A Luna for the Lycan King

Chapter 1

It was quiet … long enough that I let myself believe he wouldn’t go.

“Lissa, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Please forgive me.”

His voice was shaking. He meant it. He was sorry, and he meant every word, and I thought that meant he wasn’t going to abandon me.

Ivy took his arm.

He looked up at her.

And then he was gone.

I don’t know how long I was on that floor. Long enough for the light in the window to move across the wall and start climbing the door.

Bastian found me. He came up to report that a royal column had crossed our southern border, and instead he found his luna face down with a knife wound under her shoulder blade, in a room with an empty closet and every drawer pulled out.

The healer got willow weed into me. It didn’t cure anything. Whatever Ivy put on that blade was still working under my skin, chewing through me, and the willow weed just handed my legs back long enough to stand on them.

That was all I needed.

“How long?” I asked.

“They’re already on the road.” Bastian’s hands were shaking worse than mine. “They took the bank cards. The jewels too. Everything. What do we do?”

Noon had come and gone while I was down there. He hadn’t turned himself in. He was never going to.

There was only one answer, and I think I had known it since the letter.

I had a rider out to meet them within the hour.

The Alpha of the Quartz Pack has fled. His Luna remains. I will answer for him. I will comply with any terms you set, and in exchange, not one member of this pack will be touched.

Bastian argued with me until his voice broke. It wasn’t mine to answer for, he said, over and over, like saying it enough would make it matter.

“I know,” I told him. “But I won’t let this pack pay for what Alfred did.”

***

They came that afternoon.

They lined my pack up in the yard to be counted and labeled, and I stood in front of them and made myself watch every second of it, because that is the job of a luna. You don’t get to look away from your people.

The royal officer who opened the case wore gold plate and didn’t look at me like a person. He lifted the collar out and held it up so the whole pack could see it first. Silver links, with a leash hanging off the front of it.

“You understand what this is, Luna?”

“I understand exactly what it is.”

I lifted my hair off the back of my neck.

The lock closed with a small, tidy sound, and the burning started right away. I didn’t make a sound, because everyone I had sworn to protect was standing there watching, and they needed to see that it didn’t break me.

Then they made us wait.

Maybe that was strategy. Maybe the Lycan King simply didn’t think we were worth hurrying for. Either way, the sun dropped lower and the silver kept burning. Out of all of us, I was the only one in chains.

Soldiers walked the rows with clipboards. That was the part that got to me. Not the collar. The clipboards. Every one of them had a name and a home and people who loved them, and now they were numbers on a page because their alpha ran.

“My luna, you did what you had to do,” Bastian whispered next to me. He had every reason in the world to be down in that line with everyone else. Instead, he had planted himself at my shoulder like a man who intended to be buried there.

“I’m not your luna anymore, Bastian. Just call me Allissa.”

His hands balled into fists. “I wish I could take it off you.”

“I agreed to this. Nobody gets touched as long as I comply.” I bit back the tears before they got out. “If that b***h hadn’t poisoned me, I could have protected all of you.”

“You didn’t do anything.”

“Neither did they.” I nodded at the rows.

He didn’t have an answer for that, because there isn’t one.

Everybody knows the stories about the Lycan King. He took the crown young. He tore a man apart in his own throne room for lying to him. He put down an entire pack’s leadership over a border dispute and never held a single trial to do it. He has never taken a mate, and there are people who say that is exactly what is wrong with him.

Every version of every story agrees on one thing. Darren Weston does not listen.

And I was going to be standing in front of him on a leash.

Fine. Let them look.

I glanced back over the rows and I could see the sorrow on their faces, tears on more than a few. By now they all knew what Alfred had done and what I was doing about it. None of us knew how this ended. Would he have me killed before I got a word out? Would I be sent down to the mines?

“You! Get in line, away from the prisoner!”

Another officer, and he was yelling at Bastian.

Bastian didn’t move. That was when I understood he was going to get himself killed over me.

“Go, Bastian. With the alpha gone and … no heir …” My breath caught on it. “You’ll have to lead them. Don’t let me down.”

I gave him a smile that didn’t reach anywhere.

“Luna—”

“That is an order.”

It took him longer than any order I had ever given him. Then he turned and took his place in the line with the rest of them.

Then I was alone in the middle of that yard.

I stood there, head held high despite the weight of the silver collar pressing down on me. I braced myself for the arrival of the Lycan King. I felt his presence before I saw him. A commanding aura pressed against my weakened body, but I refused to fall. With every ounce of strength I had left, I kept myself upright and chin up. I had done nothing wrong.

Every lycan in that yard dropped their eyes at once. I heard it happen behind me, a whole pack looking at the ground in one motion.

The warm, sweet fragrance of cinnamon wafted through the air, awakening my lycan inside. My senses sparked as I recognized the scent of my mate. My heart raced as I frantically searched among the royal guards, trying to pinpoint the source. The tantalizing aroma grew stronger. It was a scent I had never encountered before, but it felt strangely familiar. Almost like my soul knew it.

No. Not now. Not today, of all the days of my life.

Then, my eyes landed on the source, his green eyes locking onto mine as he walked directly toward me. His face was taut, and there was an unforgiving look in his eyes. His lips curled up angrily as my lips parted slightly in shock.

Oh no, the Lycan King was my mate, and he did not look happy.