Sweat and roasting mutton choked the air of the great hall, thick enough to chew.
Emeir stood near the hearth, picking dried suet from beneath her cracked fingernails, waiting for the mating moon ritual to end so she could retreat to the kitchens.
Her dress was coarse, undyed wool that scratched at her collarbone, and her boots were stuffed with straw to keep out the damp chill of the stone floor.
She wasn’t a warrior.
She wasn’t a highborn omega draped in silks.
She was Emeir.
She scrubbed the blood from the hunting party’s cloaks and scraped the marrow from the banquet bones.
Nobody looked at her.
That was the rule of her existence, a survival tactic she had perfected over 20 years.
If you didn’t cast a shadow, no one could step on it.
Tonight, however, the shadows in the hall were warped.
The visiting alpha king, Cailan, sat at the high table.
He had arrived two days prior with a retinue of silent, massive guards smelling of snow-capped mountains and old, dried blood.
Their local pack leader, alpha Bran, had been sweating through his velvet doublet ever since.
Cailan didn’t speak much.
He didn’t drink the ale.
He just sat there, a dark, immovable mass of muscle and scars, watching the frenzy of the mating dance with eyes the color of a bruised winter sky.
Emeir kept her gaze fixed on the floorboards, counting the knots in the wood.
The drums pounded a rhythmic, relentless thudding that vibrated up through the soles of her boots and settled deep in her molars.
The younger wolves were shifting, howling, intoxicated by the pine and musk scent of the pheromones flooding the enclosed space.
Then, it happened.
It wasn’t a shower of sparks.
It wasn’t a sudden angelic choir singing in her ears.
It felt exactly like swallowing a fishhook.
A sharp, violent yank seized the space right behind her navel.
She gasped, her lungs locking up as a jolt of agonizing heat shot down her spine.
Her hands flew to her stomach.
The air around her suddenly tasted different, overwhelmingly of crushed cedar needles and hot iron.
She knew that smell.
She looked up, her vision blurring at the edges, and found the source, Garric.
He stood in the center of the dancing circle, chest heaving, sweat gleaming on his heavily muscled torso.
He had just been named lead warrior three moons ago.
He was handsome in a cruel, sharp-jawed way, and he had spent the better part of their childhood shoving her into mud puddles because her father had been a traitor.
Garric’s head snapped toward her.
The crowd of writhing, dancing bodies seemed to part, an invisible current pushing them aside as the raw, undeniable tether of the goddess snapped taut between them.
Mate.
The word didn’t feel like a blessing.
It felt like a death sentence.
She saw the exact moment comprehension hit him.
His pupils blew wide, swallowing the amber of his irises.
Then came the horror.
His gaze raked over her dull brown hair, tucked haphazardly under a soiled linen cap, down to her ash-stained apron, and finally to the ugly, puckered burn scar that crawled up the left side of her neck.
His lip curled.
The scent of cedar soured, turning rank with revulsion.
No, she thought, taking a stumbling step backward.
Please, goddess, no.
Just let me leave.
But the drums had stopped.
The sudden silence was absolute, heavier than the noise had been.
Hundreds of eyes turned, following Garric’s horrified stare, landing squarely on her.
She stood frozen by the hearth, a wooden spoon still clutched idiotically in her right hand.
Garric took a step forward.
The heavy thud of his boots echoed off the vaulted ceiling.
He didn’t look like a man walking toward his destiny.
He looked like a man approaching a diseased animal.
“Garrick.”
Einar whispered.
Her voice was a pathetic rasp.
She hated herself for the pleading note in it.
She didn’t even want him.
Yet, the primal, instinctual part of her brain was already whimpering, desperate for his acknowledgement.
He stopped five paces away.
The pack circled them, a wall of judging faces and whispered sneers.
She could smell their anticipation.
It smelled like copper and sour breath.
“You.”
Garrick spat, the word dripping with venom.
“A scrub wench, a traitor’s bloodline.
The goddess has a sick sense of humor.”
Her face flushed so hot it burned.
She tried to swallow, but her mouth was stuffed with cotton.
She wanted to stand tall, to offer a biting retort, but her knees were shaking so violently she thought they might shatter.
She just wanted to shrink.
She wanted the floor to open and swallow her whole.
“I won’t be tethered to a rat who cleans my boots.”
He said, his voice carrying effortlessly across the silent hall.
He raised his chin, his chest puffing out as he looked toward Alpha Bran, and then briefly toward the silent Alpha King at the high table.
