Lycan Kings Secret Daughter Returned E-Book

Laura Dutton

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026

Beschreibung

She was never meant to return.
She was never meant to survive.
Hidden from the pack since birth, the Lycan King’s daughter grew up as a secret buried in shame and blood. Her existence was denied to protect the throne, to protect power, to protect lies. But secrets never stay buried forever.
When fate drags her back to the kingdom that cast her out, she returns as a stranger wearing her father’s face—and carrying his sins. The pack sees her as a threat. The council sees her as leverage. Enemies see her as a weakness they can use to tear the Lycan throne apart.
And her father—the king who hid her—must face the cost of choosing power over his own blood.
As old enemies rise and betrayal coils within the pack, she is forced to choose who she will become:
a weapon, a sacrifice… or the ruler they never wanted.
Blood will be spilled.
Loyalties will shatter.
Love will be tested where mercy has no place.
Because this time, she didn’t return to beg for a place at the table.
She returned to claim her name—
and the truth written in blood.
Lycan King’s Secret Daughter Returned is a raw, emotional werewolf romance filled with betrayal, forbidden bloodlines, ruthless pack politics, and a heroine forged by abandonment and loss. Perfect for readers who crave powerful family drama, dark lycan legends, and love that survives even when everything else burns.

Leseprobe

Lycan Kings Secret Daughter Returned

Laura Dutton

Copyright © 2026 Laura DuttonAll rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the author, except for brief quotations used in reviews or other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

The Bairn They Buried in Silence

Returned Under a Ragged Moon

Gate-Wolves and Old Packlaw

The King’s Hall of Bone and Breath

A Lash of Truth, A Bite of Name

Blood-Marks on the Hearthstone

The Heir’s Scent in the Smoke

Oath-Bone Laid on the War Table

The Stranger Who Won’t Kneel

A Bride-Price Paid in Scars

Howls in the Chapel of Night

The Hunt Called “Daughter”

Whisper-Rumors and Knife-Saints

The Alpha’s Claim, The Girl’s Refusal

Trial by Fang and Firelight

The Betrayer Wears Pack Colors

The Secret Spilled Before the Whole Den

War-Moon Rising, Hearts Unraveling

The King’s Knees in the Snow

Returned for Good, Returned for Blood

Epilogue

The Bairn They Buried in Silence

They buried a bundle of rags and called it me.

Rain rode the wind like thrown gravel as I came up the last rise. The packlands lay below—dark timber, wet stone, torchlight trembling along the palisade. I’d been gone so long I’d forgotten the shape of the hills, but my bones knew it. That’s the curse of blood. It remembers even when you don’t want it to.

The letter in my pocket was soaked through. The ink had bled, but the words still sat in my head like a thorn.

Come back. They lied. You were never dead.

I hadn’t slept much since I read it. Anger kept me upright. Not the hot kind that makes you shout. The cold kind that makes you walk straight into a wolf’s teeth and not care if they clamp down.

A horn sounded from the gate—one long note, then a shorter one. A warning, not a welcome.

Two sentries stepped into view between the sharpened posts. Big men in boiled leather and wolf-fur capes, spears tipped with iron. Their eyes caught my scent and didn’t like it. Stray. Outsider. Trouble.

“Hold there,” the taller one called. “Name and pack.”

My boots sank in mud. “No pack.”

“That so?” His voice carried that old pack sneer, like he’d found something stuck to his heel. “Then you’ve no right on our road.”

“It’s a road,” I said. “It don’t belong to you.”

The shorter sentry spat to the side. “Listen to her. Mouthy little crow.”

“Easy,” the tall one muttered, but his hand stayed near his knife. “Last chance. State your name.”

A lie sat ready on my tongue. I’d used plenty of them to stay alive. But something about that gate—about standing under the same timbers my bloodline had raised—made lies taste rotten.

“Call me Mara,” I said. It wasn’t my true name, not the one my mother whispered when she thought no one heard. But it was close enough to wear without choking. “I’m passing through.”

“No one passes through Fenr Hollow without leave.” He stepped closer, spear angled. “Show your hands.”

My fingers were stiff from cold. Palms up. Empty.

