Chapter One: Sold to the Alpha King
I smelled him before I saw him.
The bond hit me like fire down my spine, hot and undeniable, pulling me forward through the crowded training grounds. My heart pounded so hard it hurt. Mate. My mate.
I stepped into the circle just as Alpha Kael turned.
Golden eyes met mine.
For one perfect second, his wolf surged toward me—and then his expression hardened into ice.
“No,” he said coldly.
The word sliced deeper than claws.
Murmurs rippled through the pack as he turned away from me and pulled Selene against his chest. He bit down on her neck without hesitation.
The mark bloomed crimson.
“An omega without a wolf,” Kael announced to everyone, “will never be my Luna.”
My knees buckled.
Inside me, something screamed—then shattered into silence.
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The bond was supposed to hurt when it formed.
No one ever warned me what it would feel like when it died.
I sat alone on the stone steps outside the pack hall, my knees pulled to my chest as laughter drifted from inside. The celebration hadn’t stopped just because my world had ended. If anything, it had grown louder.
Alpha Kael had chosen his Luna.
Just not me.
I pressed my palm against my chest, trying to feel something—anything. The warmth. The pull. The quiet hum every mated wolf spoke of in reverent whispers.
There was nothing.
Only a hollow ache that throbbed deeper each time I breathed.
Earlier, when he’d marked Selene in front of everyone, something inside me had screamed so loudly I’d thought my heart would tear itself apart. I’d tasted blood where I’d bitten my lip, forcing myself not to cry.
An omega does not make a scene.
That was what they taught us.
“Did you see her face?”
“She really thought the Alpha would choose her.”
“Wolfless omegas shouldn’t dream so high.”
The whispers followed me no matter where I went. I kept my head down as I walked back to my family’s small house on the edge of the territory, my hands clenched in the hem of my dress.
When I pushed the door open, the air inside felt heavy.
My mother sat at the table, her hands folded so tightly her knuckles were white. My younger brother lay on the cot by the fire, his breathing shallow and uneven.
My heart dropped.
“They came today,” my mother said quietly.
I already knew who they were.
“The pack elders,” she continued. “The healers. The debt collectors.”
I swallowed. “How much?"
Her voice broke when she answered.
"Too much."
The pack had borrowed against next winter’s supplies to pay for my brother’s treatments. Everyone had known the price would come due eventually.
I just hadn’t expected it to be paid with me.
“I’ll go,” I said before she could speak again.
Her head snapped up. “Aelin—”
“I’ll go,” I repeated, my voice steady even as my chest burned. “If it keeps him alive.”
Silence filled the room.
That night, the pack elders summoned me.
They spoke of duty. Of honor. Of survival.
They did not say the word sold, but it lingered between us like rot.
The contract was already signed.
I was to be delivered at dawn.
When the black-armored guards arrived, their presence sucked the air from my lungs. The crest on their cloaks gleamed silver in the torchlight.
A crown.
A claw.
The Alpha King’s seal.
The leader of the guards bowed his head slightly.
“By royal decree,” he said, “you are summoned to the Alpha Kingdom.”
My hands began to shake.
“Who… who requested me?” I asked, though dread coiled in my stomach.
He met my gaze.
“Alpha Kael.”
The man who had rejected me.
The man who now owned me.
