She fell asleep listening to the steady heartbeat of a rogue mercenary, deeply grateful to have finally escaped the tyrannical alpha king.
But when Genevieve opened her eyes, her collarbone was searing with an ancient, inescapable brand, and the man holding her wore the cruel crown of the very beast she fled.
The winter wind howling through the whispering peaks did not care that Genevie Sterling was the daughter of a nobleman.
It sliced through her velvet cloak just as ruthlessly as it would a beggar’s rag.
She stumbled through the kneedeep snow, her breath rising in ragged icy plumes, her muscles screaming in protest with every step.
She had been running for 3 days, 3 days since the gates of the sterling estate in the valley of Oakaven had been breached by the Lyenthro guard.
They had come for her.
The decree from Castle Iron Hold had been absolute.
King Luric, the Alpha of the Northern Reaches, required a human bride to fulfill the ancient treaty of 1442, a pact forged in blood between men and wolves.
But Genevieve knew the brutal truth of Leorit’s court.
Human brides were not wives.
They were collateral.
Fable breeding stock, often dead within a year, unable to survive the violent, possessive nature of the royal Lyan bloodline.
She had seen what happened to her cousin Beatatrice, who had been taken 5 years prior and returned in a sealed pine box.
Genevieve had sworn she would die in the frozen wilderness before she let the alpha king claim her.
Her boots snagged on a hidden route, and she collapsed hard into a snowbank.
The cold was no longer sharp.
It was becoming a heavy, seductive blanket.
Hypothermia was setting in.
Her vision blurred at the edges.
The dark trunks of the pine trees swaying like specters in the fading light.
Far below, echoing up the mountain past, she heard it, the low, resonant howl of a hunting pack.
They were closing in.
Genevieve squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the end.
If you sleep now, little bird, you will never wake up.
The voice was a deep, grally rumble, startlingly close.
Genevieve’s eyes snapped open.
Standing over her was a man of terrifying proportions.
He wore no heavy furs, only a worn leather tunic and a dark woolen cloak that hung loosely from his massive shoulders.
His hair was thick and dark, kissed by the falling snow, and a rugged silver scar cut through his left eyebrow, but it was his eyes that locked her in place of piercing storm glass gray that seemed to see straight through her shivering form.
Who?
She choked out, her teeth chattering so violently she bit her tongue.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Rowan,” he said, his tone devoid of the predatory malice she expected from the men of this region.
He knelt, effortlessly lifting her from the snow, as if she weighed no more than a bundle of dry reeds.
And you are freezing to death.
The king’s hounds are less than a mile away.
We need to move.
I can’t, she whispered, her head falling against his shoulder.
He smelled intensely of woodsm smoke, pine, and something rich and earthy that made her dizzy.
“You can because I will carry you.”
True to his word, the mercenary carried her through the blinding blizzard, navigating the treacherous mountain paths with unnatural shore-footedness.
Genevieve drifted in and out of consciousness.
She vaguely registered the crumbling stone archways of an abandoned sanctuary, the ruined chapel of Saints.
Jude, a forgotten relic of the old human kings.
Rowan kicked the heavy oak doors shut, sealing out the howling wind.
The interior was freezing but dry.
Within minutes, he had a fire blazing in the ancient hearth using dry timber he had stashed in a corner.
He laid Genevieve on a bed of furs near the flames, but the heat of the fire couldn’t penetrate the ice in her veins.
She was shaking uncontrollably, her lips tinged blue, her skin pale as marble.
The fire isn’t enough.
The frost is already in your blood,” Rowan said, his brow furrowing as he crouched beside her.
He stripped off his wet leather tunic, revealing a torso heavily corded with muscle and crisscrossed with faded battle scars.
He exuded an immense almost radiant body heat.
Take off your wet cloak.
Genevieve recoiled, clutching the soden velvet to her throat.
No.
Have you lost your mind?
If you keep that wet wool on, you will die before midnight, he stated flatly, his gray eyes flashing with a sudden intense authority that brookke no argument.
I am a mercenary lady, not a monster.
I care nothing for your virtue, only your survival.
Now remove it, or I will cut it off you.”
Her hands were too numb to manage the silver clasp.
Seeing her struggle, Rowan gently batted her hands away and undid the latch, pulling the heavy, freezing fabric away from her shivering body.