His gaze dropped to my throat, and I saw the moment he noticed the cord under my collar. The small thing hanging there bumped against my skin with each breath—a wolf-tooth carved with a mark I’d tried not to look at too long, because it raised questions I didn’t want to answer.

“Pull it out,” he ordered.

For a beat, I considered running. The woods behind me were thick, and I’d lived rough enough to vanish fast. But running would turn me into prey, and I was done living like prey.

The tooth slid into view, wet with rain. The carved crest—wolf and crown twisted together—caught the torchlight.

Both sentries went still.

The shorter one swallowed. “That ain’t—”

The tall one cut him off with a look. Then he stared at me like he was seeing a ghost walk.

“Where’d you get that?” he asked, and his voice lost its bite.

“It was mine before it was yours to question.” My jaw ached from holding steady. “Now you letting me in, or you making a scene in the rain?”

He studied my face. Not my clothes—patched and travel-stained. Not my hands—scarred, nails broken. My eyes. The shape of my brow. The line of my mouth.

A flicker of fear crossed him. Not fear of me. Fear of what I might be.

He turned his head and barked toward the gate, “Fetch Captain Roan. Now.”

So there it was. A name I’d heard in old whispers as a girl—Roan of the Gate, the one who kept the borders clean.

The shorter sentry jogged off. The tall one stayed planted, spear still up, but his stance had changed. Less threat, more caution. Like a man trying not to step on a snake he couldn’t quite see.

“You’ll wait,” he said. “No sudden moves, lass.”

“Lass,” I echoed, tasting it. Pack talk always tried to shrink you down. Make you small, make you easy to handle.

Minutes dragged. Rain ran down my hair and into my collar. Somewhere inside the walls, a wolf howled, low and far off. It wasn’t a call. It was a warning.

Footsteps slapped through mud. A third man came hard down the path, cloak snapping behind him, sword at his hip. Red hair, rough beard, a scar splitting his lip. His eyes were sharp as flint.

Captain Roan.

He took one look at me and the tooth at my throat, and his face closed like a door.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Mara,” I said again.

“That’s not what I asked.” His gaze flicked to my hands. “Any weapons?”

“A knife,” I told him, and nodded toward my boot. “For meat and rope.”

“Take it.”

I didn’t move fast. Slow and steady, like I had sense. I bent, drew the knife, and laid it in the mud at his feet.

He didn’t pick it up. “Show me the mark.”

My fingers lifted the tooth again. The crest shone dull.

Roan’s throat worked. “Where’d you get this?”

“It was put on me as a babe,” I said. The words came out before I could stop them. Truth is a mean thing—it slips when you’ve held it too long. “I didn’t carve it. I didn’t steal it.”

The tall sentry made a sound like a cough.

Roan stared at my face longer than a decent man should. “Open the gate,” he said at last, but it wasn’t an order spoken easy. It was one spoken like it might start a fire.

The palisade groaned. The gate split. Warm torchlight spilled out, and with it came the smell of smoke, wet fur, old stone, and a hundred wolves packed too close together.

Roan stepped aside, but not far. “You’ll come with me. No wandering.”

“Aye,” I said, because sometimes it’s smarter to give a wolf what he wants while you count his teeth.

Inside, Fenr Hollow looked the same and not the same. The main path was lined with huts and longhouses, roofs slick with rain. Folks peered from doorways—women with babes on hips, old men with hollow cheeks, young wolves with eager eyes. Heads turned as I passed. Whispers followed.

“That’s her—”“Can’t be—”“Looks like—”

Roan heard them too. His shoulders tightened. “Eyes down,” he snapped at a young guard who stared too long. The guard flinched and obeyed.

We didn’t go toward the great hall. Not yet. Roan took me down a side lane where the buildings leaned close, as if they wanted to listen. He led me to a low stone house with a smoke hole in the roof and dried herbs hanging by the door.

A healer’s place.

Roan rapped once, hard. “Ma Bess. Open.”

The door swung in before the knock finished, and an old woman stood there with a knife in her hand like she’d been waiting for trouble her whole life.

Her hair was gray and braided tight. Her back was bent, but her eyes were bright, sharp, mean with knowing. She looked from Roan to me, and something in her face shifted so fast I almost missed it.

Not surprise.

Recognition.

