He rejected me to save his pack. Now I'm his Lycan Queen. He wants me back. I choose his enemy.

The pack house reeked of blood and cheap whiskey. Not mine. Not yet. I stood in the center of the great hall, barefoot on cold stone, wearing the white dress they’d forced on me. Ceremony dress. Sacrifice dress. The elders called it “tradition.” I called it a shroud. Five hundred wolves watched. None of them met my eyes. Except him. Alpha Kieran Blackwood sat on the obsidian throne, jaw locked, knuckles white on the armrests. My mate. My Alpha. The boy who taught me to climb trees and promised me the moon when we were seven. Now he looked at me like I was a corpse he had to bury before it stank. “Lyra Nightshade,” Elder Marrow’s voice cracked through the hall. “You stand accused of treason against the Blackwood Pack.” I didn’t flinch. I’d stopped flinching three days ago when they dragged me from my bed in chains. “The sentence for treason,” Marrow continued, “is death. But our Alpha is merciful.” Merciful. I almost laughed. Kieran stood. Every wolf in the hall dropped their gaze. Every wolf except me. I stared straight into those winter-gray eyes and dared him to do it. “I, Alpha Kieran Blackwood,” his voice was iron, “reject you, Lyra Nightshade, as my mate. You are banished from these lands. If you return, your life is forfeit.” The bond snapped. It wasn’t clean. Wasn’t quick. It felt like someone reached into my chest, grabbed my ribs, and tore. I hit my knees. The stone bit through the thin dress. Someone gasped. Someone else whispered “pathetic.” I didn’t scream. I wouldn’t give them that. I forced myself up. One foot. Then the other. My vision swam. My wolf was howling, clawing to get to him, to beg. I shoved her down and locked her away. Kieran didn’t move. Didn’t help me. Didn’t speak again. His Beta, Dorian, stepped forward with a leather pack and threw it at my feet. “Three days’ food. A knife. Don’t come back.” I picked up the pack. My hands weren’t shaking. That surprised me. I turned my back on the throne. On the pack. On him. “Lyra.” His voice stopped me at the great doors. For one stupid second, hope flared. I didn’t turn. “What, Alpha?” A pause. Then, cold as the stone under my feet: “The rogue lands are east. You’ll last a week.” That was it. No “I’m sorry.” No “I had no choice.” Just an estimate of my death. I walked out. The doors slammed behind me. The sound echoed like a grave closing. Three years later. The rogue lands hadn’t killed me. They’d tried. Starvation first. Then winter. Then the feral packs that roamed the border, wolves who’d lost their minds to bloodlust. I killed the first one with the knife Dorian gave me. Took his coat. His kill. His warning. I stopped being Lyra Nightshade that winter. Stopped being mate, stopped being pack, stopped being prey. Now I was something else. “Queen.” The voice came from the treeline. I didn’t turn. I was standing on the cliff overlooking the valley, watching the fires spread. My fires. “They’re calling you Queen now,” the voice said again. Rhys. My second. The first rogue who didn’t try to kill me. The first who knelt instead. “Let them,” I said. Below us, the Silverfang Pack’s territory burned. Their Alpha had thought he could raid my camps. Thought a woman with no pack was easy meat. He thought wrong. His head was on a pike at the border. His wolves were mine now.