fathers don't have the power to save them. You do."
The truth of it crashed over Aldridge.
He shook his head, violent and desperate.
"There has to be another way. We can, there must be someone else. Another candidate. A volunteer, perhaps. We could put out a call for volunteers, offer compensation...."
"No."
Elder Thorne's voice was final, absolute, allowing no argument.
"The marriage must carry weight. It must mean something to both sides. It must be a genuine sacrifice, a true offering of trust and commitment."
He leaned forward, his eyes boring into Aldridge's.
"Your daughter is the only acceptable choice. The President's daughter married the Lycan King, which sends a message that cannot be misinterpreted. It shows that you are willing to bind your bloodline to ours, to trust us with what you hold most precious."
His voice dropped lower.
"Anything less would be viewed as insincere. A political maneuver. Empty words. And we have had enough of empty words."
Aldridge looked desperately at his advisors, silently begging them for support, for alternatives, for anything at all.
General Hawthorne's face was carefully neutral, but he could see the conflict in her eyes. Her jaw was clenched tight, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. The military strategist in her was calculating costs and benefits, weighing fifty-three deaths per day against one life. The human being in her was recoiling in horror.
Chancellor Wei looked like he might be sick. His face had gone from pale to gray, and his hands were clasped so tightly together that his fingernails were leaving marks in his skin.
Ambassador Okoye met Aldridge's gaze and slowly, regretfully, shook her head.
No help was coming.
He was alone with this decision.
The Elders waited, patient and still, while his world crumbled around him.
"This is madness," Aldridge said, but his voice had lost its force, the words coming out flat and defeated.
He pressed his palms against the table, feeling the cool wood beneath his hands, needing something solid to anchor him.
"You're asking me to sacrifice my daughter."
Elder Ravenna tilted her head slightly, studying him the way a scientist might study an interesting specimen.
"We are asking you to make the same choice we ask of every parent in this war," she said, her voice carrying a note of what might have been sympathy, though it was hard to tell. "To put the survival of your people above your personal comfort."
She paused, letting the words settle.
"The Lycan King makes the same sacrifice. He sets aside the choice to mate within his own kind, to find a partner who understands his nature, who shares his blood. He agrees to take a human bride, a creature he has been taught to see as weak, as other, as enemy, for the sake of peace."
Her amber eyes never left his face.
"We all give up something in this bargain, Mr. President. You are not alone in your sacrifice."
"It's not the same," Aldridge said, but even to his own ears, the argument sounded weak, hollow.
How could it not be the same? How could he claim his daughter's sacrifice was greater when wolf children were dying too, when their parents grieved just as deeply?
But she was his daughter. That had to mean something.