Rejected by the Alpha, Claimed by the Lycan King

Chapter 4: The Hunt

Kael's hand was warm.

That was the first thing I noticed as we ran through the Blackwood. His grip on mine was firm but not crushing, his pace steady even though I knew he could move faster without me. He was holding back for me. Slowing down for me.

In all my eighteen years, no man had ever slowed down for me.

The howls behind us were getting louder.

"How many?" Kael asked. He didn't sound out of breath. He didn't even sound concerned.

I listened, the way my father had taught me to listen to a hunt. Three voices, maybe four. Coming fast.

"Four wolves," I said. "Damon's leading them. I can hear his howl."

Kael's jaw tightened at the sound of Damon's name.

"Good," he said quietly. "I want him to find us."

I stumbled.

"What?"

He pulled me upright without breaking stride. "Keep running. We are not running because we are afraid, Aria. We are running because I want to choose where this happens. Not him."

"Where what happens?"

He didn't answer.

The trees began to thin. The forest floor sloped upward. Kael steered us toward a clearing I hadn't noticed before a wide circle of moss and stone, ringed by ancient trees that looked like they had been standing there since before the first werewolf ever drew breath. In the centre of the clearing stood a single black stone, taller than a man, carved with symbols I didn't recognise.

Kael stopped in the middle of the clearing. He let go of my hand.

"Stay behind me," he said.

"Kael"

"Stay behind me, Aria."

There was no arguing with that voice. I stepped behind him, my heart hammering against my ribs. My wolf was pacing inside me, anxious, sensing the violence that was coming.

The first wolf burst out of the trees.

He was huge a brown wolf with golden eyes, one of Damon's enforcers. His name was Roric. He had pinned me to the ground in a sparring match when I was fourteen. He had laughed in my face when I cried.

He saw Kael. He saw me behind Kael. And he charged.

Kael didn't move.

He didn't shift. He didn't crouch into a fighting stance. He just stood there in his long black coat with his hands at his sides, watching the wolf come.

When Roric was three feet away from him, mid-leap, fangs bared

Kael moved.

I have never seen anything move that fast.

One moment he was standing still. The next, his hand was around Roric's throat, mid-air, holding the wolf suspended like he weighed nothing. Roric's paws scrabbled at empty space. His golden eyes went wide with shock.

Kael looked up at him almost calmly.

"You shouldn't have come here," he said.

He squeezed.

There was a sound a wet, cracking sound and Roric went limp. Kael dropped him. The body hit the moss with a soft thud, already shifting back into a human shape as the life left him. A naked man with golden eyes, lying broken on the ground.

I clamped a hand over my mouth.

I had never seen a wolf die.

Three more wolves crashed out of the trees.

Two of them stopped dead when they saw Roric's body. The third a grey wolf I recognised as one of the younger enforcers kept charging. Stupid. Loyal. Dead.

Kael caught him by the scruff and threw him.

I do not mean he tossed him aside. I mean he *threw* him. The grey wolf flew through the air like a stone from a sling and slammed into the trunk of one of the ancient trees. The crack of his spine echoed through the clearing. He slid down the trunk and did not move again.

The two remaining wolves backed up.

And then the fourth wolf stepped out of the trees behind them.

Damon.

He hadn't shifted. He stood there in his alpha clothes, dark green hunting leathers, his face flushed from the run. His eyes went from Roric's body to the grey wolf's body to Kael standing in the middle of the clearing, calm as a winter morning.

To me, behind Kael.

His green eyes found mine, and for one second, I saw something flicker in them. Something that might have been regret. Something that might have been fear.

Then his face hardened.

"Aria," he said. His voice was tight. "Step away from him. Come back to the pack. Now."

"Why?" I said. My voice was shaking, but I was looking at him, and that was something. "So you can kill me yourself?"

"You are a rejected mate on contested ground," Damon said. "The law is clear. You either come back under pack protection, or you are an enemy."

"Your father told me to leave the territory and never come back." I lifted my chin. "I am not on Blackmoon land. I am in the Blackwood. I am not your problem anymore, Alpha Kane."

"You will always be my problem." His jaw clenched. "Your existence threatens Selene's claim. Until that bond is severed completely until you are dead, Aria Selene cannot become Luna without challenge."

The words landed like stones in my chest.

He had come here to kill me.

My own fated mate. The boy I had loved for three years. The man who had rejected me yesterday so he could marry my sister. He had come into the Blackwood to murder me so that Selene's path to power would be clear.

I felt something inside me break.

And then slowly I felt something else take its place.

Rage.

Cold, clean rage. The kind that burns without smoke.

Kael spoke. His voice was low and dangerous.

"You came here to kill her."

"This does not concern you, stranger." Damon's voice was tight. He was trying to keep control. He was failing. "This is pack business. Walk away and we will let you live."

Kael laughed.

It was not a kind sound. It was the sound of something old and amused and very, very dangerous.

"You will let me live," he repeated softly. "You will let me live."

Damon's two remaining wolves whined and backed up another step. They could feel something. The air had changed in the clearing. The temperature had dropped. The ancient trees were creaking, even though there was no wind.

"What are you?" Damon whispered.

Kael smiled.

It was the first time I had seen him smile, and it was a terrible thing. Sharp. Cold. Full of teeth.

"My name is Kael Draven," he said. "I am the last Lycan King. And the woman behind me is my mate."

He took one step forward.

"You rejected her," he said. "You humiliated her. You sent your father to throw her out of her home. And now you have come here to murder her in cold blood." Another step. "Tell me, Alpha Kane. Why should I let you live?"

Damon's hand went to the silver knife at his belt.

Kael saw the movement.

His silver eyes turned black.

Not dark grey. Not just dilated. Black. Pure black, edge to edge, like someone had poured ink into them.

And the air around him began to ripple.

I felt my wolf drop to the ground inside me, belly low, ears flat, in the universal posture of a wolf submitting to something so much bigger than itself that resistance was impossible.

I had never seen a Lycan shift before.

I was about to.