The Chronicles of Ethoguard hid a scandalous truth for centuries.
They tell you King Alaric tamed the sky terror to unite the Lycan clans.
They lie.
The deadliest beast in the realm didn’t yield to the alpha king’s roar.
It bowed to a terrified maid holding a wooden bucket.
If you look into the officially published histories of the Montgomery Lycan dynasty, the records will tell you that King Alaric Montgomery was a ruler of unparalleled dominance.
He was the alpha of alphas, a wolf of staggering proportions with a mind as sharp as a diamond-edged blade.
The history books claim that in the winter of 1452, to end the border skirmishes with the rival Sterling pack, Alaric ventured into the jagged northern peaks and returned with an iron scale wyvern.
He broke the dragon, rode it into the valley, and forced the Sterlings to kneel.
But history is written by the victors, and often it is heavily redacted.
The private sealed diaries of Maester Sullivan, the royal historian who served the Montgomery court, tell a vastly different, far more dangerous story.
A story not of immediate triumph, but of blood, humiliation, and a lowly human girl named Clara Higgins.
Clara was not a warrior.
She was not a lycanthrope.
In a castle teeming with dominant, aggressive werewolves whose senses were dialed to apex predator levels, Clara was completely invisible.
She was 21 years old, a human servant whose family had been indentured to the Montgomery pack for three generations to pay off a long-forgotten debt.
Clara’s days were spent in the damp, freezing bowels of Castle Dunwall.
Her hands were permanently raw from lye soap.
Her clothes smelled constantly of wood ash, bleach, and old copper.
To the werewolves, humans were either snacks or furniture.
Clara survived by being the latter.
She kept her head down, never made eye contact, and never spoke unless spoken to.
When King Alaric brought the dragon back to the castle, he did not ride it in.
He dragged it.
It took 200 of his strongest wolves and logging chains as thick as a man’s torso to haul the beast into the subterranean fighting pits of the castle.
The dragon, a magnificent nightmare of obsidian scales and molten gold eyes, was furious.
It was named Ignis by the scholars, but the guards simply called it the widowmaker.
Alaric needed to mount the beast.
In the Lycan kingdom, power is entirely visual and physical.
If the alpha king could ride a dragon, no pack would ever dare challenge his bloodline again.
But Ignis had other plans.
The three agonizing months, the greatest warriors of the Montgomery pack tried to claim the saddle that had been strapped to the beast’s massive back.
It was a slaughter.
Commander Kaylen Reed, the king’s own brother-in-arms, lost his left arm when the dragon snapped its jaws faster than a wolf could dodge.
Lord Harrington, a massive brute of an alpha from the southern borders, was incinerated inside his armor, reduced to a pile of smoking ash.
Every time a wolf approached, radiating dominance, flashing fangs, and releasing the aggressive pheromones of an apex predator, the dragon matched their aggression tenfold.
Alaric himself tried.
Sullivan’s diaries note that the king spent an hour roaring at the beast, flashing his crimson alpha eyes, projecting an aura of command that brought the palace guards to their knees.
The dragon merely sneered, whipped its tail, and sent the king crashing into a stone pillar, fracturing three of Alaric’s ribs.
The beast was unbreakable, but someone had to clean the pit.
That miserable task fell to Clara.
Every morning before the sun rose and before the alpha warriors came to try their luck, Clara was sent into the dragon’s enclosure.
The beast was chained to the walls by its neck and hind legs, giving it a limited range of motion.
Clara was terrified.
The first time she entered the cavernous, sulfur-smelling pit, her knees shook so violently she dropped her scrub brush.
The dragon’s massive golden eye locked onto her.
It let out a low, rumbling growl that rattled the fillings in Clara’s teeth.
But Clara did what she had always done to survive in a castle of monsters.
She made herself small.
Unlike the werewolf warriors who marched in with chests puffed out, radiating alpha pheromones, Clara entered with her head bowed.
She had no predator scent.
She smelled of chamomile soap and fear.
She didn’t stare the dragon in the eye.
She kept her gaze fixed firmly on the bloodstained cobblestones.
“I’m just here to clean,” she whispered, her voice trembling.
“I won’t hurt you.”
And she set to work, scrubbing the gore and soot from the stones.
The dragon watched her every move.
At first, it snapped its jaws to test her.
Clara flinched, whimpering softly, but she didn’t bare her teeth or posture.
She simply stepped back, bowed her head, and waited.
Over the weeks, a strange, silent ritual developed.
