Sacrifice to the Cursed Alpha King

Chapter One

Ivy.

The rotten tomato hit my shoulder before I even saw who threw it.

“Traitor's daughter!” someone shouted, and the crowd near the well laughed, the sound sharp and bright like breaking glass. I didn't turn to look. I'd learned years ago that turning only gave them a face to aim at.

I kept walking, my basket of laundry balanced on my hip, the wet linen smell mixing with the sourness now soaking into my sleeve. Frostbite pack territory stretched wide and green around me, mountains dusted with the last of the snow, and not one inch of it had ever felt like mine.

“Ivy Winslow.” Old Maddoc spat at my feet as I passed his stall. “Your parents sold us out to save their own skins. Don't know why the Alpha lets you draw breath.”

I know why, I thought. Because Vincent asked him to.

That thought was the only warm thing I let myself hold onto most days. I clutched it now, the way I'd clutch it every time someone reminded me what I was born from. A weak omega. A wolfless girl at nineteen, when every other pup my age had shifted years ago. The daughter of two dead traitors nobody would let me mourn properly, because mourning them meant admitting they'd once been loved.

I reached the creek at the edge of the training grounds and knelt to rinse my sleeve, watching the tomato pulp bleed pink into the water. My reflection stared back, pale and tired, eyes a shade of grey too light to belong to anyone from this pack. Mother's eyes. I'd been told that once, by a healer who'd known her, before the woman remembered herself and turned cold.

“You missed a spot.”

I startled, nearly losing my footing on the bank, and looked up to find Vincent crouched beside me, sunlight catching gold in his hair. He dipped his own sleeve in the water without asking and dabbed carelessly at the stain on my shoulder like it was nothing. Like I was nothing to be ashamed of touching.

“You shouldn't,” I said, glancing past him toward the training yard, where a cluster of warriors had paused their sparring to watch us. “Your father—”

“My father isn't here.” He said it lightly, but there was a flicker behind his eyes, gone before I could name it. “Come on. Get up before Maddoc decides round two.”

I let him pull me to my feet. His hand was warm, calloused from fighting with so many swords, and he held onto mine a beat longer than he needed to before letting go, tucking his hands into his pockets like he hadn't noticed. I noticed. I noticed everything about Vincent, had noticed for years, the way you notice the one fire in a house gone cold.

“We are finally going to meet her tonight,” he said, falling into step beside me as we walked away from the creek and the stares. “She's going to be beautiful,” I didn't miss the excitement in his voice.

My stomach tightened. Tonight was the full moon assembly, when every unshifted pup my age or younger would stand in the circle and wait to see if their wolf finally woke. I'd stood in that circle four times already. Four times I'd waited, breath held, humiliation blooming hotter each year I remained empty inside, wolfless, while the pack watched and smirked and whispered that the traitors' daughter probably didn't deserve a wolf at all.

“I'm not going,” I said.

Vincent stopped walking. “Ivy.”

“Don't.” I kept my eyes forward. “I can't do it again, Ash. I can't stand in that circle and feel everyone waiting for me to fail.”

He caught my wrist gently, turning me to face him. Up close, his eyes were the warm brown I'd memorized since we were children playing at the edge of these woods, back when neither of us understood what the world would demand of us. Back when he was just the Alpha's son who shared his bread with the girl nobody else would sit beside.

“You won't fail,” he said. “And even if your wolf never comes, that changes nothing between us. You know that.”

I wanted so badly to believe him that I let myself, the way I always did, folding the words up small and pressing them against my chest like a coal that might, someday, catch. “You always say that.”

“Because it's true every time I say it.” His thumb brushed once over my knuckles, an absent little gesture that undid something in me every single time. “I have training. I'll see you tonight. Front row, so you know at least one person there wants you to succeed.”

He left before I could answer, jogging back toward the yard where Beta Silas waited with crossed arms and an expression I couldn't read from this distance. I watched Ashford go, watched the easy way he moved through a world that had never once looked at him like he owed it an apology for existing, and I told myself, again, that whatever this ache in my chest was, it wasn't foolishness. It was hope. There was a difference. I needed there to be a difference.

*

*

*

The gathering circle was lit with torches by the time full dark fell, the whole pack pressed shoulder to shoulder around its edge, murmuring, waiting. I stood among the dozen or so pups still unshifted, all of them younger than me, all of them throwing me sideways looks that made my skin crawl.

Alpha Ethan Laurent sat on the raised dais at the circle's head, his face carved from the same cold stone as always. Vincent stood at his father's right, exactly where he'd promised, and when our eyes met across the fire he gave me the smallest nod. Front row. He'd kept his word.

One by one, the younger pups stepped forward, closed their eyes, and reached for the wolf inside them. One by one, something in the air shifted when it worked, a ripple of pack magic that raised the hair on my arms even as an outsider to it. Cheers. Relief. Parents pulling children into their arms.

Then it was my turn.

The whispers rose the moment I stepped into the firelight. I closed my eyes anyway, the way I'd done four times before, and reached inward toward the place where a wolf was supposed to live, expecting the same aching emptiness I always found there.

Instead, something answered.

A strange sensation unfurled deep inside me, so sudden it stole the breath from my lungs. It began as a faint flutter beneath my ribs before spreading through every inch of my body, warm and electric, like countless tiny sparks racing beneath my skin. My heart pounded violently against my chest, each beat stronger than the last, and an unfamiliar energy coursed through my veins.

This was it.

This was exactly how every newly awakened werewolf described the beginning of their First Shift.

My pulse quickened with hope as I braced myself for the pain that was supposed to follow—the snapping of bones, the stretching of muscles, the birth of the wolf I'd waited years to meet.

But it never came.

The warmth lingered for one suspended moment, teasing me with the promise of something more, before slowly ebbing away until only the frantic beating of my heart remained.

I waited.

So did everyone else.

Seconds stretched into what felt like an eternity, yet nothing changed. My bones remained intact, my body unchanged, and the wolf I had spent years longing for never emerged.

A murmur swept through the crowd.

“Did it stop?”

“What's happening?”

“Did her First Shift fail?”

I barely heard them.

Disappointment settled heavily in my chest, threatening to smother the hope that had flared only moments ago.

Then it came.

A scent.

It threaded through the smoke, the pine trees, and the earthy smell of nearly two hundred wolves gathered around the ceremonial grounds. It was unlike anything I had ever smelled before—rich, intoxicating, and impossible to ignore. Every other scent faded into the background as though the Moon Goddess herself had plucked this one from the air and placed it beneath my nose.

My heart lurched.

The pull yanked me around before I'd decided to move, my whole body turning toward it like a compass needle finding north, and my heart was slamming so hard I could feel it in my throat as my eyes found him across the fire.

Vincent.

A sob of pure, disbelieving joy tore out of me before I could stop it. It was him. It had always been him, some part of me had always known it would be him, and I was already moving, already pushing through the crowd toward the dais with my hand outstretched, my mouth shaping the word I'd waited my whole life to say.

His eyes found mine as I broke free of the crowd, and for one perfect, suspended heartbeat, he smiled.