“Well,” she said, voice rough as burlap. “Look what the river spat back.”

Roan frowned. “You know her?”

Ma Bess didn’t answer him. She stepped closer to me, slow, as if approaching a wild thing. Her gaze moved over my face, the slope of my nose, the set of my jaw. Then she reached up and put two fingers under my chin, turning my head into the light like I was a piece of meat she meant to buy.

I slapped her hand away.

“Don’t touch me.”

She didn’t get offended. She smiled, small and sad. “Still got teeth.”

Roan’s patience frayed. “Bess.”

“Shut it, Roan.” She jabbed her knife toward him without looking. “If you’re scared, go piss in the ditch.”

His face darkened, but he held his tongue.

Ma Bess nodded toward the inside. “Come in, then. You’re soaking and you’re shaking.”

“I’m not shaking,” I said.

“Your bones are,” she replied, and turned away. “Close the door before the rain gets bold.”

The warmth hit me like a wall. The room smelled of herbs and blood and old smoke. A pot simmered over coals. Strips of cloth lay folded on a bench. This was a place that knew pain and didn’t flinch from it.

Roan hovered near the door like he wanted to keep one foot out. Ma Bess ignored him and rummaged for a blanket, then tossed it at me.

“Sit,” she ordered.

I didn’t.

Her eyes narrowed. “Stubborn. Fine. Stand and drip on my floor. Makes no odds.”

Silence stretched. Roan cleared his throat. “You wrote the letter?”

Ma Bess lifted a brow. “Aye.”

My stomach tightened. “Why?”

“Because I’m old,” she said, like that explained everything. “Because I’m tired. Because the truth don’t stay buried no matter how many stones you stack on it.”

Roan’s jaw clenched. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”

“Dangerous?” Ma Bess laughed once, dry and ugly. “Boy, I’ve midwifed pups out of women while the roof burned. I’ve stitched men back together with my own hair when thread ran out. Don’t you tell me what’s dangerous.”

Roan looked at me again, and his voice dropped. “If she is who you think—”

“She is,” Ma Bess cut in. Then she faced me fully, and for the first time her eyes softened. Not much. Just enough to show she wasn’t made of stone.

“You don’t know the story,” she said. “Not all of it.”

“I know enough,” I snapped. “They wanted me gone.”

Ma Bess’s mouth twitched. “Aye. They did.”

The room seemed to tilt. Heat crawled up my neck, not from the fire. From the old hurt I’d carried like a hidden bruise.

“What did they do to my mother?” The question came out rough.

Ma Bess didn’t answer right away. She crossed to a shelf and pulled down a small wooden box, worn smooth by years. She opened it and took out a strip of cloth, faded but clean, folded tight.

She held it out.

The cloth was marked with a smear of dried, dark brown—old blood—and stitched into one corner was the same crest as the tooth at my throat. Wolf and crown. Crooked, hurried, like someone sewed it with shaking hands.

“That was wrapped round you,” she said quietly. “The night you came screaming into this world.”

My throat went dry. “You were there.”

“I was,” she said. “And I watched men with pack colors on their backs stand over you like you were a problem to solve.”

Roan shifted, uneasy. “Bess—”

“Let her hear it,” Ma Bess snapped. “She’s earned that much.”

Her eyes stayed on mine. “Your mother was no weak thing. She bit one of ‘em when they tried to take you. Drew blood. They’d have killed her for it if she hadn’t already been half dead from birthing.”

My hands curled at my sides, fingers digging into my palms, but I didn’t let myself fall apart. Not here. Not in front of them.

Ma Bess went on, voice steady. “They said you were a stain. A bastard. A risk. They said the King couldn’t be seen to have a bairn out of wedlock, not with rival packs sniffing for any crack in his rule.”

“Then why keep me at all?” I asked. My voice sounded too calm for how hard my chest felt.

Ma Bess’s gaze flicked to Roan, then back. “Because some part of him wanted you. Even if he didn’t have the spine to claim you then.”

Roan stiffened. “The King was at war.”

“Aye,” Ma Bess said. “And while he bled on foreign soil, his council made choices in his name.”

A bitter taste rose in my mouth. “So they killed me.”

“No,” Ma Bess said, and that single word landed like a stone.

