Rejected by the Alpha I Saved, Claimed by the Lycan King

Chapter Two: The Lie Before the Hunters

The captain did not smile back.

His name was Holt. I knew it because men like him enjoyed making lesser wolves remember their names. He had once broken a Scavenger boy’s fingers for touching a saddle that had been left beside the refuse gate.

Now his pale eyes moved from my face to the ditch.

“Climb away from the edge,” he said.

I obeyed slowly. Quick movements made predators curious.

Four hunters spread behind him. Two remained human, holding silver-edged crossbows. The others paced in wolf form, their muzzles lowered to the snow.

Below us, Kael lay beneath ninety pounds of frozen rogue.

Holt lifted my lantern from my hand. “You came alone?”

“No. I brought a ballroom full of admirers. They’re shy.”

His gaze hardened.

My mouth had always been faster than my sense of self-preservation.

One of the wolves approached the ditch. I moved sideways, putting my body between him and the slope.

“Careful,” I said. “That rogue died foaming at the mouth.”

The wolf stopped.

Holt’s nostrils widened. “Disease?”

“Maybe. Or bad manners. I haven’t opened him yet.”

That was not entirely a lie. The rogue had been dead less than a day, his gray fur clotted with yellow discharge. I had planned to burn the carcass before it contaminated the drainage channel.

Holt handed my lantern to another man. “Turn him over.”

Ice settled in my stomach.

“You just heard me say he may be diseased.”

“And you heard me give an order.”

The hierarchy of the northern territories was built on orders like that. Alphas commanded Betas. Betas commanded ordinary wolves. Ordinary wolves kicked Scavengers when they wanted to feel taller.

Hollows were lower still.

I walked down the slope.

The dead rogue’s hide had shifted. A strip of Kael’s bare thigh showed beneath the fur, hard muscle streaked with blood. I dropped to my knees and pulled the carcass toward me, hiding the exposed skin with my skirt.

Kael’s heat seeped through the thin wool.

Dead bodies did not burn like that.

I placed one hand on the rogue’s shoulder and slipped the other into my coat. My fingers closed around a small clay vial.

“Well?” Holt called.

“He’s heavy.”

“You drag corpses for a living.”

“Usually the dead have the courtesy not to criticize my technique.”

I broke the vial beneath the rogue’s neck.

Rotbloom extract soaked into the fur. The stench struck a heartbeat later—sweet, swollen, and vicious enough to make my eyes water.

The nearest wolf yelped and scrambled backward. One of the human hunters gagged.

Holt swore. “What did you do?”

“Opened the swelling.” I covered my nose. “Congratulations. You were right. We should examine him closely.”

For several seconds, no one moved.

Then Kael’s heartbeat struck beneath my knee.

Once.

Twice.

Too hard.

Holt’s head tilted.

“There are two rhythms down there.”

I pressed my palm against the rogue’s stiff rib cage as if surprised. “Maggot clusters.”

“Maggots don’t have heartbeats.”

“Then perhaps your dinner is trying to escape.”

His hand closed around the hilt of his knife.

Under the carcass, something brushed the inside of my calf.

Kael’s fingers.

He was awake.

The touch should have frightened me. Instead it was strangely controlled—one slow warning against my skin, then stillness. Even half poisoned, he understood that if he moved, we both died.

Holt came down the slope.

I squeezed the last of the rotbloom from the broken vial. A greenish bubble rose from the rogue’s mouth and burst.

Holt stopped so fast his boot skidded.

“Moon rot,” I whispered.

That did it.

The hunters retreated as one. Moon rot had not appeared in the north for twelve years, but the old terror remained useful. It liquefied a wolf’s lungs and spread through breath. The symptoms looked nothing like green bubbles, but Holt had never struck me as a reader.

“Burn the ditch,” he ordered.

My relief died before it formed.

“The runoff leads to Ashfen.”

“Then your clan can dig a new channel.”

He climbed to the ridge. One hunter uncapped a tin of lamp oil.

I rose. “Lord Draven wants a body, doesn’t he?”

Holt glanced back.

“Burn this one and you’ll never know whether it belongs to the man you’re hunting.” I nodded toward the rogue. “Let me take it to the Scavenger furnace. We’ll strip it, record every mark, and send the report by dawn. If it’s your fugitive, you get proof. If it isn’t, you haven’t destroyed evidence.”

Greed and fear argued across his face.

Fear won, but only narrowly.

“Before dawn,” he said. “And if I learn you lied—”

“You’ll put me in the ditch. I know how the system works.”

He stepped close enough that the silver buckle on his belt touched my coat. “No, Hollow. I’ll put your father there first and make you carry him.”

The threat landed exactly where he intended.

I kept my face empty.

Holt took his men and vanished into the trees.

I waited until their scents thinned beneath the snow before shoving the rogue aside.

Kael sucked in air. His face had gone gray, but his eyes remained open.

“Maggot clusters?” he murmured.

“You had a better explanation?”

“Several. None so insulting.”

I hooked his arm over my shoulders. When I tried to lift him, his bare chest pressed along my side, hot enough to feel through both our clothes. He smelled of blood, smoke, and something darker—cedar split by lightning.

My body noticed.

I resented it immediately.

“How do you know my name?” I demanded.

His gaze dropped to my collar. “Your work tag is sewn inside. You turned it out when you reached for the medicine.”

I checked. A thumb’s width of brass showed beneath the wool, the letters NYLA VOSS stamped small enough that I had to hold it near a lamp to read them.

Kael had read it in a moonless ditch.

“Convenient eyes,” I said.

“Convenient lie.”

He sagged against me before I could question him further.

Getting him out of the ravine took the rest of my strength and most of my remaining patience. I loaded him beneath the rogue on my handcart, covered both bodies with a tarred sheet, and followed the old drainage road toward Ashfen.

The Scavenger tunnels appeared just before dawn: iron doors set into a hillside, smoke lifting from hidden vents. Home, if one was generous with the word.

I had almost reached the abandoned infirmary when a crossbow clicked behind me.

“Take your hands off the cart,” Garrick Voss said. “And tell me why the corpse underneath that sheet is breathing.”