By the fifteenth lash, her whole body shook uncontrollably, and warm blood soaked through her dress. Perhaps death would be kinder than giving in.

“I refuse it,” she said through clenched teeth. “I know the King wants your heir, and I am not that heir. If you force me, I will tell him you are only deceiving him.”

It became a silent battle of wills, his against hers. She refused to let him take the last thing she still owned without a fight. By the tenth lash, she was sobbing openly, tears streaming down her face, but she would not break. Her back felt as though it were on fire.

“Get the pack doctor to fix her up. I need her to be in good shape until King Derek Wolfe arrives tomorrow. And keep a strict eye on the wildcat’s cell. I do not want her missing before her marriage tomorrow.”

“Chloe will sit on this throne,” Lydia continued, smoothing the front of her dress with one hand. “Nothing and no one is going to stop that.”

King Derek Wolfe was not a name that came with comfort attached to it. He was the reason entire werewolf packs had abandoned their lands and fled to human territories, the reason mothers pulled their children inside when rumours of Lycan movement spread through a region.

Kira sat at the dresser, spine straight, hands folded in her lap. She looked at her own reflection and thought about how little of herself she recognised right now. One tear gathered at the corner of her eye. Lydia caught it immediately and stepped closer.

And now he wanted to secure that peace through marriage. Through the Moonfang heir.

Her father met her outburst with a flat, emotionless stare. “It is not a topic for discussion.”

She turned to the omegas waiting in the doorway and gestured. “Bring her.”

On the twentieth lash, her voice cracked, barely more than a whisper through tears and exhaustion.

The walk to the grand hall felt like a march to the gallows. Every step made the wounds on Kira’s back flare with pain, the lace of the dress rubbing against the raw welts. She was going to die so young in a foreign land, she was sure of it.

“Yes, Alpha,” one of the gammas answered.

“The King has arrived,” he said.

***

“I will marry him,” she whispered, the words so faint they were almost lost in the damp air of the cell.

It was him.

The words cut deeper than any slap ever could. She wanted to scream that she hadn’t asked to be born, hadn’t asked for her mother to die bringing her into the world. But she didn’t get the chance.

“Bring her,” Lydia said.

Kira had no interest in the Moonfang throne.

“You will marry the King,” he said. His voice was unsettlingly gentle, as if he were merely asking her to pass the salt.

He turned and walked out of the cell without another look. She heard his voice through the bars, speaking to the gammas outside.

“I will not marry him,” she answered, holding on to her defiance with everything she had left.

It didn’t add up. A man like Derek Wolfe did not make political gestures. He made moves. There was something underneath this arrangement that she couldn’t see yet, and that frightened her more than the man himself.

Kira was pulled from sleep by the sound of the bolt sliding back.

“What? No! Why?” Kira’s voice rose in a frantic pitch as the gammas seized her arms.

They dragged her through the corridors like a common criminal while the pack watched in silence. Her father followed at a calm, unhurried pace.

“What is so difficult to obey?” her father hissed, frustration sharpening his tone.

Now, even that dream seemed thwarted. She thought about what waited for her in Lycan territory, and her stomach turned.

“Get up,” Lydia said, already moving toward the door. “And make sure you do not disgrace your father in that room. I hope those Lycans do what we never managed to and clip those wild wings of yours.”

A sharp knock at the door pulled her out of her thoughts. A gamma stepped in and bowed his head.

Once they reached the cold stone cells beneath the pack house, he ordered the gammas to bind her face down to a rough wooden bench. Then he calmly took a long leather whip from the wall.

She had never imagined being forced into an arranged marriage. It was so bitterly unfair.

“Don’t you dare,” Lydia warned. “Do not let that tear fall and ruin your makeup. If you give that King even one reason to question this arrangement, I will strangle you myself. Do you understand me?”

All her life, she had dreamed of finding a true mate, someone who would love her the way she had never been loved as a child.

The two years of fragile peace between their kinds had felt like borrowed time to most people, and apparently it was.

He raised the whip again, clearly prepared to continue until she either agreed or stopped breathing. In that moment, something inside her gave way.

Two of them swept into the room, muscles tense and ready for his command. “Take her to the dungeons,” Rolf commanded, turning his back on her as if she were already gone.

Kira’s heart lurched hard against her ribs. Her hands, folded so carefully in her lap, had gone cold and damp.

He let the whip fall to the floor with a dull thud. “Shouldn’t have taken you this long,” he snarled. “Now listen. You are my heir, and you are not forced into this. You understand the price for peace, and you are willing to pay it for your people. Do you understand?”

She wanted to grab the woman by her perfect hair and scream “liar” right in her face, but she held herself still. Too much was at stake.

Ever since the death of their former king, King Maurice, who had tried so hard to bring werewolves and Lycans together, the Lycans had turned colder than ever.

The omegas moved in immediately, taking Kira by both arms. She was too exhausted to fight them. Every muscle in her body ached, and her back was a map of pain from the whip, so she let them drag her out of the cell and up into the main packhouse without resistance.

“What?!” Kira burst out before she could stop the word from escaping. Over her dead body.

When they were done, they dressed her in a beige lace gown that was far too beautiful for the occasion, and Luna Lydia dismissed them with a flick of her wrist. Then, the pack doctor came in and dressed her wounds again.

“You dare defy me?” he snarled. “Your father and your Alpha? For twenty years, I have suffered the affliction of your existence. I will suffer no more.”

“Gammas!” Rolf barked.

The cell gate squeaked open as her father’s footsteps faded down the corridor. She heard the gamma bolting her cell gate and pressed the lock.

Then, her eyes adjusted to the Lycans sitting on the opposite side of the room. Her breath caught in her throat. Her heart stopped, then restarted violently.

When the gammas finally pushed open the heavy double doors, Luna Lydia let out loud, dramatic sobs that scraped against Kira’s already raw nerves.

The next day…

Kira said nothing. She had stopped reacting to Lydia’s ill-treatment a long time ago, and she saw no reason to start now.

The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth as her teeth sliced into the side of her tongue.

She opened one eye. Luna Lydia stood in the doorway of the dungeon cell, immaculate as always, with a small group of omegas fanned out behind her like obedient shadows.

All she had ever wanted was to finish her degree at Aethelwulf Centralis University and marry Scott, the love of her life, probably leave this pack behind for good, and build something small and quiet and entirely their own somewhere that her father’s shadow couldn’t reach.

Fury flashed in his eyes like lightning. He closed the distance between them in one swift motion and struck her with the back of his hand.

He had spent years raiding packs, burning homes, and reminding werewolves exactly where they stood in his estimation.

They took her to her old room, filled the tub, and washed her. The warm water found every welt on her back and made them sing. Kira pressed her lips together and breathed through it, refusing to make a sound, refusing to give any of them the satisfaction.

That man was King Derek Wolfe?

Suspicion had replaced trust. Hatred had grown deep roots. They barely tolerated werewolves, even at Aethelwulf Centralis University, the one place that was supposed to be neutral ground.

Then, Scott had come into her life, and fulfilled that dream, or so she had thought.

Tears burned at the corners of her eyes. He had already stripped her of everything—her birthright, her freedom, her place in the pack. But this? Her right to choose who she loved, who she shared her life with, belonged to her alone. It had to.

She nodded, sniffing back fresh tears.

The whip cracked across her back. Pain exploded through her body, and she cried out. Yet her father simply repeated the same words, and she forced out her own in reply: “I will not marry him.”

The towering stranger from the riverbank. The man who had saved her life from the rogue, and had vanished into the shadows without a word. The man who had haunted her dreams for the last twenty-four hours.