Her face tightened, like the memory hurt her too. “They told everyone you were stillborn. They told your mother the same so she’d stop fighting. They told the pack you’d been buried proper, so no one would ask.”

She stepped toward the back of the room and pointed with her knife to a small window. Beyond it, the rain blurred the yard, but I could make out a patch of ground near the fence, darker than the rest.

“That’s where they made me dig,” she said. “Right there. They handed me a bundle, said it was you, and told me to do it quiet.”

My stomach turned.

Ma Bess’s voice dropped. “But I looked inside.”

The air in my lungs felt thin. “And?”

“And you were warm,” she said simply. “You were small and angry, and you had your father’s eyes even then.”

Roan swore under his breath.

Ma Bess pointed the knife at him again. “Save your curses. You weren’t the one holding a living babe while grown men watched, waiting to see if you’d do as you were told.”

Her gaze locked on mine. “So I buried their rags. Dirt over cloth. Dirt over lie. Then I wrapped you in my own shawl and carried you out before dawn.”

My voice came out hoarse. “How?”

“Through the goat pass,” she said. “A tinker owed me a favor. He took you. Promised to raise you far from here, far from pack law. I never knew if he kept that promise.”

She let out a breath and looked at me like she was afraid to hope. “Then your face walked back in through my door.”

The room fell quiet except for the rain ticking on the roof.

Something in me went hollow, but not in the way it used to when I was a child and didn’t understand why my mother—my real mother, the one who raised me on the road—went silent whenever I asked about my birth. This was a different hollow. Sharper. Older. Like a door opening onto a dark room you’ve avoided your whole life.

“You let them think I was dead,” I said.

Ma Bess didn’t flinch. “I did what I could with what I had. You wanted me to stand in the square and shout at the council? They’d have hung me from the gate.”

Roan spoke, low. “If the council learns she’s here—”

“They already know,” Ma Bess said, and her eyes cut to the door as if she could see through wood and rain. “They’ve been sniffing around since your first step inside the walls.”

A chill slid under my skin. “Why bring me back, then?”

Ma Bess leaned in close. Her voice turned hard again, like iron cooling.

“Because the King is due home tonight,” she said. “Because there’s talk of choosing a bride for him come winter, and the council wants him tied up neat while they hold the leash. Because you’re the loose end they tried to bury, and loose ends come back to choke folk.”

Roan’s face went gray. “He’s back already. Horn sounded from the ridge an hour ago.”

Ma Bess nodded once, grim. “There you have it.”

My pulse didn’t race. It slowed. Everything in me went steady and cold, like the moment before a strike.

So he was here. The Lycan King. My father. The man whose crest I wore on my throat like a brand.

Rainwater dripped off my hair onto Ma Bess’s floor. I didn’t care.

“What’s his name?” I asked, and the question surprised even me.

Roan hesitated.

Ma Bess answered for him. “King Garrick.”

The name hit my ears and settled deep, like it had always been waiting there.

Outside, another horn sounded—closer this time—and voices rose in the lane. Boots splashed. Orders barked. The whole Hollow shifting, waking, making ready for their king.

Roan reached for the door. “You’re not going to the hall.”

His tone wasn’t a request.

Ma Bess looked at me without blinking. “If you go, you won’t be able to take it back.”

My hand found the tooth at my throat. Wolf and crown. Proof. Curse. Key.

The next breath tasted like smoke and rain and something else—something like home, even if home had tried to bury me.

“Open the door,” I told Roan.

He stared at me. “Girl—”

“Open it,” I said again, and my voice left no room.

Roan’s jaw worked like he was chewing through nails. Then he moved, slow, and unlatched the door.

Cold air rushed in. Night pressed close. The clouds thinned just enough for the moon to show—ragged around the edges, like it had been torn by claws.

I stepped out into it.

Behind me, Ma Bess muttered, half prayer, half curse. “Returned under a broken moon… gods help us all.”

And down the lane, through torchlight and gathering eyes, the great hall waited—along with the man who never claimed me.

I started walking.

Returned Under a Ragged Moon

The moon looked like a torn coin the night I crossed back into wolf country.

Clouds dragged over it in dirty strips, and the light came and went like a liar’s promise. My boots were soaked through, my cloak stank of road mud, and my mother’s last words kept looping in my head like a curse I couldn’t spit out.