She was left in her thin linen underdress.
Rowan laid down on the furs and pulled her firmly against him.
Genevieve gasped as her back hit his bare chest.
He was like a furnace.
The sheer radiating heat of him began to thaw her frozen skin on contact.
He wrapped his heavy cloak around them both, pulling her tight against his torso.
One heavy muscular arm rested over her waist, anchoring her in the dark.
I I not I am running from King Leric, she whispered, her voice trembling, feeling the need to confess to her savior.
If they find me with you, they will kill you.
She felt the deep rumble of his chest as he let out a breath.
King Lori will not harm me.
You are safe here, Genevieve.
She was too exhausted to wonder how he knew her name.
The cold was finally receding, chased away by the overwhelming warmth of the man behind her.
She turned slightly, pressing her face against the solid wall of his chest.
Beneath her ear, she could hear his heartbeat.
It was unnaturally slow, powerfully rhythmic thump, thump thump, thump.
It was a comforting, grounding sound in the dark, chaotic world.
For the first time in weeks, Genevie felt entirely completely safe.
She let her eyes close, surrendering to the exhaustion, burying her face into his warmth.
She slept deeply, unaware that the moment she willingly pressed herself against him, the ancient magic of the land began to stir in the shadows of the chapel.
Genevieve woke to the smell of burning frankincense and the soft, suffocating touch of silk.
She inhaled sharply, her eyes darting open.
Gone was the ruined stone ceiling of the chapel of Cinti.
Jude gone with the smell of damp pine and woods smoke.
She was lying in the center of a massive forposter bed draped in crimson velvet.
The walls were constructed of polished black stone illuminated by grand iron chandeliers.
Heavy tapestries depicting towering wolves standing over bowing men hung from the walls.
Panic seized her throat.
She recognized those tapestries.
She had seen drawings of them in her father’s study.
She was in the royal bed chamber of Castle Iron Hold.
She scrambled backward against the carved headboard, but as she moved, a blinding, agonizing pain erupted at the base of her neck.
She cried out, clutching her collarbone.
It felt as though a red-hot iron had been pressed into her flesh.
Breathing heavily as she pulled down the collar of her silk night gown a gown she did not remember putting on.
There, resting just above her heart, was a mark.
It was an intricate, jagged crescent moon interwoven with a thorny vine, and it was glowing.
It pulsed with a dull, furious red light beneath her skin, emitting [clears throat] a literal feverish heat.
The heavy oak doors of the bed chamber groaned open.
Genevieve grabbed the bed sheets, pulling them up to her chin like a shield.
Two armored guards stepped into the room, coming to a sharp halt on either side of the doorway.
Behind them, a figure stepped out of the shadows.
It was him.
He wore the same face, the same silver scar cutting through his eyebrow, the same piercing storm blast eyes, but the worn leather tunic of the mercenary was gone.
In its place was a tailored duplet of black velvet embroidered with silver threads.
A heavy mantle of direwolf rested upon his broad shoulders, pinned by a clasp of solid obsidian, and upon his head rested the jagged iron crown of Ethelgard.
“Ran was not a mercenary.
He was King Leoric.
You’re awake,” Leora said.
His voice was no longer the gentle rumble from the chapel.
It resonated with the deep commanding power of the alpha.
You, Genevieve, breathed, her voice trembling with a mixture of terror and white hot rage.
You lied to me.
You tricked me.
I told you no lies, Leoric replied, stepping closer to the bed.
His gaze fell to her chest, noting her trembling hand hovering over the glowing mark.
I told you I would keep you safe from the cold.
I told you the king’s hounds were hunting you.
I simply omitted that I was leading the hunt myself.
Why?
She screamed, throwing a velvet pillow at him.
He deflected it effortlessly with a flick of his wrist.
If you wanted me dead, why didn’t you just let me freeze in the snow?
Why bring me here?
I never wanted you dead, Genevieve.
I needed you alive.
And more importantly, I needed you to willingly seek my embrace.
Leoric stopped at the foot of the bed, his expression heartening.
You are from Oak Haven.
You know the old laws.
The treaty of 1442 demands a human bride for the alpha to maintain the peace.
But Lykan blood is venom to humans.
The mating bite kills nine out of 10 human.
Genevieve swallowed hard, the burning in her chest intensifying.
