Rejected By My Mate, Chosen By The Lycan King

The mirror in Lyra's chamber had seen more of her secrets than any living soul. She sat before it, one shoulder bared to the candlelight. Her fingertips traced the faint, jagged scars crossing her shoulder blade. The marks were old, older than memory. They had been there since she was eight. Her mother had wept the first time she'd seen them. Her father had only told her to keep them covered, in the same nonchalant tone he would use to tell a servant to sweep the floor. Some daughters inherit kingdoms, she thought. I inherited a secret nobody would explain to me. She reached for the pot of heavy cream powder Greta had specially mixed to hide the marks and began applying it carefully to her throat, collarbone, and the curve of her shoulder. Layer after layer, she covered the scars until they vanished beneath ordinary skin, as though they had never been there. Greta soon arrived to help her dress and lace her into the pale blue ceremony gown her father had insisted she wear. There had been no other option. Lyra looked into the mirror again. There was nothing left to suggest she was anything other than what the world expected her to be: unremarkable, unclaimed, and unawakened. "You look lovely, my lady." Greta's hands paused at Lyra's shoulder a moment too long. Then she straightened Lyra's sleeve, smoothing it twice more than necessary. "I look ready," Lyra said. "That's all that matters today." Greta's voice dropped to almost nothing. "You matter more than today, child. No matter what anyone tells you." Then, as though frightened by her own words, she busied herself with a pin that didn't need adjusting. Somewhere down in the courtyard, the first ceremonial bell rang out, a single low note testing the air. Her father was waiting in the east study. He did not rise, and he did not look up when she entered. Duke Cassian Ashbourne had once been every lady's dream man, and even now he was undeniably handsome. But age had hardened that handsomeness into something colder. He measured everyone by the value they could bring him. "You're late." "I'm still early, Father. The ceremony isn't until midday." "It does not matter how early you are. You're still late if you're not here by the time I need you." He set down his pen. His eyes moved over her the way a merchant's eyes moved over livestock, assessing her worth and calculating her price. "Sit." She sat, and for one unguarded second she was six years old again, reaching for his hand across this same desk before she'd learned that his hands were never reaching back. He didn't explain what today was. He didn't need to. "If no bond forms today," he said, "you will no longer be an Ashbourne. Alpha Draven has already agreed to take you." A chill ran through her body, raising goosebumps along her skin. Everyone in the pack and beyond knew who Alpha Draven was. Everyone knew about the two wives he'd buried in the same season he married them. "I am not a bargaining chip," she said. Her father's mouth curved into a smirk, almost a smile. "There has never been a difference." Lyra said nothing. She had learned long ago that silence was the only answer he couldn't use against her. He returned to his ledgers, silently dismissing her. A second bell rang out beyond the windows, closer this time. Somewhere in the halls above, servants and guards hurried through the estate, making their final preparations before midday. She found Selene in the corridor outside the west hall, cursing at the stubborn clasp of her own gown while servants rushed past with arms full of silver ribbons and candle wax. They rarely found themselves alone like this. Lyra could still dimly remember a time when they had been the closest of sisters, before their father decided it was safer to keep them apart. He had convinced everyone that Lyra's dormant wolf, or perhaps her lack of one altogether, might somehow affect Selene's own awakening. "Let me." Lyra crossed the distance before Selene could refuse, gently working the clasp free. Selene went still beneath her hands, unsure of how to react. "You didn't have to do that." "I know." "I wasn't going to thank you." "I know that too." Something flickered across Selene's face, almost like guilt, but it disappeared as quickly as it came. "Lucien Thorn's party arrived an hour ago," Selene said instead, smoothing her skirts without quite meeting Lyra's eyes. "Father's already fawning over him like a prize hound." Lyra's stomach tightened at the name of the Alpha the entire Council expected to claim her... or reject her... before the sun set. "Then I suppose I'll meet him soon enough." The thought made her chest tighten. If Alpha Lucien rejected her, her father would hand her over to Alpha Draven without a second thought. "You'll need more luck than I will," Selene said, then swept toward the hall. Lyra watched her go and told herself the ache in her chest didn't mean anything. A passing servant girl slowed just long enough to whisper to another, "They say the Lycan King killed an entire pack last winter because someone said the wrong word in his presence." The other girl shuddered and hurried away. Lyra caught only that much before continuing on her way. The Lycan King was nothing more than a monster beyond the border, spoken of the way children whispered about monsters lurking beneath their beds. She had no reason to think of him again. She was wrong. --- The Ceremonial Hall was vast, glass-domed, and built so the Moon's light could pour down like something poured from a cup. Lyra had no attention left for ceilings. Her focus was fixed on the crowd gathered beneath them: Alphas and their sons, the Council seated in high silver chairs, and nobles who hadn't come to witness a miracle, but to watch for a failure. A third bell tolled, deep and final. There would be no more warnings after this one. Backstage, in the narrow antechamber where the unmated girls waited their turn, Lyra pressed a hand flat against her stomach and breathed until the trembling in her fingers slowed. That was when the burning started. Between her shoulder blades, exactly where the old scars lay hidden, a warmth bloomed, pulsing in a slow, deliberate rhythm. Like something knocking patiently from the inside. She pressed her back against the cool stone wall, hoping to ease the heat before anyone noticed. The warmth didn't fade. Instead, it pulsed again. In eleven years, the marks had never so much as tingled. They had simply existed, with no explanation. They had never, not once, felt like something waking up. Why now? she thought, her pulse hammering. Why today, of all days— "Lyra Ashbourne." The High Priestess's voice rang out across the hall. Every murmur in the crowd died into a terrible, expectant silence. Lyra's whole body went cold as the marks beneath her skin came alive. Her name echoed a second time, sharper and more impatient. Lyra stepped out from behind the curtain and into the full silver light of the dome. Her heart pounded like a war drum as she crossed toward the dais, careful to keep her spine straight, her chin level, her face unreadable. Halfway there, she heard a ripple of whispers, low and quick, moving through the front rows like wind through wheat. She didn't dare turn her head. "Did you see that?" someone murmured. "See what?" "Just there — on her shoulder. I could have sworn—" "It was the light. The dome does strange things with the moon." "I suppose. Still. For a second I thought—" The whispers died as fast as they'd risen, swallowed by the hush of the ceremony resuming around her. Lyra glanced down at her own shoulder, heart in her throat. Nothing. No glow, no mark. Only pale skin and pale silk, exactly as she'd left it that morning. Had I imagined it? But the heat beneath her skin hadn't imagined anything. It was still there, low and insistent, pulsing in time with her own frightened heartbeat. She lifted her eyes to the dais, and found the High Priestess already watching her. Not the serene, distant gaze the woman wore for the crowd. Something sharper that showed that something had, for one unguarded instant, slipped entirely out of her control. "Impossible," the High Priestess breathed, so quietly that Lyra almost didn't catch it at all. Then, before Lyra could be certain she'd heard it right, the High Priestess's expression smoothed back into perfect calm, as though nothing had happened, as though the last five seconds had never existed. "Come forward, child," the High Priestess said, her voice warm and even and utterly unreadable. "The Moon is waiting." Lyra's legs carried her forward on their own, her mind still snagging on that single whispered word, on the flicker of something like fear in the High Priestess's eyes, fear not of her, Lyra understood with a cold and sudden certainty, but for her. She had no idea why. And she was about to step directly into the one place in the world where that question could get her killed.