Posturing.
He was putting on a show.
He looked back at her, his eyes cold and dead.
“I, Garrick, lead warrior of the Riverbend pack, reject you, Einar.”
The words didn’t just hurt, they severed flesh.
The fishhook behind her navel was violently ripped out.
She screamed.
She didn’t mean to, but the physical agony was blinding.
It felt as though her sternum had been cracked open with a dull axe.
She collapsed.
Her knees hit the stone floor with a sickening crack, the impact jarring her teeth.
She curled into a ball, clutching her chest, gasping for air that refused to fill her lungs.
Blood rushed to her ears, roaring like a waterfall.
Above the rushing noise, she heard the laughter.
It started as a few snickers from the highborn females, then swelled into a chorus of cruel barking amusement.
They were laughing at her, writhed on the floor, rejected, broken, smelling of lye and failure.
Her nose was running.
Tears of sheer, involuntary pain streamed down her face, mixing with the soot on her cheeks.
She gagged, a dry heave tearing through her throat as the torn bond bled invisible agony into her veins.
“Get her out of here.”
She heard Garrick say, his voice thick with disgust.
“She’s ruining the feast.”
The cold seeped through the wool of her dress, biting into her skin.
But it was nothing compared to the icy hollow carved out inside her chest.
She pressed her forehead against the gritty stone floor.
It tasted faintly of spilled ale and dirt.
She wanted to stay there until she turned to dust.
A heavy hand grabbed her upper arm.
It was one of the guards.
“Up you get, kitchen rat.”
He muttered, his grip bruising.
Emeir tried to push herself up, her limbs trembling, completely uncoordinated.
She felt like a newborn fawn, weak and pathetic.
The laughter of the pack echoed around her, sharp and jagged.
She kept her eyes squeezed shut, unable to bear the sight of their sneering faces.
“Quiet.”
The word wasn’t shouted.
It was spoken at a normal volume, a deep, gravelly baritone that lacked any inflection.
Yet, it rolled over the great hall like a physical shockwave.
The laughter died instantly.
The guard’s hand vanished from her arm.
The silence that fell over the room was so absolute, so suffocating, that for a wild second, she thought she had gone deaf.
She forced her eyes open, blinking through the stinging tears and the grime.
The temperature in the room had plummeted.
She could see the faint puffs of white breath escaping the mouths of the pack members standing nearest to her.
The suffocating smell of roasting mutton and pheromones was wiped clean, completely obliterated by a sudden, overwhelming wave of frost, ozone, and ancient timber.
She slowly turned her head.
Alpha King Kaelen had risen from the high table.
He didn’t walk, he stalked.
Every movement was terrifyingly deliberate, the controlled grace of an apex predator that knew no equal.
He was massive, towering over a foot above the tallest warrior in their pack.
He wore no furs, no jewelry, only scarred black leather and steel, but the sheer weight of his aura pressed down on her shoulders, forcing the breath from her already aching lungs.
The crowd didn’t just part for him, they scrambled backward, shoving each other out of the way, desperate to avoid his path.
Alpha Bran was gripping the edge of his table, his face devoid of color, trembling openly.
Kaelen stopped in the center of the room.
He didn’t look at her.
He was looking at Garrick.
Garrick, who had been preening seconds before, now looked like a cornered rabbit.
His chest heaved, but he couldn’t maintain eye contact.
He lowered his chin, exposing his neck in a desperate, instinctual display of submission.
“You rejected her,” Kaelen said.
His voice was a low rumble that vibrated through the stone floor beneath Aemyr’s palms.
“Yes, my king,” Garrick stuttered.
The bravado was gone, replaced by a reedy terror.
She is She is weak, unfit.
I am the lead warrior.
I require a mate of standing.
Kaylen tilted his head a fraction of an inch.
You require The king stepped forward.
Just one step, but Garrick flinched backward as if struck.
You felt the pull of the goddess, Kaylen continued, his voice terrifyingly calm.
And you severed it because her hands are calloused and her clothes are spun of dirt.
She is nothing.
Garrick blurted out, panic making him foolish.
Look at her.
She belongs in the mud.
Kaylen didn’t yell.
He didn’t bare his teeth.
He simply moved.
It was a blur of violence too fast for her eyes to track.
One second Kaylen was standing 5 ft away.
The next, his hand was wrapped around Garrick’s throat, lifting the massive lead warrior off the ground single-handedly.
Garrick choked, his hands clawing uselessly at the king’s forearm.
