The Alpha King Rejected His True Queen

Chapter 4 - The Woman In The Forest

Lyra ran until her lungs burned and the party noise faded into nothing behind her, and then she kept going a while longer out of pure stubbornness, because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant remembering the sound of Kael’s voice saying I reject her in front of everyone she’d ever known.

She didn’t have a plan. She’d left without a cloak, without shoes fit for the woods, without so much as a candle, and by the time she finally slowed down she was deep enough into the treeline that the Ashwood house was just a smear of light behind her, small and unimportant, like something from a life she used to have.

Her collarbone still ached where the mark had burned itself in. She pressed two fingers against it and hissed — it wasn’t hot anymore, but it wasn’t right either, tender in a way that felt less like a bruise and more like a wound that hadn’t decided yet whether it was healing.

“Stupid,” she said out loud, to no one. “Stupid, stupid—”

Her wolf didn’t argue with her, which was somehow worse than if it had. It just sat there under her ribs, quiet now, worn out from all the howling, like a dog that had barked itself hoarse and finally given up.

She walked without any real destination for a long time. Long enough that her feet started bleeding a little from the rocks, long enough that the anger burned down into something colder and more tired, and somewhere in there she started crying, not the dramatic kind, just the leaking, exhausted kind that comes when a body has nothing left to do with what it’s feeling.

That’s when she heard the voice.

“You’re bleeding on my mushrooms.”

Lyra spun around so fast she nearly fell. An old woman was crouched a few feet away, half-hidden by a fallen log, a basket of dark, gill-edged mushrooms balanced on one knee. She didn’t look startled at all. She looked, if anything, mildly inconvenienced, the way you’d look at a cat that had wandered into your garden.

“I’m sorry,” Lyra said, because apparently nineteen years of training didn’t just switch off even in the middle of a forest at midnight. “I didn’t see you.”

“Most people don’t.” The woman set the basket down and looked at her properly for the first time, and whatever she saw made her go very still. Her eyes dropped to Lyra’s collarbone, to the mark still visible above the collar of her dress, and something crossed her face that Lyra didn’t have a name for yet — not quite shock, not quite recognition, something closer to a held breath finally being let out after a very long wait.

“Say your name,” the woman said.

“What?”

“Your name, girl. Say it.”

“Lyra.” She didn’t know why she felt like she had to answer. “Lyra Ashwood.”

The old woman didn’t move for a second. Then she reached up and pulled her hood back, and Lyra saw a face lined with age but not softened by it, sharp-eyed, watchful, the kind of face that had clearly spent a long time waiting for something and had just now decided the wait was over.

“No,” the woman said quietly. “You’re not an Ashwood. Not really. Your mother would have hated that name being put on you.”

Lyra’s stomach dropped. “You knew my mother?”

“I knew Elara.” The woman’s mouth pulled into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Better than most people ever did, and worse than I should have, if you want the honest version. My name’s Rhoswen. Sit down before you fall down — you look like you’ve had the kind of night that ends in fainting.”

Lyra didn’t sit. “How do you know my mother’s name? Nobody talks about her. Marta won’t even say she existed.”

“Marta’s an i***t who was told to keep her mouth shut and, credit where it’s due, actually managed it.” Rhoswen studied her for a long moment. “Your mother asked me to look after you, a long time ago. I’ve been keeping half a promise ever since — watching from a distance, mostly, because getting closer would have put you in more danger than leaving you where you were.” Her gaze went back to the mark on Lyra’s collarbone. “Looks like distance isn’t an option anymore.”

“What is that?” Lyra pressed her hand over the mark instinctively. “It burned into me. In front of everyone. The King saw it and looked like he’d seen a ghost.”

“He probably has, in a manner of speaking.” Rhoswen picked her basket back up, businesslike, like they were discussing the weather and not the fact that Lyra’s entire life had just come apart at the seams. “That mark belonged to your mother.”

Lyra stopped walking. “What do you mean, belonged to her?”

“I mean exactly what I said.” Rhoswen didn’t slow down, forcing Lyra to catch up. “She wore one just like it. Kept it covered, always. I’m not going to tell you what it means tonight — you’re bleeding, you’re exhausted, and some things aren’t safe to say out loud in open woods with the King’s men still somewhere behind us. Ask me again when we’re somewhere with walls.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No,” Rhoswen agreed. “It isn’t.”

She turned and started walking, not toward the Ashwood house, deeper into the trees, and after a moment’s hesitation Lyra followed, because it was that or stand alone in the dark with a burning mark and no answers at all.

Somewhere behind them, faint, Lyra heard something that made her stomach clench — voices, several of them, moving through the trees with purpose.

Rhoswen heard it too. Her whole posture changed, sharpened.

“Kael’s men,” she said. “Tracking your scent, probably. He’ll have sent someone the second you ran — a King doesn’t reject a bond and then just let the woman he rejected walk off into the dark unguarded. That’s not mercy, whatever he tells himself. That’s a leash with slack in it.”

“They can’t find me. I can’t—” Lyra didn’t even know what she was afraid of, exactly, only that the thought of being dragged back to that ballroom, back to those staring faces, made her wolf claw at the inside of her chest. “I can’t go back there.”

“Then don’t.” Rhoswen grabbed her wrist, surprisingly strong for someone who looked like a stiff wind might take her off her feet. “Come on. And try to walk quieter. You stomp around like a newborn calf.”

They moved fast through the dark, Rhoswen leading with the sure-footed confidence of someone who’d walked these woods a thousand times, Lyra stumbling behind her and trying not to think too hard about any of it — not the mark, not Kael’s face when he’d said the word reject, not the voices closing in through the trees behind them.

At some point Rhoswen’s hand tightened on her wrist, and the world tilted sideways.

It wasn’t like fainting. Lyra was still standing, still moving, but the forest around her had gone thin and unreal, replaced by something warmer — a small room, firelight, and a woman with Lyra’s own eyes holding a baby against her chest and singing something low and wordless.

You are not a curse, the woman said, though her lips weren’t quite moving, though the words arrived somewhere behind Lyra’s ears instead of in front of them. Whatever they tell you, whatever you become — you are not a curse. You are the last thing I did right.

The vision let go of her all at once, like a hand releasing a rope, and Lyra staggered, catching herself against a tree. Rhoswen was watching her, unsurprised, like she’d expected exactly this.

“That was her,” Lyra said, breathless. “That was my mother.”

“That was your wolf remembering something you weren’t old enough to remember on your own.” Rhoswen’s expression had gone careful, weighing something. “It’s starting faster than I thought it would. That’s not good news, for what it’s worth. It means someone else might feel it too.”

Behind them, closer now, a man’s voice called out — not angry, not threatening, just certain, the voice of someone who knew exactly what he was hunting.

“She went this way. I can smell her.”

Lyra’s blood went cold.

The voice belonged to one of Kael’s soldiers. He wasn’t sensing the bond. He was following the scent Lyra had left behind as she ran through the forest.

Rhoswen’s fingers tightened around Lyra’s wrist.

“Faster,” she whispered.

They disappeared deeper into the trees as the voices continued behind them, growing louder with every passing moment.

But somewhere far behind them, back at the ballroom, Kael stood among the people who had just witnessed him reject his true mate.

And for the first time since he had spoken the words, his composure was beginning to c***k.

The bond between them had not disappeared.

It was pulling.

And Kael could feel it.