The dragon realized this tiny, scentless creature was not a threat.
Clara, in turn, began to notice things the arrogant alpha warriors missed.
She saw that the heavy iron collar was chafing the dragon’s scales, leaving weeping sores on its neck.
She noticed that it favored its right hind leg, where a massive iron hook had dug deep into the muscle.
One cold Tuesday morning, Clara brought a bucket of warm water infused with willow bark and crushed aloe remedy her mother used to use for burns.
Trembling, she approached the dragon’s chafed neck.
The beast tensed, a puff of smoke escaping its nostrils.
“It’s okay,” Clara murmured, humming a low, repetitive lullaby.
It was an old human song, a simple melody about a quiet river.
She had noticed that loud, sudden noises agitated but steady, rhythmic sounds seemed to confuse it into stillness.
She gently sponged the weeping sores on its neck.
The dragon went completely rigid, its golden eye fixing on her.
One snap, and she would be gone.
But the swaggering and droolingness of the aloe overrode its predatory instinct.
It let out a long, shuddering exhale and slowly lowered its massive head to the stone floor, allowing the invisible maid to clean its wounds.
Clara Higgins, the lowest servant in Castle Dunwall, was the only living soul who had ever touched the widowmaker without losing a limb.
And nobody knew.
The pressure on King Alaric was reaching a boiling point.
The Grand Equinox Festival was approaching, a week-long celebration where the neighboring packs, most notably the Sterling pack led by the cunning Lord Alister and his ambitious daughter, Lady Genevieve, would arrive at Castle Dunwall.
Rumors had already spread across Ethoguard that the king had captured a dragon but was too weak to tame it.
Alister Sterling was smelling blood in the water.
If Alaric could not demonstrate his dominance over the beast during the festival’s opening ceremonies, the Sterlings would take it as a sign of weakness.
Civil war would be inevitable.
Maester Sullivan’s diary describes the king’s desperation.
Alaric ordered the beast starved for 3 days to weaken it, ignoring the warnings of his handlers.
He decreed that during the opening feast, in the center of the grand coliseum, he would personally mount the dragon in front of thousands of Lycans.
The night of the festival was electric.
The coliseum was packed with over 5,000 werewolves.
The air was thick with the scent of roasted venison, spiced wine, and the overpowering musk of lycanthrope anticipation.
The royal dais was draped in crimson and gold.
King Alaric sat on his throne, his jaw clenched, while Lady Genevieve Sterling sat nearby, sipping her wine with a patronizing smirk.
Clara was working the event.
She was part of a dozen human servants weaving through the dangerous crowd, carrying heavy pitchers of wine.
She was exhausted, her arms aching, but her mind was entirely focused on the heavy iron portcullis at the far end of the arena.
She knew they were going to bring Ignis out.
She had seen the beast that morning.
It was starving, in pain, and pushed to the absolute edge of its sanity.
The trumpet sounded.
The crowd roared, a terrifying sound of thousands of wolves howling into the night sky.
The heavy gates cranked open.
It took 50 wolves dragging on chains to pull Ignis into the torchlit arena.
The dragon looked magnificent but deadly.
Its black scales reflected the firelight, and its golden eyes darted around, completely overwhelmed by the noise, the smells, and the aggression of the crowd.
King Alaric stood up, throwing off his heavy fur cloak.
The crowd cheered louder.
He stepped down into the arena, his eyes flashing a brilliant, terrifying alpha red.
He extended his claws, letting out a dominant roar meant to submit the beast.
It was the worst thing he could have done to a starving, cornered, and wounded dragon.
An alpha roar is not a command to kneel, it is a challenge to the death.
Ignis didn’t submit.
With a deafening shriek that shattered the glass goblets in the stands, the dragon lunged.
Alaric barely dodged out of the way as the beast’s jaws snapped through the air where his head had been a second before.
Panic erupted.
The dragon planted its massive feet and whipped its body, utilizing the leverage of the thick chains against the handlers.
With a sickening crack, the central iron mooring post in the arena snapped entirely.
The beast was loose.
Screams replaced the cheers.
Lycans, despite their strength, trampled each other trying to escape the lower bleachers.
Ignis unleashed a torrent of white-hot fire, scorching the stone walls and setting the banners ablaze.
Royal guards rushed the beast with spears, but they were swatted away like annoying flies, their bodies breaking against the stone walls.
Clara was trapped.
She had been pouring wine near the base of the royal dais when the chaos erupted.
