The Lycan Queen's Return

Chapter 2: I Refused To Marry Him

The maids’ words slammed into me like a second dagger.

“Lady Elara! You’re awake at last. Today is your wedding to Alpha Kael.

I stared at them. Two familiar faces from a life that had already ended. Marta, the older one with the tight gray bun and the soft hands that had once braided my hair for the coronation. Lina, younger, freckled, always humming under her breath. Both of them alive. Both of them three years younger. Both of them looking at me as if I were still the obedient daughter who would walk into the cage with a smile.

My heart hammered so hard I felt it in my teeth.

I threw the covers aside and lunged out of bed. My bare feet hit the cold marble. The nightgown tangled around my legs. I ignored it. I ignored the startled cries behind me. I crossed the room in three strides and seized the heavy silver-backed mirror from the dressing table.

I smashed it against the edge of the table.

Glass exploded. Shards rained across the floor, glittering like ice under the morning light. One large piece remained in my hand. I held it up, breath tearing in and out of my lungs, and stared at the reflection.

My face.

Younger. No fine lines at the corners of my eyes from three years of sleepless nights. No hollows beneath the cheekbones from the months I had barely eaten after the marriage turned to ash. Dark hair tumbling loose past my shoulders instead of the severe coronation braid. And the eyes, wide, wild, brown with flecks of gold that the Moon Goddess had marked as proof of my bloodline.

No silver dagger scar between my breasts.

I dropped the broken glass and tore the nightgown open at the neck. Fabric ripped. I clawed at my own skin, searching, pressing, desperate for the raised ridge of healed flesh that should have been there.

I spun toward the full-length mirror still standing near the wardrobe and drove my fist into it.

More glass, more blood, real blood this time, bright and hot across my knuckles. The pain was sharp and clean and nothing like the silver fire that had ended me. I welcomed it. I needed something that belonged to this body, this time, this impossible second chance.

Marta screamed. Lina dropped the armful of white silk. It pooled on the floor like a spilled ghost.

“Lady Elara!” Marta rushed forward. “What are you doing? Your hands, stop!”

I shoved her away. Harder than I meant to. She stumbled back onto the dressing table. Perfume bottles toppled. One shattered, flooding the room with the heavy scent of night-blooming jasmine, the same scent I had worn on my wedding day the first time.

The first time.

The words echoed inside my skull like a drumbeat.

I was back,truly back.

Three years. The morning of the wedding. Hours before the ceremony, that would chain me to Kael Blackwood. Hours before the long cold nights. Hours before the letters I would one day find. Hours before the silver dagger and the vow spoken with my dying breath.

I would not walk down that aisle.

I would not become his wife.

I would not become his Luna.

I would not die in his arms while the court watched.

“Get out.” My voice came out raw, cracked, nothing like the soft tone these women expected.

“Both of you. Get out now.”

Lina’s freckled face crumpled. “But the dress, the Alpha, is already in the palace, your father.”

“Out!”

They fled. The door slammed. I stood alone in the wreckage of glass and silk and the sharp copper smell of my own blood, chest heaving, mind racing so fast the room seemed to tilt.

I pressed both hands to my sternum again, harder this time, as if I could dig through flesh and find the proof that none of this was real. Still nothing. Only the frantic beat of a heart that should have stopped forever on the coronation dais.

Memories poured in, brutal and clear.

The first time I stood in this exact room, the maids had dressed me in white while I smiled through the nerves. I had believed the alliance would protect my people. I had believed Kael’s cool courtesy might one day warm into something bearable. I had walked into the great hall with my head high and my father’s blessing heavy on my shoulders.

This time the memories tasted like ash.

I crossed to the window and shoved the heavy curtains aside. The eastern palace grounds spread below in the soft gold of early morning. Guards already lined the main courtyard. Carriages bearing the Blackwood crest, black wolf on silver, waited near the gates. Banners snapped in the wind. Servants hurried with trays of flowers and crystals. The entire kingdom had gathered to watch the Eastern king’s only daughter bind herself to the most powerful Alpha of the northern packs.

I had less than a day.

The ceremony was set for sunset under the rising full moon, as tradition demanded for a Luna binding. If I was still inside these walls when the moon cleared the horizon, the vows would be spoken, the bond forced, the cage locked.

I won't, happen.

A sharp knock sounded at the door.

I ignored it. I crossed to the wardrobe and yanked it open. Gowns and jewelry of every color.

