Too Irresistible For The Lycan King

CHAPTER 3 : Framed

Wren’s POV

“Luna Wren doesn’t live here anymore,” the head maid said, dropping a stack of dirty linens into my arms.

“Just Wren now, get used to it.”

I got used to it fast, I had to.

Two weeks passed, and my hands, hands that once wore his ring, now scrubbed floors until my knuckles cracked open.

I carried water buckets up four flights of stairs and I knelt in the kitchen garden pulling weeds until my back screamed.

Nobody called me Luna anymore, nobody looked at me at all, except to point out what I had done wrong.

“You missed a spot,” Isolde said one morning, standing in the doorway of the laundry room like she owned the air I breathed.

She probably thought she did.

I didn’t look up from the shirt I was scrubbing.

“Good morning to you too.”

“Careful with that tone.” She stepped closer, her boots clicked against the stone floor and each step was slow and deliberate.

It was like she wanted me to feel her getting closer.

“You’re a servant now. Servants who talk back don’t last long here.”

“Is there something you need, Isolde?”

“Corvin needs his ceremonial robes cleaned by tonight. Perfectly cleaned. He has a meeting with the border patrol.”

She smiled, and it was the kind of smile that made my skin crawl.

“I would do it myself, but that’s what we have you for, isn’t it?

Since you’re so good at cleaning up messes that aren’t yours.”

I bit back everything I wanted to say and took the robes from her hands.

But she didn’t leave right away, she lingered, watching me work, like my humiliation was entertainment to her.

“You know,” she said softly.

“I almost feel sorry for you. Almost. You really thought one night would change anything. That’s sweet, in a sad sort of way.”

My hands were still on the fabric. “Was there a point to this visit?”

“The point,” she said, leaning in close enough that I could smell her perfume.

“is that Corvin is mine, he was always mine. You were a debt he had to pay, and now the debt is paid, and you’re nothing.

So do yourself a favor and remember your place before you embarrass yourself further.”

She then left before I could answer, and I stood there gripping the robes so tight my knuckles turned white, my chest burning with something I refused to name.

Not tears, I wouldn’t give her tears.

That night, I heard the alarm horn before I understood what it meant.

I ran out into the courtyard with the other servants, and the whole pack was gathering near the sacred grove, where the old protection stone sat.

The one Corvin’s grandfather blessed generations ago, the one that kept enemy wolves from finding our borders in the dark.

Warriors surrounded it, torches lifted high, and faces grimmed.

The stone was broken, split clean in half, it was like something struck it with terrible force.

“Who did this?” Corvin’s voice cut through the crowd, it was sharp with fury I had never heard directed at anyone but enemies.

He stood at the center, staring at the shattered stone like it was a wound in his own chest.

Nobody answered and then a warrior knelt beside the broken pieces and went still.

“Alpha. There’s blood here.”

My stomach dropped before I even understood why.

“Whose blood?” Corvin demanded.

The warrior lifted something from the ground, a torn scrap of pale fabric.

I recognized it instantly because it matched the bandage I had been wearing on my palm since I cut it on a broken plate two days ago.

“It’s mine,” someone said behind me, and I realized with horror the voice was Isolde’s, it was loud enough for the whole courtyard to hear.

“That’s Wren’s bandage. I gave her that fabric myself, from the medical stores, I remember the pattern.”

Every face turned toward me and my mouth went dry.

“That’s impossible,” I said. “I haven’t been anywhere near the grove. I have been in the laundry room all day, ask anyone…”

“She’s angry about the divorce,” someone murmured in the crowd. “Everyone knows it.”

“She always did look at the Alpha strange,” another voice added. “Like she resented all of us.”

“I didn’t do this,” I said, louder now, panic climbed up my throat.

“Corvin, please, you know me. You know I would never…”

“Do I?” His voice was quiet, but it landed harder than a shout.

He looked at me, and I searched his face for any piece of the man who held me that night, who whispered my name like it was precious, and I found nothing there but a stranger’s cold judgment.

“A year ago I would have said I knew you, Wren. But I also thought I knew what that night meant to you. Maybe I was wrong about both.”

“Corvin, I swear to you…”

“Take her to the dungeon,” he said, turning away before I even finished speaking, like he couldn't stand to look at me a second longer.

“Until we determine what she’s done.”

“No, please, Corvin, listen to me!”

But the guards were already moving, hands closing around my arms, dragging me back from the broken stone.

Back from the crowd whispering my name like a curse, back from Isolde, who watched me went with her arms folded and the smallest, satisfied curve at the corner of her mouth. Nobody else saw it, only me.

She did this.

The thought hit me like ice water, but I had no proof, no voice loud enough to be heard over an entire pack that has already decided who I was.

The dungeon door slammed shut behind me, and the sound echoed through my whole body.

I sank to the cold stone floor, and wrapped my arms around my knees.

And for the first time since I signed that divorce paper, I let myself cry, ugly, silent sobs that shook my whole body, because there was no one left to see me and pretend to care.

Hours passed, maybe a full day, I lost track of time in the dark.

Then I heard it, faint at first, drifting down through the small barred window near the ceiling of my cell.

Voices, laughter and the sound of something being built, hammering, wood dragged across stone, excited chattered carrying on the night air.

“Only two days until the Moon Ceremony,” I heard a guard said outside my window, and his voice was bright with excitement.

“My whole family is coming to watch. Imagine, finding out who your true mate is, right there in front of everyone.”

Another voice laughed.

“I heard the Alpha himself will stand at the flame this year. Now that Isolde’s back, everyone wants to see the bond confirmed properly, in front of all the visiting packs.”

My whole body went still in the dark.

The Moon Ceremony, where the ancestral flame revealed every wolf’s true mate for the entire world to see.

And I was locked in a cell with no idea, none at all, what that flame was going to show when it looked at me.