The crowd of panicked werewolves pushed her against the cold stone barrier.
She dropped her pitcher, the red wine pooling around her boots like blood.
The dragon was rampaging toward the royal dais.
King Alaric was standing his ground, his claws fully extended, preparing to fight a battle he could not possibly win.
Lady Genevieve had tripped in her heavy gown, sprawling across the steps of the dais, screaming as the dragon’s massive shadow fell over her.
Ignis raised its head, its chest expanding, glowing from within with a terrifying orange light of building fire.
It was about to incinerate the king, the Sterling heir, and half the royal box.
Clara didn’t think.
The history books would later try to frame her actions as a calculated maneuver of dark witchcraft, but the truth was far simpler and far more human.
Clara hated the loud noises.
She hated the violence.
And strangely, looking at the terrified, enraged dragon, she felt a profound surge of empathy.
It was just an animal pushed into a corner by cruel masters.
“No!”
Clara shouted.
Her voice wasn’t loud.
It wasn’t an alpha roar.
But it was sharp, and it cut through the din of the panic because it carried absolutely zero fear or aggression.
Clara stepped over the stone barrier and walked directly into the center of the arena.
King Alaric, mid-shift with fur sprouting along his arms, rose.
He stared at the scrawny human maid in her soot-stained apron walking calmly toward the apex predator of the skies.
“Clara, run!”
A guard yelled from somewhere above.
Clara ignored him.
She stopped 10 ft from the beast.
Ignis cut off its fire mid-breath, choking on the smoke.
The dragon swung its massive, horned head down, locking its golden eyes onto the tiny, familiar figure.
It let out a low, threatening hiss, smoke curling from its nostrils, warning her to back away.
Clara didn’t back down.
Instead, she dropped to her knees right there in the dirt and ash.
She bowed her head, exposing the back of her fragile human neck to the beast, the ultimate sign of submission.
Then she began to hum.
It was the same soft, rhythmic river lullaby she had sung in the dark, freezing pits.
The sound barely carried over the crackling fires, but the dragon’s sensitive ears twitched.
The arena fell into a deathly, stunned silence.
Thousands of werewolves watched in absolute shock.
Ignis took a heavy, thudding step forward.
The ground shook.
King Alaric tensed, ready to leap, believing the beast was about to snap the girl in half, but the dragon didn’t attack.
It lowered its massive snout, bringing its face inches from Clara’s kneeling form.
It inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of chamomile, lye soap, and the soothing, non-threatening presence of the only creature that had ever shown it mercy.
The dragon let out a long, rumbling purr that vibrated through the floorboards.
Slowly, deliberately, the great iron scale wyvern folded its front legs.
It lowered its massive, spiked shoulders into the dirt.
It bowed its head until its snout rested gently against Clara’s knees.
Finally, it extended its massive left wing, creating a perfect, sloping ramp up to the intricately carved leather saddle strapped to its back.
It was offering her the mount, the untouchable sky terror, the beast that had broken alphas and incinerated lords, had just bowed to a human maid.
Clara slowly lifted her head.
She looked past the dragon’s snout, her eyes locking onto the royal dais.
King Alaric was staring at her.
The arrogant, untouchable alpha king looked completely, utterly paralyzed.
The red had faded from his eyes, replaced by wide-eyed, absolute shock.
In that single, breathless moment, the entire power structure of the Aethelgard-like un-kingdom collapsed, and a terrifying, dangerous new reality took its place.
Invisible girl was holding the leash to the apocalypse.
The silence in the coliseum was so absolute, you could hear the torches sputtering in the night air.
Thousands of apex predators were frozen, staring at a scrawny human servant resting her hand on the snout of the iron scale wyvern.
Lord Alister Sterling was the first to break the quiet.
He did not bow.
Instead, he stood up from the guest dais, eyes narrowing into slits of calculating malice.
He had come to Castle Dunwall looking for a weakness to exploit, and King Alaric had just handed it to him on a silver platter.
According to the recovered, ciphered letters of Chancellor Reginald, the immediate aftermath was a political nightmare.
Alaric ordered the arena cleared immediately.
He did not roar.
He did not make a grand speech.
He simply grabbed Clara by her soot-stained arm, flanked by his royal guard, and marched her directly into the subterranean war room of the castle, leaving Ignis contentedly chewing on a burnt sheep carcass in the center of the stadium.
The heavy oak doors slammed shut.
Clara stood in the center of the map room, her knees finally giving way.
She collapsed onto the stone floor, trembling violently as the adrenaline left her system.
