Rejected by the Alpha, Claimed by the Lycan King

Chapter 10: The Message

I woke up sore.

Every muscle in my body protested when I sat up. My shoulders. My ribs. The places along my forearms where Vael's stave had landed. I made a sound that was not quite a groan and pressed my palms against my eyes.

Three weeks ago, my biggest concern had been which dress to wear to my mating ceremony.

I lowered my hands.

The sun was already up. Pale grey light filled the room. I had slept long past dawn. That was strange I had been raised in a Beta's house, and Beta's daughters did not sleep past dawn. But the linen was warm and my body was wrecked, and the candle on the table by the bed had burned all the way down.

A small wooden tray had been left just inside the door.

I had not heard anyone come in.

I got out of bed slowly. I crossed the cold floor on bare feet. The tray held bread, soft cheese, two small pears, and a clay cup of something that turned out to be honey-water.

There was a folded note beside the tray. The handwriting was small and severe.

*Eat. Do not skip. V*

I almost laughed.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and ate everything on the tray. Then I dressed and went down to find what was waiting for me on the second day of the rest of my life.

Oryn caught me in the hall.

I had barely made it halfway across the great room when he appeared at my elbow, white hair catching the firelight, silver eyes bright with the kind of focused energy I associated with men who had been waiting since before sunrise. He fell into step beside me.

"My king is in the war room," he said. "He asked that you be brought as soon as you woke."

"The war room?"

"That is what we call it. It is technically a council chamber. But we have not held a council in three centuries, and we have planned a great deal of war." Oryn paused. "It is the room with the round table."

"That helps."

"I thought it might."

I followed him through a set of stone corridors I had not seen yesterday. Ashenveil was bigger than it had looked from the hill — not in living space, but in dead space. We passed empty halls. Empty courtyards. A great library where every shelf was full and every chair was empty. A kitchen that could have fed three hundred people, currently feeding a kitchen staff of four.

"How many of you served the kingdom at its height?" I asked.

"Twelve thousand," Oryn said.

I stopped walking.

He stopped too. He turned, his expression patient in the way people are patient when they have given the answer to that question a thousand times in their head and never out loud.

"Twelve thousand Lycans," he said. "Across three cities and a dozen towns. We had alliances with seven werewolf packs, two human kingdoms, and the southern witches. Trade routes. Schools. A standing army of two thousand. A library that held every book ever written about the bloodline." He gestured vaguely at the empty hall around us. "The library is still here. Most of the books survived. There just are not enough of us left to read them anymore."

I did not know what to say to that.

He started walking again. After a moment, I followed.

"Lady Aria," Oryn said.

"Just Aria."

"Lady Aria," he repeated firmly, "may I ask you eleven questions before we reach the war room?"

"Eleven?"

"It was originally fifteen. I have prioritised."

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. "You have eleven questions before we reach a door. Go."

"How many wolves serve under Alpha Damon Kane in Blackmoon Pack?"

"Three hundred and four, last count. About sixty are warriors. The rest are families."

"How many neighbouring packs would Blackmoon call on for support in a war?"

"Two for certain. Greybark and Ironwood. Maybe a third Stonefell if Damon's father called in a personal favour. He has a debt with their alpha."

"Has Blackmoon ever fought a Lycan?"

"No. They think you are a story."

"Good. Number four. What is the customary signal for a pack-wide hunt in your territory?"

"Three long howls from the alpha. Repeated at one-hour intervals until enough wolves answer."

"Number five"

"Oryn." I stopped walking. "Are you preparing for an invasion?"

He stopped too. He turned and looked at me with those silver eyes, and for the first time since I had met him, the brisk practical layer dropped away.

"Yes," he said. "We have been preparing for an invasion for five hundred years. We just did not know when."

He paused.

"And now we know," he said quietly, "that it is coming soon. Because of you."

The corridor felt very cold.

He started walking again.

I followed.

The war room had a round stone table in the centre and a fire in the wall and three Lycans standing around the table when we walked in.

Kael was one of them.

He looked up as I entered, and something in his face eased just slightly, just enough that I knew he had been watching the door. He was dressed in a darker version of the clothes he had worn yesterday. His hair was damp. He had been training too, somewhere I had not seen.

Vael was the second.

She did not greet me. She lifted her chin half an inch, which I was beginning to understand was a Vael greeting, and went back to studying whatever was on the table.

The third was a woman I had not seen before. Older. Tall. Hair iron-grey, pulled back severely. She did not have silver eyes. She had pale grey eyes, ordinary human eyes, and she was the only person in the room who was not Lycan. She was wearing a long robe of dark green wool with silver embroidery at the cuffs.

"Aria," Kael said. "This is Senna. She is one of the southern witches."

The woman inclined her head a fraction.

"There are still witches?" I said before I could stop myself.

Senna's mouth moved. It might have been a smile.

"Some of us survived too, child," she said. Her voice was lower than I expected. "Not all our circles burned with the Lycan kingdom. A few of us went underground. We have been waiting, like the Lycans have been waiting." She glanced at Kael. "I came north when I felt the bond strike. Three days ago, in the Blackwood."