His legs kicked in the empty air.
“She,” Kaylen whispered, “the sound carrying in the dead silent room was the only thing in this rotting, miserable pack that smelled of anything real.”
With a flick of his wrist that looked entirely too casual, Kaylen threw him.
Garrick flew through the air and crashed into a heavy oak pillar.
The wood groaned, and Garrick crumpled to the floor, coughing violently, blood spilling from his nose.
He didn’t get up.
The hall was paralyzed.
No one breathed.
Then, the alpha king turned.
He looked down, his piercing storm cloud eyes locking onto hers.
Emyr froze.
The torn edges of her severed bond throbbed, a dull, sickening [snorts] ache.
She expected him to kick her aside, to order her back to the kitchens where she wouldn’t offend the eyes of his court.
Instead, Kaylen knelt.
He moved slowly now, telegraphing his movements so as not to spook her.
He knelt right there in the dirt, the spilled ale and the crushed rushes, heedless of his dark leather breeches.
Up close, he was terrifying.
His face was rugged, mapped with faded white scars, his jaw clenched tight.
The smell of winter fire and ozone radiating off him was so strong her head spun.
He reached out.
She flinched, pulling her arms over her head, squeezing her eyes shut.
A pathetic ingrained reflex.
She braced for the blow.
It didn’t come.
Instead, she felt a warmth, a shocking blistering heat brush against the side of her face.
His knuckles, rough and calloused, grazed her cheek.
He didn’t touch the soot.
He didn’t trace the ugly burn scar on her neck.
He simply cupped the side of her jaw, his thumb resting gently near her pulse.
The moment his skin made contact with hers, the world tilted on its axis.
The hollow, agonizing void in her chest, the bleeding wound where Garrick had ripped the bond away, ignited.
But it wasn’t the painful fishhook tug she had felt before.
This was a slow, roaring fire.
It started at the point of his touch, sinking into her skin, flooding her veins like molten gold.
It wrapped around her ribs, knitting the frayed, broken pieces of her soul back together with terrifying possessive force.
Her breath hitched.
She opened her eyes, staring into his.
His pupils were fully blown, eclipsing the gray.
A muscle ticked in his jaw.
He was breathing heavily, his broad chest rising and falling, staring at her as if she were the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth.
He didn’t look at her with pity.
He didn’t look at her with the reluctant horror Garrick had shown.
He looked at her like a starving man who had just found water.
“I have searched for a century.”
Kaylen murmured, his voice a raw, jagged whisper meant only for her.
His thumb swept beneath her eye, catching a tear she hadn’t realized she shed across continents, through blood and ash.
He slowly stood, bringing her up with him.
His grip was entirely unyielding, yet strangely careful, hauling her shaking body upright.
She stumbled, her numb legs giving out, but he caught her, pulling her back flush against his massive, armor-clad chest.
The heat of him soaked through her damp clothes.
Kaylen wrapped one thick, heavily scarred arm around her waist, anchoring her.
He looked out over the terrified, silent crowd, his eyes blazing with a predatory fury that made the local alpha drop to his knees.
“She is not a scrub wench.”
Kaylen’s voice boomed, rich and lethal, echoing off the stone walls like thunder.
He pulled her tighter against him, burying his face in the crook of her neck, right over the ugly, puckered skin of her scar, inhaling her scent deeply enough for the whole room to hear.
When he raised his head, his eyes glowed with the undeniable, terrifying gold of an alpha king laying claim.
“She is mine.”
Panic smelled like sour milk.
It rolled off the hundreds of wolves crammed into the great hall, a noxious wave that clashed violently with the sharp, clean ozone rolling off Kaylen.
Emeir’s legs were useless.
If Kaylen hadn’t kept his arm clamped around her ribs, she would have melted back into the rushes.
His chest was a wall of heat against her freezing spine.
She gripped his forearm.
His leather bracer was scored with deep claw marks, the edges worn smooth by time.
She dug her broken fingernails into the thick hide, grounding herself.
Alpha Bran was on his knees.
The velvet of his doublet pooled in the spilled ale.
He was sweating so profusely it dripped from his fleshy chin.
“My king,” Bran stammered, his voice cracking.
“There has been a mistake.”
“The girl, she is defective, a runt.
Her father sold our border patrol routes to the mountain rogues 10 years ago.
Her blood is tainted.”
A low growl vibrated through Cailin’s chest.
It didn’t sound like a wolf.
It sounded like a rockslide.
