CHAPTER TWO
1161 Words
CHAPTER TWO
LYRA POV
The courtyard was exactly as I remembered it and nothing like it at all.
The architecture was the same–the high stone arches and banners of the noble bloodlines arranged in careful hierarchy.
But the faces had changed. I would need to learn the new faces of this new alliance.
But there, near the pillar, stood Baron.
My father's brother and my family's executioner. He looked older but in no way like he had suffered in the time I had been gone.
Beside him was Sera, his daughter, wearing a chain at her throat that I recognized–my mother's. The one that had been in the Valen family for three generations.
My nails bit into the soft flesh of my palm.
The second guard pushed me into the room and I stumbled on my feet. The room fell silent as they all stared at me like I was some exhibit animal. Shock first, then contempt. I catalogued all of it.
I was not welcome here and they were not bothering to hide it.
The door opened, banging against the walls, and the court went silent.
The Alpha King was here.
Darius Kael was not what rumor had prepared me for, and rumor had prepared me for something considerable. He was tall, with dark hair that fell over his forehead and into his eyes and the kind of build that spoke of a man who spent more time fighting than making peace.
His eyes were amber, startlingly clear, and they moved across the room with the unhurried precision of someone who never needed to look for threats because threats already knew better.
His pheromones hit the room before he reached the dais. Every werewolf in the room felt it— shoulders dropping, chins dipping without permission.
I felt a tickling of something against my skin, like an itch I couldn't scratch, and I wasn't sure what the hell it was. Liquid heat pulled at the base of my spine in a direction I had never been pulled before.
Something in me screamed for me to offer my neck, to submit.
The instinct rose in me like a reflex, and I had never once in my life had that reflex.
I locked my knees and held my chin level, staring at the middle distance.
The guard kicked my knees.
“Bow, peasant,” he hissed as I buckled.
His gaze found mine.
He walked across the room, step by step, until he was standing in front of me and all I could see was the tip of his shoes.
“Lyra Valen,” he called out, his voice raspy and low like a purring cat.
I tried to speak but it was like a boulder was stuck in my throat.
“Omega,” he murmured.
I swallowed.
“Alpha,” I said, breathless, and it was like the whole room disappeared, my gut tightening, warmth filling my veins like molten honey.
“I have come to take my mate,” he said, and the mothers and daughters burst into tittering laughter.
I had expected fear and crying but definitely not laughter.
I understood the reactions almost immediately.
“The omega Lyra Valen will be that mate.”
“Is that a problem?” he drawled, his eyes barely looking at them.
“Alpha, the Valen girl is unsightly–” my uncle muttered.
“Do you have another Valen girl?” he asked, and the murmuring resumed because the only other girl was mated, which my uncle and cousin probably regretted to the extreme.
“Do you have another Valen girl?” he hissed.
“No, Alpha.”
“Then it's settled,” he huffed, turning away, and that was it.
The guards escorted me out immediately after. I assumed we were heading to any room prepared for me, but the longer we walked, the more I realized I was wrong.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
No answer.
"I asked a question."
"Mind your step," the guard on my left said, and gestured forward.
We were moving away from the noble quarters, away from any of the standard wings, and deeper into a part of the pack house that had once been reserved for my father.
This was my home.
The doors at the end of the corridor were heavy and undecorated, but most importantly, open.
He was already inside.
The guards did not follow me in. The moment my feet crossed the threshold, the doors closed behind me.
Darius Kael stood at the far side of the chamber with his back partially turned, one hand resting on the edge of a table scattered with maps.
He had removed the formal overcoat he had worn in court. In its absence, he looked, if possible, more dangerous.
His pheromones were stronger in the enclosed space.
Each breath I took was filled with his scent, invading my nose, my lungs. It took too much effort to hold my head straight and not succumb to the urge to bare my neck.
I did not lower my gaze.
He turned.
Studied me for a moment with those amber eyes–unhurried, assessing.
"You're not what I expected," he said. His tone was even, almost bored.
"Good," I said.
“Then we're already more honest than most political marriages manage in the first year.”
Something shifted in his expression as he moved toward me, stopping close enough to be uncomfortable.
Every instinct I had never possessed until today was screaming at me to run, to submit, and bare my neck to the Alpha.
His eyes gleamed with amusement and fury filled me. He was doing it on purpose, releasing his pheromones more intensely.
I glared at him, holding my ground.
"Most Omegas can't stand this close without lowering their eyes," he said.
“I'm aware,” I gritted out.
“And yet.”
“And yet,” I agreed.
He studied me for another long moment.
He wasn't looking at me the way men looked at their potential brides. I didn't know what he was looking for and I wasn't sure if he would find it.
I did not intend to show him.
“The arrangement will proceed,” he said finally, pulling back the intensity of his scent.
“You will be presented as my chosen Luna within the fortnight. You will conduct yourself accordingly in court.”
“I understand the terms.”
“Then you accept them.”
“I accept them,” I said. “With conditions.”
It was like I dropped a pin.
“Conditions,” he repeated.
“One condition,” I said.
“Non-negotiable, the same as yours.”
He waited.
I held his gaze–those amber eyes that had silenced an entire court without effort, that were doing something now to my pulse I refused to acknowledge–and said it plainly.
“I want the Valen family destroyed.”
- Writer
