The Lycan King’s Forbidden Mate

PROLOGUE

The Night of Ash

SERAPHINE

The first thing I learned about kings was that their soldiers burned brighter than ordinary men.

At fifteen, I stood barefoot in snow and watched Ashen Vale turn orange beneath a black winter sky. Roofs collapsed in showers of sparks. Pine beams screamed as they split. Wolves howled from the eastern ridge, not in challenge, but in pain.

My father shoved a hunting knife into my hand and closed my fingers around the hilt.

“Run north,” he said.

His face was streaked with soot. Blood darkened the sleeve of his gray coat. Behind him, our meeting hall had become a furnace, the carved antlers over the doors already swallowed by flame.

“I’m not leaving you.”

“You are.”

A horn sounded beyond the trees. Three low notes. The royal signal.

My father’s mouth hardened.

The men who had ridden into our valley wore the silver wolf of House Veyr on their cloaks. They called us traitors. Moonmarked. Contaminated blood. They read an edict bearing King Aldric’s seal and told us our bloodline was forbidden by law.

Then they started killing people.

My father gripped my shoulders. “Find Elias. Get to the river. Do not shift unless you have no choice. They can track wolf-scent farther than blood.”

“My mother—”

His expression broke for a single heartbeat.

That was answer enough.

I swallowed the scream trying to climb out of me.

A branch snapped in the darkness.

My father turned.

A Lycan stepped from the smoke.

He was young. Nineteen, perhaps twenty. Too young for the cold authority in the set of his shoulders. His armor was black beneath a travel cloak, his sword wet with blood. Silver eyes caught the firelight.

Veyr eyes.

Royal eyes.

My father shoved me behind him.

“Go,” he said.

The Lycan stopped ten paces away.

He looked at my father, then at me.

For one impossible instant, something in his face changed. Not pity. Pity was too soft. This looked like horror forced into stillness.

“Commander,” someone shouted from farther down the hill. “The western houses are cleared.”

The young Lycan’s jaw tightened.

My father lunged.

Steel flashed.

I screamed his name.

The Lycan knocked my father’s blade aside and stepped back instead of striking. “Take the girl and run.”

My father froze.

So did I.

The Lycan glanced toward the approaching soldiers. “Now.”

My father seized my wrist.

Then an arrow came from the smoke.

It buried itself beneath his shoulder blade.

He staggered.

A second arrow struck his side.

“No!”

I caught him before he hit the snow. Blood rushed hot over my hands.

The young Lycan spun toward the ridge. “Who fired?”

No one answered.

Boots pounded closer.

My father’s fingers clutched my coat.

“Sera.” His breath rattled. “Live.”

His hand went slack.

The world narrowed to the red spreading across the snow.

Something tore open inside me.

My wolf surged against my skin, wild with grief. A crescent-shaped mark beneath my collarbone burned as if someone had pressed molten silver into it.

The young Lycan saw the light under my torn shirt.

His eyes widened.

“Moonmarked,” one of the soldiers whispered behind him.

The law said my blood meant death.

The young Lycan moved before they did.

He stepped between me and his own men.

“Nothing here,” he said.

The nearest soldier frowned. “My prince—”

“I said there is nothing here.”

Prince.

My grief sharpened into hatred.

Aldric Veyr’s son.

He looked back at me once.

“Run,” he said quietly.

I ran.

For twelve years, I remembered the silver eyes of the prince who had worn the enemy crest while my father died.

For twelve years, I promised myself that if I ever saw him again, I would not run.

I would put a blade through his heart.