The white wedding ensemble is still hanging in its place of honor, moonstones catching the light like tiny frozen tears. I shoved it aside and dug deeper until I found what I needed; a simple dark riding dress, boots, a cloak with a deep hood. Clothes meant for travel, not ceremony.

Another knock. It was harder this time.

“Elara.” My father’s voice, deep and already edged with the impatience I remembered too well.

“Open this door.”

I did not move.

The lock clicked. Of course, he had a key. The door swung open and King Theron of the Eastern Packs stepped inside, followed by two of his personal guards. He took one look at the shattered mirrors, the blood on my hands, the torn nightgown, and the storm on my face, and his expression hardened into the same look he had worn the day he signed the alliance papers.

“What is the meaning of this?”

I turned to face him fully.

“There will be no wedding.”

Silence stretched for three heartbeats.

Then he laughed. A short, disbelieving sound. “Cold feet. I expected as much. Every bride feels it. The Alpha is already here. The packs are watching. You will dress, you will smile, and you will do your duty.”

“I will not.”

His smile vanished. The guards shifted behind him. I saw the exact moment he decided this was fear and nothing more, the same way he had dismissed every doubt I voiced the first time around.

“Elara.” He stepped closer, his voice dropping into the tone he used with difficult council members.

“The western shadow grows stronger every season. The Blackwood alliance is the only wall between our people and s*******r. You know this. You agreed to this.”

“I was wrong.”

“You were a child playing politics, you are still a child if you think you can undo what has been sealed by blood and treaty.”

He gestured at the broken glass.

“This tantrum changes nothing. The ceremony proceeds at sunset. Marta will return to dress you. You will walk into that hall, and you will become Luna of the Blackwood Pack. That is final.”

I met his eyes and let him see everything I felt, the rage, the terror, the absolute refusal.

“If you force me down that aisle, I will scream the truth of every rumor about Kael Blackwood until the entire court hears it. I will tell them about the northern warlords. I will tell them about the letters. I will make certain the alliance burns before the first vow is spoken.”

His face went white, then red. For a moment I thought he might strike me. He never had before. But the man standing in front of me was the same man who had handed me to a killer for the sake of borders and power.

He recovered fast. The mask of the king slid back into place.

“You know nothing of any letters. You are frightened and speaking nonsense. Guards, see that she does not leave this wing. No one enters except the maids and I. The wedding will happen. Be ready at sunset, daughter. Or I will have you carried into that hall.”

He turned and left. The door locked behind him with a heavy finality that echoed through the room.

I stood frozen for three full seconds.

Then I moved as fast as my legs could carry.

I stripped the ruined nightgown off and pulled on the dark riding dress with shaking hands. Boots next. I bound my hair into a tight knot and covered it with the hooded cloak. Blood still welled from the cuts on my knuckles; I wrapped them in a strip of torn sheet and ignored the sting. Every second counted.

I crossed to the writing desk and yanked open the drawers. Paper. Ink. A small traveling knife I had once used for opening letters. I took the knife. I took a pouch of coins I found in the bottom drawer, money set aside for the bride’s personal use. Enough to buy a horse and silence if I was careful.

Escape routes flashed through my mind, the same ones I had mapped in the long cold years of the first marriage when I still believed I might one day run.

The bedroom window overlooked a narrow ledge that led to the old servants’ stairs. From there, the laundry courtyard. From the courtyard, the postern gate used by the kitchen staff. Beyond that gate, the dense pine forest that marked the beginning of the borderlands. If I reached the trees before the guards realized I was gone, I could disappear into the wild and never look back.

Kael would search. My father would search. But I had three years of knowledge they did not possess. I knew which paths flooded in spring. I knew which villages still owed my mother quiet favors. I knew how to vanish.

I crossed to the window and pushed the heavy casement open. Cold morning air rushed in, carrying the scent of pine and distant snow and the faint metallic tang of the Blackwood banners snapping in the courtyard below. The ledge was narrow, stone worn smooth by decades of weather. A long drop to the flagstones if I slipped. But the servants’ stairs clung to the wall only ten feet to the left, half-hidden by ivy.

I swung one leg over the sill.

My heart slammed against my ribs hard enough to hurt. The phantom memory of silver fire flared once beneath my breastbone, a warning or a reminder. I could not tell which.

I shifted my weight, ready to climb out fully, ready to drop onto the ledge and run.

A voice spoke behind me, low and cold and far too close.

“I wouldn’t jump if I were you.”