“Tainted.”
Cailin tasted the word, spitting it out as if it were poison.
He didn’t release her.
He simply shifted his weight, pulling her closer, a physical shield against the pack’s sudden, rabid desperation to justify her abuse.
“You speak of taint, Bran, yet I smell the rot in your own grain silos.
I saw the hollow cheeks of the children huddled by the forge when I rode in.
Where are the winter rations sent by the crown?”
Bran flinched.
The blood drained entirely from his face.
She knew where the rations were.
Everyone in the kitchens knew.
She and the other servants had spent the last 3 weeks rendering fat and salting venison that went straight into Bran’s private cellars, while the lower-tier families boiled old bones.
“Speak,” Cailin commanded.
The air pressure in the room spiked.
Bran’s jaw worked soundlessly.
Cailin turned his gaze to the crumpled form of Garrick, who was weakly trying to push himself up from the splintered oak pillar.
“Your lead warrior,” Cailin said, his voice dropping to a conversational volume that was somehow more terrifying than a shout.
“A male who strikes down his fated mate to appease a corrupt, bloated coward.
Is this what the Riverbend pack breeds?”
Garrick spat a wad of blood onto the stones.
He glared at Emir, the hatred in his eyes warring with a primal, suffocating fear.
“She is nothing.”
He wheezed, clutching his ribs.
Aemyr shrank back.
Decades of conditioning told her to look away, to hide, but the roaring heat of the bond Cailan had ignited within her refused to let her cower.
It burned away the paralyzing terror, leaving behind a sharp, frantic clarity.
“He takes a tenth of the crown’s coin for himself.”
She rasped, her voice sounded like dry leaves scraping on stone.
It was the first time she had spoken above a whisper in front of the alpha in her entire life.
Silence slammed down on the hall.
Bran’s head snapped toward her, his lips pulling back to bare yellowed canines.
“You lying, filthy Cailan.”
His hand moved from her waist.
He didn’t draw a blade.
He merely extended two fingers from the shadows near the heavy wooden doors.
One of Cailan’s massive guards, a terrifying mountain of a man with a jagged scar across a blind, milky eye, stepped forward.
His name was Conrad.
He crossed the hall in four enormous strides, grabbed Alpha Bran by the scruff of his velvet collar, and slammed his face directly into the stone floor.
Bone crunched.
Bran screamed, a wet, muffled sound.
“I did not give you permission to address my mate.”
Cailan said softly.
“Mate.”
The word felt too big for her mouth.
It felt absurd.
She was wearing shoes stuffed with straw.
Cailan looked down at her.
The lethal, freezing anger in his eyes vanished the second his gaze met hers.
The contrast was dizzying.
“Is it true, Aemyr?”
He asked, his voice rough.
“Does he steal from the pack?”
“Yes.”
She breathed, her throat raw.
“The salted meats are under the north tower.
The crown silver is buried beneath the floorboards in his private solar.”
She didn’t know why she was saying it.
Maybe it was the bond forcing a reckless bravery into her veins, or maybe she was just tired.
Tired of starving while scrubbing the grease from their plates.
Cailen nodded slowly.
He looked back at Conrad.
Strip Bran of his alpha status.
Drag him to the holding cells.
He will face the king’s justice at dawn.
Cailen’s eyes slid to Garrick.
As for the warrior, break his legs.
Leave him in the snow.
If he survives the night, he is exiled.
The brutality was casual, immediate.
Garrick let out a strangled cry as two more royal guards moved in.
Their expressions bored, their hands heavy.
Cailen didn’t stay to watch the violence.
He turned, scooping her up in his arms before she could protest.
Her feet left the ground.
She stiffened, a panicked squeak escaping her lips.
She smelled like lye and sweat.
She was filthy.
“You’re shaking.”
Cailen muttered, his jaw brushing the top of her soiled linen cap.
“Put me down.”
She managed to say, pushing uselessly against the thick leather of his chest armor.
“I’ll stain your clothes.”
He let out a short, harsh breath that might have been a laugh.
“Let them stain.
I would burn the world down just to keep you warm.”
He carried her out of the great hall.
The heavy oak doors slammed shut behind them, cutting off Garrick’s first agonizing scream.
Silence in the guest wing was heavy, thick with the scent of beeswax candles and dried lavender.
It was a stark contrast to the chaotic, screaming frenzy they had just left.
Cailen carried her into the alpha’s private suites, rooms Bran had eagerly vacated for the king’s visit.
