REJECTED BY THE PRINCE, CLAIMED BY HIS RUTHLESS UNCLE.

CHAPTER FIVE:INTO THE WOLF TERRITORY

Morning arrived gray and overcast, fitting weather for a day Liana had been dreading since the council's decision three nights before. A carriage waited in the palace courtyard when she finally descended the stairs, small and plain, nothing like the grand processions that had carried other royal brides to their weddings. There would be no celebration for this marriage. No cheering crowds. Only a quiet, hurried departure, as though the kingdom wanted to be rid of the scandal as quickly as possible.

Mabel was waiting by the carriage, her weathered face creased with worry, a small bundle of herbs pressed into Liana's hands before she could climb inside.

"For calming the nerves, and for wounds, should you need them," the old healer said, her voice thick. "I wish I could go with you."

"I'll be alright," Liana said, though she wasn't at all certain it was true.

"You are stronger than you know, child. Whatever waits for you in the north — remember that." Mabel squeezed her hands once, firmly, before stepping back to let the guards close the carriage door.

Liana pressed her face to the small window as the carriage pulled away, watching the palace that had never once felt like home shrink smaller behind her. She caught one final glimpse of the royal balcony above the courtyard — Cassian standing there beside Selena, his expression unreadable even from this distance, making no move to wave, or call out, or offer any final word of farewell to the woman the Moon Goddess had chosen for him and he had so easily thrown away.

Then the carriage turned a bend in the road, and the palace vanished from sight entirely, and there was nothing left ahead of her but miles of unfamiliar road leading toward a territory whispered about only in fearful tones, and a man whose name alone was enough to silence a room.

Liana closed her eyes and let the herbs' faint lavender scent wash over her, and tried very hard not to think about what kind of man was waiting for her at the end of this journey — a man they called ruthless, a man with no mercy left in his heart, a man who was, as of this morning, her husband in every way but name.

She did not sleep during the long journey north. She simply watched the green hills of Silver Moon Kingdom slowly give way to darker forests, colder air, and mountains that scraped against a sky the color of iron — the borders, she realized with a tightening in her chest, of Blood Fang Territory.

Somewhere beyond those mountains, Alpha Lucien Nightbane was waiting.

And nothing in her eighteen years of quiet suffering had prepared her for what she would find when she finally arrived.