King Alaric paced the room like a caged animal.
He was a terrifying figure up close, broad-shouldered, scarred, his amber eyes still flickering with the residual aggression of a thwarted shift.
“Witchcraft!”
Chancellor Reginald spat, glaring down at Clara.
“It must be.
We must execute the human before sunrise and tell the Sterling she used a blood hex on the beast.
If the realms believe a common maid tamed the sky terror while the alpha king failed, we will face an uprising by midnight.”
Alaric stopped pacing.
He looked at Clara.
He inhaled deeply, his enhanced olfactory senses working overtime.
He expected to smell dark magic, sulfur, or the metallic tang of a spell.
Instead, he smelled only fear, lye soap, and the faint, sweet scent of chamomile.
“She is no witch,” Alaric growled, his voice a low, gravelly rumble.
He stepped forward, crouching down until he was at eye level with the terrified maid.
“Look at me.”
Clara kept her chin tucked to her chest.
It was human instinct in a lycan court, never look an alpha in the eye.
“I said, look at me,” Alaric commanded, the sheer force of his authority compelling her to raise her head.
Tears were streaming down Clara’s dirt-streaked face, but as she met the alpha king’s gaze, he saw something that stunned him.
There was terror, yes, but beneath the terror was an unyielding, quiet resilience.
This was the same girl who had walked into a firestorm to soothe a monster.
“How did you do it?”
Alaric asked, his tone dropping its aggressive edge.
“My greatest warriors are ash and bone.
How did you make it bow?”
“I didn’t try to conquer him, your grace,” Clara whispered, her voice shaking.
“You all go in there with your fangs bared and your chests out.
You smell of blood and dominance.
Ignis is a predator.
When you challenge him, he fights back.
I just I just washed his wounds.
I showed him I wasn’t a threat.”
Chancellor Reginald scoffed.
“Pathetic human sentimentality.”
“Quiet, Reginald,” Alaric snapped, his eyes never leaving Clara’s.
The king’s mind, renowned for its tactical brilliance, was racing.
Alister Sterling was already drafting ravens to his allies.
The Montgomery claim to the throne was bleeding out on the arena floor.
Alaric needed a miracle, and it was currently sitting in front of him wearing a torn apron.
“Lord Sterling’s demanding an audience at dawn,” Alaric said, standing up.
“He will claim I am unfit to rule.
He will demand the dragon be slaughtered or surrendered to his pack.
I cannot allow either.”
Alaric turned back to Clara.
The proposition he made next was so scandalous, it was entirely scrubbed from the public archives, only preserved in the frantic, shorthand notes of Maester Sullivan.
“Tomorrow at noon the festival resumes.”
Alaric declared.
“I am going to walk into that arena and I am going to mount the beast.
And you, Clara Higgins, are going to help me.”
Clara’s eyes widened.
“Me?
I I can’t command him.
He just tolerates me.”
“He trusts you.”
Alaric corrected.
“If you are with me, he will not burn me to cinders.
We will tell the court that you are not a servant.
We will claim you are a descendant of the ancient dragon kin of the deep south, a noble bloodline thought lost.
We will claim that I, as the Alpha King, recognized your blood and claimed you as my ward and my chosen mate.”
Chancellor Reginald choked on his own saliva.
“Your grace, a human mate?
The packs will revolt.”
“They will kneel if we are flying over their heads on a dragon.”
Alaric roared, the sheer volume rattling the weaponry on the walls.
He looked down at Clara.
“You will be bathed.
You’ll be dressed in Montgomery silk.
You will stand by my side and you will calm the beast so I can ride.
Do this and your family’s debt is forgiven.
You will live as a lady of the court.
Refuse and I will let Reginald have you executed for witchcraft right now.”
It wasn’t a request, it was a threat.
The Clara, the invisible maid who had spent her life staring at cobblestones, felt a strange spark ignite in her chest.
She had stared down a dragon.
Suddenly the Alpha King didn’t seem quite so terrifying.
Clara stood up.
She dusted off her ruined apron.
She looked directly into King Alaric’s amber eyes, a severe breach of protocol.
“No.”
Clara said.
The Chancellor gasped.
Alaric’s eyes flashed crimson.
“Excuse me.
I will not be your puppet, your grace.”
Clara said, her voice remarkably steady.
“If I pretend to be your mate and you mount the dragon, you will take all the glory.
And when the beast eventually realizes you are still trying to dominate him, he will kill you and the Sterlings will kill me.”