He didn’t set her down immediately.
He walked straight to the massive stone hearth where a fire roared, throwing erratic orange shadows across the tapestries.
Only then did he let her feet touch the thick woolen rug.
Her legs immediately gave out.
She didn’t hit the floor.
He caught her by the elbows, easing her down until she sat on the edge of the large fur-piled bed.
She hunched her shoulders, wrapping her arms around her stomach.
The adrenaline was crashing, leaving a cold, trembling void in its wake.
The reality of what had just happened was setting in.
Garrick was exiled, Bran was broken, and she she was sitting on a bed of furs with the alpha king.
It was a trick.
It had to be.
Her cynical mind, honed by years of surviving the lowest rung of the pack ladder, frantically searched for the catch.
Why her?
Was she a pawn in some political game?
Was this a prolonged, elaborate humiliation?
Caelan knelt in front of her.
He was too big for the space, taking up all the oxygen in the room.
He reached for her boots.
She flinched back, kicking her leg away.
“Don’t.”
He froze, his hands hovering inches from her ankles.
His storm-gray eyes snapped up to hers, searching her face.
He didn’t push.
He simply lowered his hands and rested them on his own armored knees.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.
The gravel in his voice was gone, replaced by a careful, deliberate softness.
“You don’t know me.”
“She whispered, her voice trembling.
“I scrape marrow from bones.
I’m nobody.”
“Garrick was right.
You should You should find a highborn, someone clean.”
Caelan’s jaw tightened.
A muscle jumped beneath the faded white scar on his cheek.
He reached up, his movements agonizingly slow, and took hold of the dirty linen cap covering her hair.
He pulled it off.
Her dull brown hair fell around her shoulders in a greasy, tangled mess.
She squeezed her eyes shut, mortified.
“Look at me.”
He commanded.
It wasn’t an alpha order that forced her biology to comply.
It was a plea.
She opened her eyes.
He was looking at the puckered, angry burn scar that crawled up her neck.
She instinctively raised her hand to cover it, but he gently caught her wrist.
His skin was rough, calloused from centuries of warfare, but his grip was feather-light.
He pressed her hand down, exposing the scar.
“Do you know why I came to Riverbend?”
He asked, his thumb lightly tracing the pulse point just below the ruined tissue.
The heat of his touch sent a jolt of pure, terrifying electricity straight to her core.
She shook her head numbly.
“For a decade, I felt a fracture in my soul, a cold, bleeding tear that nothing could heal.”
His eyes darkened, the gold bleeding back into the gray.
“I followed the pain.
It led me here, to this rotting corner of the kingdom, to you.”
He leaned forward.
The smell of ozone and winter pine wrapped around her, a heavy, intoxicating blanket.
“You survived them, Einar.”
He murmured, his lips hovering inches from her jaw.
“You survived their beatings, their starvation, their cruelty.
You hold the secrets of their corruption, and you bore their weight in silence.
You aren’t nobody.”
He finally touched the scar.
His knuckles grazed the uneven, raised flesh.
She gasped, expecting revulsion.
Instead, he pressed a kiss to the center of the burn.
A violent shudder ripped through her.
Tears, hot and fast, spilled over her eyelashes.
It wasn’t pain.
It was the complete, catastrophic collapse of the walls she had built over 20 years.
The deeply cynical, defensive part of her brain screamed that this was a lie, but the raw primal bond roaring in her blood knew it was the absolute truth.
“I am not a kind man.”
Cailen whispered against her skin, his breath hot.
“I have slaughtered thousands.
I have raised cities to ash, but I will spend the rest of my days making sure you never scrub another floor.”
He pulled back, catching a tear from her cheek with his thumb.
The feral possessive gold in his eyes was blinding now.
“Tomorrow, we leave this mud pit.”
He declared.
The tone left no room for argument.
“We ride for the capital, and before the first snowfall, every wolf in this kingdom will bow to you.”
She looked at his brutal scarred face.
She felt the coarse wool beneath her hands, smelled the burning wood and his intoxicating scent.
The fear was still there, a tight knot in her chest, but right beside it, something new and terrifying was beginning to take root.
Power.
She wasn’t a scrub wench anymore.
She was a queen forged in dirt and ashes, and it was time for the kingdom to pay its debts.
Will Aemond truly accept her new power, or will the ghosts of the Riverbend pack haunt her in the capital?
Can a queen forged in ashes rule alongside a king of war?
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What should Aemond’s first act as queen be?