I stared at her.

"You felt it?"

"The whole continent felt it," Senna said quietly. "Every witch who is still alive. Every Lycan in hiding. Every old creature who remembers what a true mate bond sounds like when it lands. The world tilted, child. You probably did not notice. We did."

I put one hand on the edge of the stone table to steady myself.

Kael saw the movement.

"Sit, Aria."

I sat.

Vael pushed something across the table toward me.

It was a folded piece of parchment. Real parchment, the heavy kind, sealed with red wax. The seal was a wolf's head with a crown of antlers. I knew that seal. Every wolf in three pack territories knew that seal.

Blackmoon Pack.

My breath caught.

"It came at dawn," Kael said. "A messenger crossed the eastern border. He left it at the boundary stone and turned back. He did not enter Lycan territory. He was alive when he left."

I looked up at him.

"Who is it from?"

"It is addressed to you."

I pulled the parchment toward me with hands that were not quite steady. I broke the seal.

I unfolded the letter.

The handwriting was small and neat, and I knew it the way you know your own.

It was Selene's.

*Aria,*

*I hope this finds you alive. I hope it finds you in one piece. I hope, somewhere in the place you have gone, you are still my sister and not yet what they will turn you into.*

*Damon told me what happened in the Blackwood. He came home shaking. He has not slept since. He told me about the silver eyes and the man in the long coat and the things that man did to Roric and to Tev. He told me about you, on your knees in the moss, sending him back with a message.*

*I am sending one back.*

*Father has called a Pack Council. The vote will be tomorrow. Damon and I will be confirmed as Alpha and Luna of Blackmoon Pack. I have already shifted into my full form. The pack accepted me. The Goddess did not strike me down at the altar, Aria, no matter how much you prayed for her to.*

*But Damon is not the same man you loved. He has not eaten in two days. He sees your face every time he closes his eyes. He whispers your name in his sleep, and he does not know I can hear him. The bond he rejected was not severed cleanly, sister. It is rotting inside him. The healers cannot fix it. The witches will not.*

*You did this to him.*

*And I want you to know that I will spend the rest of my life paying for the choice he made. I will sit beside a man who is hollowing out from the inside. I will bear his pups while he calls me by your name in the dark. I will rule a pack that is going to look at me and see your shadow for the next sixty years.*

*This is what you wanted, isn't it? This is what your message was. I heard you in the Blackwood. I heard every word. I am coming for you, you said.*

*Sister, you do not need to come for me.*

*I am already in hell.*

*Selene*

I read it twice.

The room had gone completely silent.

When I finally looked up, three pairs of silver eyes and one pair of grey were watching me with the careful stillness of people who were waiting to see how I was going to react.

I did not cry.

I did not shake.

I read the letter a third time. Then I folded it. I set it down on the table. I pressed my hand flat over it, the way you press your hand over something that is trying to get up and walk away.

"She is lying," I said quietly.

Kael's eyes sharpened.

"About which part?"

"About all of it." I looked up at him. "Selene does not write letters like this. Selene does not feel guilt. Selene sleeps eight hours a night and wakes up beautiful and does not, ever, sit awake listening to a man whisper the wrong name in his sleep." I tapped the parchment once. "This letter is not from a woman in hell. It is from a woman who wants me to *think* she is in hell. So that I will hesitate. So that I will doubt. So that I will not come for her when the time comes."

Vael leaned forward.

"You read your sister well," she said.

"I have had eighteen years of practice."

Senna spoke for the first time in several minutes.

"Child," she said softly, "would you let me see the letter?"

I pushed it across the table.

The witch picked it up. She did not unfold it. She closed her grey eyes and ran two fingers slowly along the wax seal. Her face did not change, but something in the air around her shifted a faint dry smell, like old paper and chalk.

She set the letter down.

She opened her eyes.

"There is a binding on it," Senna said.

Kael's whole body went still.

"What kind?"

"A scrying binding. Old. Witch-work, but not southern witch. This is northern coven magic. The kind we do not teach anymore."

"Meaning what?" I said.

Senna looked at me.

"Meaning, child, that whoever wrote this letter your sister, or someone using her hand wrote it so that they could *find you* through it. The moment you touched it, the binding marked you. Your location is now known to a witch somewhere south of here." Her grey eyes were very steady. "And anything bound to that witch is now coming for you."

Kael moved.

He stood up so fast his chair scraped back against the stone. His silver eyes had gone almost black.

"How long?" he said.

"Hours," Senna said. "Maybe a day. The binding is fresh."

"What is bound to the witch?" Vael asked, already moving toward the door.

Senna did not answer at first.

She looked at me the long, slow look of an old woman who has seen many wars and is sorry to be looking at the start of another.

"The old things," she said quietly. "The things the Lycans drove underground when this kingdom was strong. They are not werewolves, child. They are not witches. They are what the wolves and the witches were once afraid of."

She paused.

"And someone has just told them where to find you."