adoredbygiants
King Erwin Smith has spent his entire life carrying the weight of a kingdom.
Humanity's last hope rests upon his shoulders, yet Erwin has always been more interested in the mysteries of the world-and the answers his late father died seeking-than in the marriage his advisors insist he needs.
Then, during a patrol of the kingdom's poorest district, he catches a thief stealing food.
Levi Ackerman is short-tempered, sharp-tongued, fiercely protective of his friends, and completely unimpressed by royalty. Rather than punish him, Erwin offers Levi, Isabel and Furlan a place among the royal guards.
Levi expects the castle to be nothing but another place where people look down on him.
He doesn't expect the King himself to be different.
As the two slowly grow closer through shared cups of tea, training sessions and long nights planning for war, Erwin begins to see the person behind Levi's walls-and Levi begins to wonder if the King is truly the man he thought he was.
But when a dragon threatens the kingdom, everything changes.
Victory comes at a devastating cost.
And when Levi loses the only family he has ever known, the King who once gave him a place in the castle becomes the very person he blames for taking everything away.
Levi swears revenge.
Erwin doesn't know it yet, but the greatest threat to his kingdom may not be the dragon they just defeated.