He’s your sire. The Lycan King. Don’t go back. If you go, go with teeth.

That was where I’d been left—kneeling on the floor of our one-room hut in Saltmere, my hands sticky with her blood, my throat raw from calling her name even after she’d gone quiet. The confession had come late, too late to fix anything, and she’d died with her fingers hooked around the wolf-tooth pendant she’d hidden my whole life.

I wore it now. It hung under my shirt, cold against my skin, the carved crest pressing into me every time I moved. Wolf and crown twisted together. Not a pretty thing. A warning.

Saltmere was days behind me. The sea air was gone. So was the softness. Every mile inland felt like the land was tightening its fist.

The path I’d taken wasn’t a true road anymore—just ruts and old wagon scars that led toward the pines. Old border stones started showing up at dusk, half sunk and lichen-covered, etched with symbols I didn’t know but still understood. Pack land.No trespass.No mercy.

The closer I got, the more the world smelled like wet fur and smoke.

A raven followed me for a time, hopping from branch to branch, watching like it had business with my bones. When I threw a stone, it only flapped higher and stayed.

“Go on, then,” I muttered. “Tell ’em I’m coming. Tell ’em the dead girl crawled back.”

No answer but the wind through needles.

The last village before the forest was little more than a ring of huts around a firepit. Men with missing fingers stared too long. Women pulled their children close. Nobody asked my name. They didn’t need to. A lone girl heading north with wolf eyes and a pack pendant meant trouble, and folk with small lives don’t court trouble unless they’re starving for it.

At the firepit, an old tavern-keeper slid me a bowl of stew without smiling.

“You’re headed to Blackpine,” he said, like he’d read it off my forehead.

“What if I am?”

He scratched at his gray beard. “Then you’ve got more nerve than sense. Ragged moon’s a bad sign. Always has been.”

“I’ve had worse signs.”

His gaze dipped to my throat, like he could see the tooth through cloth. “Aye. You have.”

No one tried to stop me when I left. No one wished me luck either.

That suited me fine. Luck had never been my friend. I’d made it this far on spite and stubborn blood.

Night fell quick under the trees. Not proper dark—something thicker, pressed close by branches and mist. The forest swallowed sound. Even my steps felt muffled, like the earth itself was listening.

Half a mile in, the feeling hit me: not fear, not exactly. The sense of being weighed. Judged.

My mother used to say wolves can smell truth the way men smell rain. If that was so, then my truth was about to stink up their whole den.

A twig snapped behind me.

I didn’t whirl like some startled doe. I kept walking, hand sliding down toward the knife at my belt. It was a simple blade, more for skinning fish than fighting wolves, but it was mine. And I’d promised myself I’d die biting if it came to that.

Another snap. Closer.

The air shifted—warm breath, wild scent. Male. Wolf. Not full beast, not human either.

“Keep your hand off that toothpick, girl,” a voice said from the dark. “You’ll only make me laugh.”

I stopped. Not because he told me to. Because I’d learned long ago that running makes men crueler.

“Show yourself,” I said.

A shape stepped between two pines. A man, broad-shouldered, hair tied back with leather, cloak patched and damp. His eyes caught what little moon there was—pale, sharp, too steady. He had a scar down one cheek, old and thick, like something had raked him and meant it.

A pack scout. One of the border wolves.

His gaze went straight to my throat. “That’s a Blackpine mark you’re carrying.”

“It was my mother’s.”

His mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. “And your mother’s name?”

“Dead.”

“That so.”

“That’s so.”

He studied me like I was a problem he didn’t want to solve. “You’re not one of ours.”

“I didn’t say I was.”

“You’re walking our land under a ragged moon. That’s asking to be dragged into a ditch and left for crows.”

“Then do it,” I snapped. “Or stop talking.”

For the first time, his eyes narrowed with something like respect. Or maybe it was annoyance. Hard to tell with wolf-men. They wear their feelings like knives—kept close, used quick.

“Spit your name,” he said. “So if I kill you, I can tell the spirits who I sent on.”

The words scraped my tongue. Names have weight. Once spoken, they’re harder to take back.

“Brynn,” I said. “Brynn Elowen’s get.”