She stepped closer to the most dangerous werewolf in the world.
“Ignis will not let you ride him alone.
Not ever.
If you want to fly, if you want to prove to the Sterlings that you control the skies.”
Clara swallowed hard, her heart pounding against her ribs.
“You have to ride with me and in exchange I want more than my debt forgiven.
I want a royal decree.
Humans in this castle will no longer be treated as livestock or collateral.
We are paid wages or we walk.”
Alaric stared at her.
For a terrifying minute the air in the room grew suffocatingly dense.
Then a slow, genuine smirk touched the corner of the Alpha King’s mouth.
“You have a terrifying amount of nerve for someone so small, Clara Higgins.”
The morning sun hung heavy over Castle Dunwall.
The Colosseum was packed, the tension a physical weight pressing down on the arena.
Lord Alister Sterling sat in the royal box with a smug grin waiting for the Montgomery dynasty to crumble under the weight of its own hubris.
The heavy gates cranked open.
Ignis waited in the center of the sand, entirely free of his chains.
The dragon’s massive tail swished lazily, but his golden eyes scanned the packed stands with lethal, calculated intelligence.
Trumpets blared.
King Alaric strode into the light, shedding his royal furs for fitted crimson and black riding leathers.
But the collective gasp of 5,000 apex predators wasn’t for the Alpha King.
It was for the woman walking beside him.
Clara was utterly transformed.
She wore a tailored riding habit of deep emerald green, her hair, usually tied back with a greasy kitchen rag, braided intricately with silver thread.
She walked tall, her small hand resting lightly on the crook of the King’s muscular arm.
Maester Sullivan’s diary notes that Alister Sterling jumped up screaming foul play and demanding to know the woman’s identity.
Alaric ignored him.
Clara stepped forward leaving the King’s side.
She walked right up to the beast and pressed her forehead against the dragon’s massive armored snout.
“Be good to him.”
She whispered.
Ignis huffed, a blast of warm air fluttering Clara’s hair and slowly lowered his massive wing.
Clara climbed the leathery expanse into the saddle, turning to extend her hand down to the Alpha King.
The Swinburne’s shocked the crowd into absolute silence.
The King wasn’t commanding the beast.
He was being invited aboard by a human.
Alaric took her hand, vaulting up behind her.
As his arms wrapped around her waist to grip the heavy reins, the proximity struck them both.
The terrifying Alpha felt solid and fiercely protective.
Ignis roared, launching into the sky with a force that slammed Clara back against Alaric’s chest.
Up in the clouds, away from the blood and the brutal politics of the packs, it was just the three of them.
Alaric looked at the brave human in his arms and realized the fake mating claim he had concocted suddenly felt dangerously, thrillingly real.
But the fragile peace shattered.
A sharp twang echoed from the lower tiers.
Captain Bryce, Lord Sterling’s personal guard, had smuggled a heavy siege crossbow into the stands.
The iron bolt grazed the dragon’s left wing.
Ignis shrieked in agony, banking violently.
Alaric’s grip slipped.
He tumbled sideways, hanging precariously over a 200-ft drop by a single leather saddle strap.
“Alaric!”
Clara screamed.
She didn’t freeze.
Leaning over the side of the plunging beast, Clara grabbed the heavy collar around the dragon’s neck.
“Uppy, Ignis, up!”
Responding not to an Alpha’s dominance but to his only friend’s desperate plea, the dragon strained against its injured wing.
It leveled off just in time for Alaric to haul himself back into the saddle.
They landed in the arena with an earth-shattering thud.
Alaric vaulted from the saddle, his eyes burning a terrifying crimson.
He stalked across the arena, grabbed Captain Bryce by the throat, and hurled the traitor to the dirt.
He glared up at Lord Alister.
“The sky belongs to the Montgomerys.”
Alaric roared, his voice echoing off the stone.
“And if any Sterling raises a weapon against my mate or my dragon again, I will burn your lands to glass.”
5,000 werewolves dropped to their knees, bearing their necks in absolute submission.
The official chronicles claim King Alaric conquered the skies with brute strength.
But Maester Sullivan’s final entry tells the truth.
The Montgomery dynasty thrived because a terrifying king learned to listen to a quiet maid.
Clara Higgins never scrubbed another floor.
She became the first human queen, ruling not with fangs but with an empathy that reshaped a world of monsters.
Did this hidden history of Castle Dunwall leave you breathless?
The truth is often stranger and far more romantic than the official chronicles claim.
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