She remembered her cousin Beatatrice.
So you admit you’re a murderer.
I am a king trying to save his people.
Loric snapped, the sudden volume rattling the crystal vials on the ranity.
He took a steadying breath reigning in his temper.
The old texts speak of a loophole, the ember bride.
If a human woman willingly seeks the body heat of the alpha under the threat of death and sleeps against his heart through the night, the magic of the bond bypasses the venom of the bite.
It binds our souls directly.
It marks you keeping you alive.
Genevieve stared at him in absolute horror.
She remembered the freezing chapel.
She remembered him telling her to take off her wet clothes.
She remembered willingly pressing her face to his chest, actively seeking his warmth to survive the blizzard.
“You orchestrated the entire thing,” she whispered, her stomach violently twisting.
“You let me run.
You let me freeze just so I would beg for your arms.”
“Your uncle, Lord Reginald, sold you to me to clear his debts,” Leoric stated coldly.
“You would have fought me to the death if I simply dragged you to the altar.
The bond would have rejected you and you would have died like the others.
I did what was necessary to secure my queen and keep you breathing.
I am not your queen.
Genevieve spat, throwing her legs over the side of the bed.
But the moment her bare feet hit the cold stone floor, a wave of dizzying heat washed over her.
Her knees buckled.
Leordic was there in a blur of motion, catching her before she hit the ground.
His large hands gripped her waist, pulling her flush against him.
The mud the mud was kissed, introuing and truling if the mug on her collarbone flared with a searing, intoxicating warmth.
To her, after humiliation, the searing pain instantly dulled into a deep, heavy ache of desire.
Her biology was betraying her.
The magic of the Lykenbond was surging through her veins, recognizing its master.
Let go of me,” she hissed, pushing weeply against his iron hard chest.
“I cannot do that, little bird,” Loric murmured, his face inches from hers.
His eyes flashed with a sudden predatory gold.
The bond is forged, but it is unsettled.
“You are burning.
It is the fever of the unwilling.
Your body recognizes me as its mate, but your human mind resists until you accept me completely.
Until you submit your heart to the bond the fever will continue to burn you from the inside out.
He effortlessly scooped her up, laying her back against the silk pillows.
Genevieve was gasping for air.
Her skin flushed, sweat beading on her forehead.
The heat inside her was terrifying, a suffocating fire that only seemed to subside when he was touching her.
I will never submit to you,” she choked out, glaring up at him with tearfilled eyes.
“I will let this fever burn me to ash before I ever love the beast who murdered my family.”
Lioric’s jaw tightened.
For a fraction of a second, something like regret flickered in his storm glass eyes, but it was quickly buried beneath the hardened mask of the alpha king.
“Then you will, Genevieve,” he said softly, turning away from the bed.
But you will burn as my wife.
As the heavy oak doors slammed shut behind him, sealing her inside her opulent prison, the mark on her chest flared crimson.
Genevieve curled into a ball, catching the soil sheets as the unnatural magical fever began to consume her, leaving her trapped between her hatred for the king and her body’s desperate, agonizing craving for his touch.
For a fortnight, Genevieve lived in a state of agonizing delirium.
The fever brought by the unsettled bond was a relentless, invisible fire.
It scorched her veins and left her gasping on the crimson silk sheets, her skin radiating an unnatural heat.
The royal physicians, a procession of grimfaced lychans, could do nothing.
They whispered in the corridors, their voices carrying the heavy weight of impending doom.
The human queen was rejecting the alpha.
She would not survive the winter solstice.
The only relief came at night when the castle grew silent.
The heavy oak doors would open and Leoric would enter.
He never wore his crown in her presence, only a simple linen shirt and dark trousers.
He would sit beside her, his stormed glass eyes filled with an unspoken torment, and lay his large cool hands over her burning skin.
The moment he touched her, the agony receded, replaced by a deep, terrifyingly comforting warmth.
He would hold her until she fell into a restless slumber, but he never crossed the boundary she had drawn.
He never demanded her submission, nor did he attempt to consumate the bond.
He simply took her pain until dawn, leaving her alone again with her hatred and her fever.
But the isolation of the royal bed chamber was broken on the 15th day.
Genevieve was drifting in a hazy semi-consciousness when a new figure entered her room.
It was not a physician, nor was it the king.