His head tilted. “Elowen.”

The way he said it wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t cruel either. Just… familiar. Like a name from an old song nobody sings anymore.

“You know her,” I said.

“Did,” he answered, flat. “Long time back.”

I swallowed. “Then you know why I’m here.”

He didn’t move for a beat. Then he stepped closer, slow, careful, as if I might bolt. “You smell like sea and grief,” he said. “And something else under it.”

“Say what you mean.”

His gaze cut into mine. “King-blood. Thin, but it’s there.”

My stomach went tight—not with surprise, but with the cold truth of it. I’d spent my whole life being told I was nothing but a fisher’s bastard. Even after my mother’s confession, part of me still expected the world to laugh and call it a madwoman’s dying tale.

This man wasn’t laughing.

“What’s your name?” I asked, because if I was going to be judged, I wanted to know who held the scale.

He hesitated like names cost him too. “Finn.”

“Finn what?”

“Finn will do,” he said. “That’s all most folk get from me.”

“Fine, Finn. I’m going to the keep.”

“You won’t reach it alone.”

“Watch me.”

He let out a low sound that might’ve been a chuckle if it didn’t carry warning. “Stubborn as frost. Your mother had that.”

The mention of her hit me hard, sharp as a thrown stone. I didn’t let it show on my face, but my hands went cold.

Finn glanced toward the trees. “There’s a patrol on this side tonight. Gate-wolves. They won’t ask questions. They’ll break you first, then decide if you’re worth dragging in.”

“I’m worth it,” I said, though the words tasted bitter.

He stepped to the side. “Come, then. If you’re bound for Stonehall, you’ll go with me. Not as friend. Not as guest. As a problem I’m delivering to men who hate problems.”

“I didn’t ask for help.”

“And I didn’t ask for a girl with crown-scent to stroll into my woods.” He started walking without looking back. “Keep up.”

The choice was simple: follow, or keep walking alone until a different patrol found me and decided my bones looked good on the ground.

So I followed.

The forest deepened. Finn moved like he belonged to it, barely bending branches, barely making noise. I tried to copy him and failed. Twigs cracked under my boots. The mud sucked at my soles.

“You walk like a town rat,” he said over his shoulder.

“I grew up on sand,” I shot back. “Not moss.”

He didn’t answer, but his pace slowed a touch. Not mercy. Practical. He wanted me alive enough to deliver.

We crossed a shallow stream. The water was bitter-cold and clear, running fast over stones. Finn didn’t even pause. He splashed through like it meant nothing. I gritted my teeth and did the same.

On the far bank, he stopped and sniffed the air. His posture changed—shoulders stiff, head slightly raised.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Quiet,” he hissed.

A moment later, voices carried through the trees. Men. Two, maybe three. Low talk. The scrape of boots. The clink of a spearhead against bark.

Finn leaned close, speaking near my ear. “Whatever they say, you don’t answer quick. Let them see you’re not prey.”

“I’m not prey,” I murmured.

“That’s the spirit,” he said, and there was something like approval in it.

We stepped out of the brush onto a wider path marked by old torch posts. The wood was blackened like it had seen raids. The air smelled of smoke and iron.

Three men came into view, blocking the trail. Cloaks, spears, wolf-tooth charms. Their eyes went straight to Finn, then to me.

“Finn,” the tallest one said, voice rough as gravel. His hair was cropped close, and his jaw was thick with stubble. “What’s this?”

Finn lifted his hands to show he wasn’t drawing steel. “Stray came in from the south. Carries a Blackpine crest.”

The tall guard’s gaze snapped to my throat. “Show it.”

My fingers went to the pendant under my shirt. I didn’t pull it out right away. Letting men command you is how they learn they can.

“Show it,” he repeated, taking a step.

Finn’s voice sharpened. “Easy, Tor. She ain’t trying to steal.”

Tor. The name sat heavy. A man used to breaking things.

Finally, I drew the pendant out and held it up. The wolf-and-crown crest caught the weak moonlight.

Tor’s face changed. Not much. Just enough.

“Where’d you get that?” he asked.

“It was my mother’s.”

“And your mother?”

“Dead.”

Tor’s nostrils flared. He looked at Finn like Finn had dragged a curse onto the trail. “You bring a dead woman’s get to the gate under a ragged moon. Are you touched?”

