The Lycan King's Discarded Bride

#3

Lucian.

The elders had grown bold in their demands.

For the past six months they had filled my halls with suggestions, lists, and carefully chosen daughters from every allied bloodline that still mattered.

They spoke of stability, of heirs, of the future of the Lycan throne as if I were a stud horse they could simply assign a mare to.

The last meeting had ended with a clear threat dressed as concern: find a bride by the next full moon, or the council would select one for me and present her as a necessity rather than a choice.

I had no intention of accepting their choice.

A political wife would mean weakness. Endless negotiations and smiling through obligations I had no interest in fulfilling.

I had ruled alone for years and I would continue to do so until I found a reason not to.

So when the formal invitation to Faelen Blackwood’s wedding arrived, I accepted.

The young Alpha of the rival pack was ambitious, untested, and about to bind himself publicly.

Watching the ceremony would tell me everything I needed to know about how fragile his new reign would be.

I sat in the back of the black car, watching the forest blur past the tinted windows, already impatient for the day to end.

My driver knew better than to speak. The only sound was the low, expensive hum of the engine and the occasional shift of my own restless thoughts.

Then I saw her.

A flash of white against the dark trees. A woman running barefoot down the private road that led away from the Blackwood pack hall.

The long wedding gown trailed behind her, already dirty and torn at the hem. Her dark hair was wild, streaming behind her like a banner of defeat.

“Stop the car.”

I opened the door myself and stepped out before the driver could reach for the handle.

I recognized her immediately.

Selena Voss.

The girl Faelen Blackwood was supposed to marry within the hour. I had seen her photograph once, months ago, during a briefing on Blackwood’s potential weaknesses.

She had looked composed then. Polished and unforgettable.

Mascara streaked down her cheeks in dark rivers. Her lipstick was smeared. Dirt and small cuts marked her bare feet and the hem of the dress.

She was ruined in every visible way. And still, somehow, she was striking. There was something raw in her expression, something unbroken beneath the devastation, that held my attention longer than it should have.

I walked toward her without hurry. She did not retreat. She simply stood there, trembling, watching me approach with the wary stillness of a wounded creature deciding whether the new threat was worse than the one she had just escaped.

When I reached her, I caught her chin between my fingers and tilted her face upward.

Her skin was hot. Tear tracks cut clean paths through the ruined makeup. A thin cut on her lower lip had already begun to dry.

Up close, the damage only made the underlying beauty more apparent. It was inconvenient. I did not have time for inconvenient things.

Something dark and immediate settled behind my ribs.

Call me ruthless, a monster, destruction. One thing I would never do is hurt a woman. That was the limit to my humanity.

I couldn't tolerate that— and men who treated women like filth. Apparently, Faelen was also a scumbag like that.

I did not like the idea of her belonging to Faelen Blackwood...He definitely didn't deserve her.

“You’re mine,” I said looking into her eyes.

My wolf—silent for more than a decade, buried so deeply I had begun to believe it would never surface again—slammed against the confines of my control with a force that nearly drove the air from my lungs.

It rose roaring, recognizing what my human mind had only begun to process.

The mate bond locked into place with brutal precision, a living wire of need and possession that connected me to the broken girl in front of me.

Her eyes widened. Pupils blown. Breath caught. She felt it too. I watched the exact second the truth reached her.

My fangs lengthened without permission. Every sense sharpened to a razor edge. The scent of her—salt from tears, iron from the cuts on her feet, something sweet and shattered underneath—flooded my lungs and made coherent thought difficult.

I wanted to drag her against me. I wanted to bury my teeth in the unmarked column of her throat and finish what the bond had started. I wanted to erase every trace of the man who had sent her running.

I took a step back instead.

Distance was necessary. Control was everything. I had not built my reputation, my territory, or my power by giving in to instinct the moment it screamed for something.

She did not allow the distance to remain.

She stepped forward before I could retreat further, caught my wrist with surprising strength, and pressed my palm flat against her cheek.

Her skin was fever-hot beneath my hand. Tears wet my fingers. She held me there, eyes locked on mine.

“Do it.”

I did not ask if she understood what she was offering. I did not offer comfort, explanations, or promises.

Those words were all I needed.

One arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her flush against me, the hold protective and possessive in equal measure.

My other hand slid into her tangled hair, pushing the dark strands aside to bare the clean, unmarked skin of her throat.

I lowered my head and inhaled once—deeply, greedily—letting her scent brand itself into the most primitive part of me.

Then I bit.

Blood welled, hot and bright against my tongue. The bond roared through both of us, violent and complete, rewriting something fundamental in the space between heartbeats.

She made a small, broken sound, but her fingers only tightened in the front of my suit.

She did not pull away. She held on while I claimed what the bond had already decided was mine.

When I finally lifted my head, her blood was on my lips and the mark on her neck was already beginning to close under the slow pass of my tongue.

She trembled in my arms. I did not.

I stared down at the girl I had just bound to me for life and felt something dark and deeply satisfied uncoil in my chest.

The elders wanted me to take a bride.

They would get one.

Just not the obedient, carefully selected creature they had imagined.

They would get the ruined girl who had looked me in the eye while blood ran down her throat and told me to finish what I started.

She suddenly collapsed in my arms, the weight of her small petite figure crashing on me. I stare at her.

Faelen Blackwood had thrown away something that now belonged to me.

I intended to make certain he regretted it for the rest of his short, insignificant life.