It was a man she recognized from the royal court of her childhood.
Lord Henry Wentworth, a prominent noble from the southern territories whose family wealth rivaled that of the crown.
Wentworth had always been a shadowy figure known for his political cunning and his disdain for the treaty between humans and wolves.
Lady Genevieve, Wentworth whispered, his velvet boots making no sound on the stone floor as he approached her bed.
He carried the silver goblet.
You look terrible, my dear.
The beast is slowly roasting you alive.
Genevieve tried to sit up, her muscles trembling with exhaustion.
What are you doing here, Lord Wentworth?
The king.
The king is currently occupied at the northern border.
Wentworth interrupted smoothly, his eyes glinting with a dangerous light.
A minor uprising, one I arranged specifically to grant us this private audience.
I have come to offer you salvation.
Lee placed the goblet on the bedside table.
The liquid inside was a pale shimmering violet.
The secret journals of Sir Francis Walsingham, a real private archive hidden from the lychans for centuries, detailed the true nature of the ember bride, Wentworth explained, leaning closer.
The king told you it was a bond of salvation.
He lied.
It is a parasite.
It feeds on your human soul to strengthen the alpha’s bloodline.
But there is a cure.
That goblet contains distilled wolf’s bane and the tears of a weeping willow.
Drink it and the bond will be severed.
You will be free.
Genevieve stared at the violet liquid.
Freedom.
The word echoed in her fevered mind like a holy hymn.
To be rid of the burning mark, to be rid of Leoric, to return to whatever was left of her life.
Why would you help me?
She [clears throat] rasked, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.
Wentworth offered a thin aristocratic smile.
Because Leoric is weak, he clings to the ancient treaties.
He insists on peace with your kind.
My faction believes the Lyans should rule supreme.
If his human queen dies by rejecting the bond, he will be disgraced before the council.
He will be stripped of his crown.
We both get what we want.
Genevieve reached a trembling hand toward the goblet.
Her fingers brushed the cold silver.
“He killed my father,” she whispered, a tear slipping down her flushed cheek.
“Is God slaughtered my family?”
Wentworth’s smile widened into a cruel smirk.
Yes, the slaughter at the Sterling estate was quite thorough.
Your father, bless his stubborn heart, fought like a cornered rat.
I must admit, I rather enjoyed the sound he made when my claws tore through his throat.
Genevieve’s hand froze.
Her blood turned to ice, cutting through the magical fever for one blinding moment of clarity.
Your claws, she breathed, staring up at Wentworth.
Wentworth’s eyes widened slightly, realizing his slip, but then he merely chuckled, a dark, guttural sound that vibrated with unnatural resonance.
Did Leoric not tell you?
Ah, the noble alpha taking the blame to shield his precious bride from the complex politics of his court.
It was not Leoric’s royal guard that raided your estate, Genevieve.
It was my men wearing the king’s colors.
We needed to provoke a war.
Leoric only found out about the raid after the fact.
He intercepted you on the mountain to prevent my hunters from finishing the job.
The revelation hit Genevieve like a physical blow.
The king hadn’t hunted her.
He had raced the blizzard to save her from the men who had actually butchered her family.
The master Mary in the snow, the man who had wrapped his body around hers to stave off the frostbite.
He wasn’t tricking her into a trap.
He was the only thing standing between her and the monsters, and she had hated him for it.
“Drink,” Wentworth commanded, his voice dropping an octave, slipping into the commanding tone of a dominant wolf.
His eyes flashed a venomous yellow.
“Drink it and die quietly, human.”
He lunged forward, grabbing her jaw to force the poison down her throat.
Before Wentworth’s hand could connect, the heavy oak doors of the bed chamber exploded inward, splintering off their iron hinges with a deafening crack.
Leoric stood in the doorway, a terrifying vision of primal fury.
He was drenched in rain and blood, his chest heaving.
He had not gone to the northern border.
He had seen through the trap.
With a roar that shook the very foundations of Castle Iron Hold, the Alpha King crossed the room in a blur of black shadow.
He slammed into Wentworth, tackling the traitorous lord through the heavy glass of the balcony doors.
They crashed onto the rain sllicked stone of the parapit outside.
Genevieve drank herself from the bed, the fever surging violently in her veins as her adrenaline spiked.
