Chapter 1: The Wolves Kneel
Seraphina Veyne had spent twenty two years being told she was ordinary, and tonight she had promised herself she would believe it for the length of one party.
The ballroom of the Royal Citadel glittered like the inside of a jewel. Three hundred werewolves moved beneath the chandeliers, every one of them able to smell a lie from across the room. Seraphina, the only wolfless woman among them, could smell perfume and champagne and nothing else.
Smile, Mira whispered, pressing a glass into her hand. You look like you're attending your own trial. I'm attending a royal gathering. Same thing, better canapés.
But Seraphina wasn't looking at the canapés. She was looking at the far end of the room, where five men stood together like the centre of gravity for everyone else.
Draven Wolfe, the Alpha King, stood at the middle. Tall and black haired, in a suit that made the word tailored seem like an insult. His silver eyes swept the crowd the way a blade sweeps a table. Kael Thorne stood beside him, reading the room with cool grey eyes. Lucian Voss laughed at something, amber eyes bright, charming three women at once without trying. Ronan Ashcroft loomed near the wall, scarred and broad, looking as though he would rather be fighting. And Soren Nightshade, pale and quiet, was looking at nothing at all.
Her brother's brothers. The men who had eaten at her family's table, taught her to ride, and carried her home when she was sixteen and had cried over a boy. The men who had never once looked at her as anything but Darius's little sister.
So why did Draven's gaze find her now, across three hundred people, and hold?
Heat crawled up her neck. She looked away first. She hated that she did.
He's staring, Mira said. He's calculating the cost of the champagne.
Sera. I need air. She slipped through the glass doors onto a quiet side terrace, then thought better of it and cut back through the service corridor toward the east gallery. It was empty and cool, lined with portraits of dead kings who all seemed to disapprove of her.
She was halfway down it when she realised the footsteps behind her had stopped when hers did.
Seraphina turned. A server stood ten feet away, a silver tray balanced in one hand. He was ordinary looking, forgettable, and he was smiling.
Miss Veyne, he said. Forgive me. I was told to find you. By whom?
He set the tray down on a side table with great care. By someone who has waited a very long time.
Her pulse jumped. I think you have the wrong person. No. His smile widened. I don't think I do.
The knife came out of his sleeve so fast she barely saw it. It was long and dark, and it gave off a faint, wrong glimmer, like something that had been dipped in moonlight and poison.
Seraphina ran. Heels were not made for this. She kicked them off and fled barefoot down the gallery, her gown tangling around her legs, hearing him behind her, too fast, much too fast. She had spent her entire life being the slowest person in a room of predators, and she had never hated it more.
She screamed for her brother, for anyone, and the corridor swallowed it. A hand caught her hair and wrenched her backward. She slammed against the wall, and the knife came across her forearm in a cold, bright line.
Pain arrived a heartbeat later, vicious and astonishing. She gasped. Blood welled and ran down her wrist, and for a moment she simply stared at it, absurdly calm. That's mine, she thought.
Forgive me, the man murmured, lifting the knife again. Only a little more. Then the first drops of her blood struck the marble floor.
The corridor went silent. It wasn't the quiet of an empty room. It was the quiet of something enormous drawing breath. The portraits on the walls seemed to lean. The air thickened, and a faint violet light bloomed out of the blood on the floor, spreading across the stone in thin, glowing lines like roots, like veins, like a map being unrolled.
The man's smile slipped. No, he whispered. It's too early. They said it would be...
Something hit him from the side with the force of a falling building. The knife skittered away. The assassin hit the opposite wall and slid down it, and Draven Wolfe was already standing over him, one hand around the man's throat, silver eyes burning. Behind him came the others, Kael, Lucian, Ronan, Soren, running in a tight, lethal formation, and Darius shoving past all of them to reach her.
Sera! Her brother's hands were on her shoulders, her face, her bleeding arm. Look at me. Are you hurt? Sera!
I'm fine, she said, which was a lie. Her knees were shaking. I'm fine. He knew my name, Darius. He said someone had been waiting...
She stopped. Because the violet light was still spreading, and it had reached the boots of the five men standing in the corridor.
Lucian stopped laughing. Ronan swore under his breath. Kael took one slow step back, and Soren went white as bone.
Then, in the same instant, without a word, without a command, the five most powerful Alphas in Veyloria dropped to one knee.
Not gracefully. Not by choice. Seraphina saw it in the way Ronan's jaw locked, in the way Lucian's hand scrabbled against the marble as though he could pull himself upright by sheer stubbornness. Their heads bowed as though something invisible had pressed down on the backs of their necks. Even Darius, her own brother, swayed and gripped the wall.
The assassin, pinned and half conscious, started to laugh. A wet, delighted sound. There she is, he rasped. The last of the old blood. The Original's heir.
What did you do to them? Seraphina breathed.
Nothing, little wolf. He grinned through bloody teeth. You did.
Draven had not moved. He was kneeling in the glowing light with one fist braced on the stone and his head bent, and every muscle in his body was rigid with rage, because no one knelt to Draven Wolfe, and Draven Wolfe knelt to no one.
Yet his wolf did. He could feel it, the great black beast that had never yielded to king, council, or enemy, lowering its head in the dark of his chest. Not in submission, or not only. It was something stranger and far more dangerous. It was recognition.
Slowly, impossibly, Draven lifted his eyes to the wolfless girl bleeding in front of him.
And for the first time in his life, he was afraid of what he wanted.
