The Lycan's Rose

The snow doesn’t just fall—it licks my wounds like the Moon Goddess herself can’t stomach what they’ve done to me. Each flake burns where it lands, searing my torn skin with cold that can’t numb the fire beneath.

Crack. The whip bites deeper this time. I taste blood—my own—as I choke back a scream. Never give them the sound. My knees tremble, but I lock them. I will not fall. Not for him.

Lucas’s voice slices through the silence:

“Ten lashes.”

A pause, sharp as the blade he’s sliding between our souls.

“From every warrior here.”

That voice. Gods. Once, it curled around my name like a prayer. Now it’s the axe before the swing.

The crowd shifts—boots scuffing snow, leather gloves creaking—but no one speaks. Cowards. They’ve seen me kneel beside their sick children. They’ve watched me bleed for their wounded. Now they just watch me bleed.

I tilt my head, meeting Lucas’s golden eyes.

“Look at me,” I rasp. “You know I didn’t—”

“Silence!”

The bond between us writhes—his rage, his confusion, something black coiled underneath.

Then she steps forward.

Elmai.

My twin. My shadow. The venom in her smile cuts deeper than the whip.

“Poor Ella,” she murmurs, stroking Lucas’s arm. “Still begging? The Goddess chose me. Your bond was always… borrowed.”

Lies.

Seren snarls inside me, weak but defiant.

Smell her! Magic reeks like rot—

Crack.

The next lash steals my breath.

Lucas grips my jaw, forcing my gaze up.

“I, Alpha Lucas of SilverMist,”—his voice carves into me—“reject you, EllaRose Hall, as mate and Luna.”

The bond snaps.

Pain isn’t the word.

This is bones breaking from the inside. This is drowning in daylight.

I crumple, gasping, my scream finally tearing free—

And he isn’t done.

His boot meets my ribs. Once. Twice.

“You dare call yourself my mate?”

Snow fills my mouth as he drags me up by my hair.

“You’re nothing now.”

The crowd whimpers.

No one moves.

The world fractures into broken pieces of torchlight and blood. My vision swims—Lucas’s face flickers above me, a cruel silhouette carved from ice and moonlight. His grip on my throat is gone, but the imprint remains, a necklace of bruises I’ll wear to my grave.

If they even let me have one.

His voice cracks through the night like a whip.

“Take her to the border.”

A pause, deliberate, savoring.

“If she returns… kill her.”

Not execute. Not banish.

Kill.

As if I’m nothing more than a rabid animal to put down.

The warriors move in, their hands calloused and unforgiving, fingers digging into the raw lashes striping my back.

I bite my tongue until copper floods my mouth.

No sounds. No satisfaction for them.

They drag me. My bare legs carve twin furrows of crimson through the snow, the flesh of my thighs scraped raw by ice and gravel.

One of them—Rheon, the bastard who once brought me wildflowers after I healed his daughter—leans down, his breath reeking of cheap whiskey and cowardice.

“Maybe the Lycan King will finish what we can’t,” he mutters, and the others chuckle, low and ugly.

Then they drop me.

My body collapses like a shattered puppet, limbs folding at wrong angles. The impact jolts through my ribs—something cracks, but the pain is just another note in the symphony.

Their footsteps fade.

The wind howls.

And the cold begins to eat me alive.

Get up.

Seren’s voice is a dying ember in my skull.

“I can’t.”

The words come out slurred, thick with blood and defeat.

You will. Or you’ll die here.

And I refuse to die on my knees.

My healing gift stirs—a fragile, guttering light deep in my chest.

Golden warmth spills through my veins, stitching flesh back together with clumsy fingers.

It’s not enough.

Not fast.

But it’s something.

I press my trembling, frostbitten hands into the snow and push.

Agony.

White-hot, blinding.

My muscles shriek, my bones protest, but I rise.

One breath.

One heartbeat.

One step.

The forbidden woods loom ahead, a wall of shadow and teeth. The air here is thick, wet, rotting with power—the kind that clings to the back of your tongue and tastes like warnings.

A laugh scrapes up my throat, brittle and broken.

“The Lycan’s hunting ground.”

Of course.

Of course.

Because the universe isn’t done laughing at me yet.

The snow glows faintly under the moon, a mockery of purity, as I stumble forward.

My legs give out three steps past the border, my body finally betraying me completely.

I crash against a tree, my fingers clawing into the bark hard enough to splinter.

The wood screams under my nails, the scent of sap and frost sharp in my nose.

Then—silence.

Too quiet.

No wind.

No owls.

Just the thunder of my own heart.

And then—

A growl.