Finn didn’t flinch. “Better me than some boy who’d slit her throat for sport. She’s got a claim.”

Tor scoffed. “A claim to what? A grave?”

My temper rose, hot and fast. “I didn’t come for pity.”

Tor’s eyes snapped to mine. He took another step, slow, like he enjoyed the space shrinking. “Then what did you come for, girl?”

The words sat at the back of my teeth. I could spit the truth and watch it explode. Or I could swallow it and hope to get closer before the pack tore me apart.

Finn’s gaze cut to me, warning plain now.

But I was done swallowing. I’d swallowed my whole life. Swallowed lies, swallowed hunger, swallowed my mother’s fear. It had built a hard stone inside me, and it was time it broke something other than me.

“I came because I was sent away,” I said. “I came because I was hidden. And I came because the man who rules this pack put his blood in my veins and left me to rot where no one could see.”

Tor didn’t blink. One of the other guards muttered a curse under his breath.

Finn went still beside me, like even he hadn’t expected me to throw it down so blunt.

Tor’s lips curled. “Mind your tongue.”

“My tongue is all I’ve got that’s mine,” I said. “You want it, take it.”

Tor’s spear tilted, just a fraction, and the threat was clear. “Say his name, then.”

Finn’s hand shifted toward his own blade, subtle as a shadow. “Tor—”

Tor cut him off. “Say it, girl. If you’re going to spit poison, spit it full.”

The forest felt tighter. The moon slipped behind cloud again, and for a heartbeat, everything went dark except their eyes.

I held the pendant up like a judge’s token. “King Garrick Vale,” I said, voice steady even as my insides shook with the weight of it. “Lycan King of Blackpine.”

Silence hit hard.

Tor’s face didn’t show shock. It showed anger, like my words had slapped him. The other two guards shifted their stance, uncertain now, as if the ground had moved under them.

Finn exhaled, slow. “Hells,” he muttered.

Tor leaned in close enough that I could smell the ale on his breath and the old blood dried into his cloak. “That’s treason talk,” he said softly. “You best pray you’re telling truth, or the King will have your throat.”

“Let him,” I said. “I didn’t crawl back to live easy.”

Tor pulled back and barked at the nearest guard, “Run to Stonehall. Wake the hall. Tell the King a sea-born girl stands at our gate with his crest and his stink on her skin.”

The guard hesitated. “And if it’s a trick?”

Tor’s gaze stayed on me. “Then we’ll hang her for sport at dawn.”

The guard took off into the trees.

Finn shifted closer to my side, low voice near my ear again. “You just set a torch to a powder room.”

“Good,” I whispered. “I want it to blow.”

Tor motioned with his spear. “Hands where I can see ’em. You’ll come to the gate, Brynn Elowen’s get, and you’ll wait. You don’t run. You don’t bite. You don’t speak unless spoken to.”

“And if I do?” I asked.

Tor’s smile was mean. “Then you’ll learn why we’re called gate-wolves.”

They marched us forward through the last stretch of trees, and the old wooden palisade rose up ahead—tall, spiked, built from black pine trunks and stained dark with age. Torches burned along the top, smoke curling into the night like dirty fingers.

Stonehall.

Home, if my mother’s truth held.

Or my end, if it didn’t.

At the great gate, Tor rapped the spear butt against the wood. A horn sounded from above, low and grim, and shadows moved along the wall—more wolves, more eyes.

Finn leaned toward me one last time. “When that gate opens,” he said, “don’t expect kindness. Blood claims don’t buy love here. They buy tests.”

I stared at the seam between the doors, at the thin line of darkness that would become my future in a few breaths.

“Let them test,” I said.

The locks groaned. The gate began to part.

And somewhere inside the keep, a roar rolled through the night—deep, furious, and close enough to shake the torches.

Tor’s eyes flicked up to the wall, then back to me.

“He’s awake,” he said. “Now we’ll see what you really are.”

The gate opened wide enough for one body to pass, and a figure stepped into the gap—tall, broad, wrapped in a cloak that looked like it had been cut from a storm.

He lifted his head, and the torchlight caught gray eyes like cold metal.

My pendant went heavy in my hand.