She stumbled to the shattered balcony, clutching the door frame.
Outside, a brutal, terrifying battle was unfolding.
Wentworth had fully shifted his human form, ripping apart to reveal a massive, grizzled timberwolf with yellow, murderous eyes.
Leoric, however, remained in his human form, using only his bare hands and his devastating strength to combat the beast.
Wentworth’s claws tore through Leoric’s dublet, leaving deep, bloody gashes across his chest and arms.
But the king did not falter.
He fought with a desperate unhinged savagery.
“You are weak, Leoric.”
Wentworth snarled in the ancient tongue, his voice a horrifying mixture of a man’s shout and a wolf’s growl.
You let a fragile human break your spirit.
Wentworth lunged, his jaws snapping shot on Leoric’s left shoulder.
The king had had a guttural cry of pain, but instead of pulling away, he drove his forearm against Wentworth’s throat, pinning the massive beast against the stone ballastrade.
Genevieve watched in horror as Leoric’s blood spilled onto the rain swept stones.
He was dying.
He was letting himself be torn apart to keep the traitor away from her.
The man she had cursed, the man she had sworn to hate, was sacrificing his life for hers.
Until you submit your heart to the bond, the fever will continue to burn you from the inside out.
His words echoed in her mind.
It wasn’t a threat.
It was a plea.
He couldn’t force the bond.
Only she could complete it.
The fever wasn’t his magic hurting her.
It was her own fear, her own hatred, fighting against a soul that was meant to be hers.
Genevieve looked at the glowing, agonizing mark on her chest.
It was pulsing wildly, mirroring Leoric’s fading heartbeat.
She had been clinging to the ashes of her past, blinding herself to the truth of the present.
Leoric was not the monster.
She took a ragged breath, closed her eyes, and let the hatred go.
She stopped fighting the heat.
She surrendered to the bond, opening her soul to the alpha king.
She accepted him not as a captor, but as her protector, her mate.
The moment her heart shifted, the world seemed to stop.
The searing, agonizing pain in her collarbone vanished instantly, replaced by a surge of pure, unadulterated power.
The dull red flow of the mark erupted into a blinding brilliant gold.
The fever didn’t break, it transformed.
It rushed through her veins like liquid sunlight, filling her with a strength that was utterly inhuman.
On the balcony, Laroric gasped, his storm glass eyes snapping wide open as the golden light flooded the courtyard.
The power of the completed Ember Bride surged through the bond, pouring directly into him.
His fatal wounds stopped bleeding.
His muscles expanded.
And with a terrifying, earthshattering roar, Leoric finally unleashed the beast within.
In a fraction of a second, the king transformed into a lyken of unimaginable size.
His fur pitch black and radiating a faint golden aura.
It grabbed Wentworth by the throat, lifted the massive timberwolf into the air as if he were a mere pup, and threw him effortlessly over the ballastrade.
Wentworth’s scream faded into the darkness, followed by a sickening crunch on the rocks far below.
The rain beaked down on the silent parabet.
The black wolf stood panting, his golden eyes fixed on the darkness before slowly turning back toward the bed chamber.
As he stepped through the shattered glass, the beast melted away, leaving Leoric standing there in his human form, chest bare, covered in rain and healing scars.
He looked at Genevieve, his chest heaving, his eyes searching hers for the fear and hatred he had grown so accustomed to.
But Genevieve did not back away.
She felt the golden warmth pulsing softly above her heart.
She walked toward him, her bare feet stepping over the broken blouse.
When she reached him, she reached out, pressing her hand flat against his chest, right over his violently beating heart.
“You should have told me,” she whispered, her voice steady and clear.
Leoric let out a shaky breath, raising a hand to cup her cheek.
His touch no longer brought relief from pain, but a breathtaking electric thrill.
I would rather you hate me and live, Genevieve, than know the truth and die fighting a war you could not win.
Genevieve leaned forward, pressing her lips to his.
It was a promise, an apology, and a submission all at once.
Larraid groaned, his arms wrapping around her waist, pulling her fiercely against his body as he kissed her back with all the desperate, starving passion of a king who had finally found his queen.
The winter wind howled through the broken doors, but Genevie felt no cold.
She was the ember bride, bound to the alpha, and together their fire would burn away the shadows of the kingdom forever.
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Would you have surrendered to the alpha