Not from the trees.

Not from the dark.

From inside my bones.

I lift my head... and see it.

Molten gold.

That’s all I see at first—two pinpricks of fire in the abyss.

They don’t blink.

Don’t waver.

Just burn.

Commanding.

Hungry.

Not wolf.

Worse.

The words don’t just reach me—they vibrate through my bones.

A voice like thunder and velvet, the kind that doesn’t ask for obedience—it demands it.

“Who dares bleed on my land?”

My vision wavers.

The pain is still there—a ragged, snarling thing—but beneath it, something worse:

Peace.

The kind that only comes when the body is too broken to fight anymore.

A laugh, weak and fractured, bubbles up from my ruined throat.

“Someone who’s already been killed.”

The words slip out like a secret, blood staining her teeth as the world tilts—

And then, before the ground can claim me, I’m caught.

Strong arms.

Hard muscle.

Heat that sears through the cold, branding my skin.

Too much.

Too real.

My wolf stirs—a weak, fevered snarl of protest—but the darkness is already swallowing me whole.

The last thing I know?

His scent—smoke, iron, and something wild.

Not safety.

Not salvation.

Danger.

And something terrifyingly, irrevocably alive.

Third Person POV

The cold doesn’t touch him—it worships him.

Snow crunches like shattered bones beneath Levino’s boots, the wind carving through the trees in jagged gusts, carrying the scents of the forest to his flared nostrils.

Pine.

Frost.

The musk of prey.

Boring.

Azel writhes beneath his skin, a restless storm of teeth and hunger.

A deer bolts from the brush, snow spraying in its wake.

Levino could kill it—one snap of his jaws, one flick of his claws—but he doesn’t.

Not yet.

The chase is sweeter.

Run, little thing. Make it fun.

Then—her scent.

It hits him like a blade between the ribs.

Copper and Vanilla.

Wildmint and storm-wet earth.

Wrong.

Wrong.

Wrong.

Too sweet for these woods.

Too alive to belong here.

Azel howls inside him, claws raking down his spine.

Find it.

Find her.

Levino’s steps slow, his pulse suddenly too loud in his own ears.

Every breath tastes like her, thick and intoxicating.

The forest parts before him.

And there—

A ghost of gold and blood.

She leans against a tree, fingers splintering the frost-laced bark, her body trembling but not broken.

His lungs stop working.

She is magnificent.

Even now—half-dead, streaked with crimson, breathing like a cornered thing—she’s the most beautiful creature he’s ever seen.

Azel loses his fucking mind.

MATE. MATE. MATE.

Levino’s snarl is pure violence.

“Our mate is dead.”

Liar, Azel hisses.

Look at her and lie again.

He can’t.

Her head lifts.

Green eyes, sharp as shattered glass, lock onto his.

Challenge.

Defiance.

Fire.

His fingers twitch.

“Who dares bleed on my land?”

His voice is midnight and murder.

She smiles—a razor’s edge of a thing.

“Someone who’s already been killed.”

Her knees give out.

He catches her.

Skin like ice.

Breath like smoke.

Her body fits against his as if the universe itself carved her to fill the hollow in his ribs.

No.

Never again.

She goes limp, her final whisper brushing his jaw like a secret:

“Leave me… for the Lycan King to finish.”

A growl tears from his chest.

Fury.

Need.

Agony.

Azel laughs at him.

Azel laughs at him—a sound like bones breaking in the dark.

She is ours. She has always been ours.

Levino’s grip tightens around the woman’s limp body.

“No,” he snarls—to Azel, to himself, to the ghosts watching from the trees.

His dead mate’s face flickers behind his eyelids.

Snow-white hair.

A laugh like sunlight.

The way her blood had soaked into his hands when he failed to save her.

She was my mate. My only.

But this female in his arms…

Her breath rasps against his throat.

Too warm.

Too alive.

His canines throb, his muscles locking like a trap around her.

Wrong.

Liar.

Azel’s growl is a deranged purr.

Smell her again. Deeper.

Levino inhales—and chokes on it.

Beneath the blood and sweat, there’s something worse.

Vanilla.

Wild mint.

The exact scent that used to cling to his mate’s skin after rain.

His heart stops.

Azel croons, drunk on triumph.

Told you.

Levino bares his teeth at the sky, at the moon, at the dead who won’t stop haunting him.

“She’s gone,” he snarls. “You think I don’t know my own mate’s corpse?”

But his arms don’t let go.

The woman’s pulse flutters against his palm, a fragile, stubborn thing.

Azel whispers the worst words of all:

What if the Moon Goddess is giving us a second chance?