The Lycan King’s Affection E-Book

Laura Dutton

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

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026

Beschreibung

Rejected. Humiliated. Branded unworthy before the entire dominion.
Seraphina Vale has spent her life surviving as an Omega-born healer in the harsh Frostpine Pack. She learned early to keep her head down, to work twice as hard, and to expect nothing in return. Love was never meant for someone like her.
Until one reckless night changes everything.
A wounded stranger collapses at the healer’s door, and Sera makes a choice that binds her fate to his. She never expects the truth. The man she gave her heart to for a single forbidden night is Kael Draven, the Lycan King.
When fate reveals their mate bond before the court, Kael does the unthinkable. He rejects her publicly to protect his crown and prevent war. Cast aside and sent into exile, Sera is left to face the consequences alone. But the bond refuses to die. And neither does her spirit.
As political enemies close in and ancient lies about her bloodline surface, Sera must decide who she truly is. A discarded Omega. Or something far more powerful.
Kael soon learns that ruling through fear is not the same as ruling with strength. If he wants to keep his kingdom and the woman fate chose for him, he must stand against prophecy, power, and his own pride.
In a world of sacred laws, ruthless rivals, and moonlit vows, love is not gentle. It is claimed. Fought for. Earned.
The Lycan King’s Affection is a sweeping paranormal romance filled with political tension, forbidden desire, fierce loyalty, and a heroine who refuses to remain small. Perfect for readers who crave emotional intensity, dominant alpha kings, strong heroines, and a love that rises from rejection to undeniable destiny.

Leseprobe

The Lycan King’s Affection

A One Night Stand Mistakes Turns out to be Fate

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

PROLOGUE

Blood at the Door

Stormbound

The King Comes

Moonstone Keep

Rejected Before the Court

Exile Wearing a Crown

Ashen Watch

Forged Teeth

Summoned

Council of Wolves

The Vale Record

A Key Made of Moonlight

Steel and Spine

Riding the Thread

Sacred Ground, Dirty Games

Blood-Rite

The King’s Choice

Throne of Teeth

Terms of the Heart

A New Law Under the Old Moon

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

They love me best when I’m quiet.

That’s the truth of Frostpine. Quiet girls live longer. Quiet girls get fed. Quiet girls don’t draw a claw across their throat for stepping where they weren’t asked to stand. I learned it young, same as I learned how to boil bark until the bitterness lifts, how to wrap a split knuckle, how to stitch skin when the tearing won’t stop.

I am Seraphina Vale. Most call me Sera, if they mean kindness. If they don’t, I’m “Vale-girl” with a look that says remember your place. I am twenty-four winters old. I am Omega-born in a pack that hates that word like it’s rot in the meat. I am also a healer’s apprentice, which is the only reason I’m allowed to breathe without being reminded of my rank every hour.

The Healer Den is the only place in Frostpine where an Alpha’s temper has to wait at the door.

Sanctuary. That’s what they call it. A law older than Garrick Frost and older than the very timbers over my head. No fighting inside. No challenges. No punishment speeches. You come here bleeding and you leave with your blood still in your body, if Maelis Thorn has anything to say about it.

Maelis always has something to say about it.

“Stop hovering,” she tells me, voice dry as winter bark. “If you fuss over that cut like it’s a babe, it will heal like a babe. Rough hands. Clean cloth. Move.”

Her hair is silver and coiled tight at the back of her skull. Her eyes are warm brown, but don’t let that fool you. She can flay a man with words and make him thank her for the lesson. She walks with a slight limp and still outpaces half the pack when she’s angry.

I don’t hover. Not truly. I measure, I listen, I watch. Those are the skills that kept me alive after Mother died.

I still see her sometimes when I wash my hands. A flash of dark hair against a pillow, lips cracked from fever, fingers too weak to hold mine. I was twelve and already too used to being told I needed less than other pups. Mother tried to give me more anyway. It didn’t save her. Nothing did.

After she went cold, the pack’s kindness went cold with her.

Bram Alder took me in because blood is blood, even in a pack that pretends it isn’t. He’s my mother’s cousin, a blacksmith with shoulders like a doorframe. Gamma-ranked. Useful enough to be left alone, not high enough to be worshiped. He doesn’t speak soft. He doesn’t do comfort. He does work, he does rules, he does survival.

“Eat,” he would say, shoving a bowl into my hands. “Don’t waste daylight. Don’t trust pretty words. Don’t let them see you cry.”

I got good at not crying where they could see.

It’s easier when you have your hands full of herbs and blood and people’s pain. Pain has its own rules. It doesn’t care if you’re Omega-born. It doesn’t care if you were meant to be nothing. Pain comes all the same, and if you know what to do with it, you can make people look at you like you matter. For a moment.

That’s the bargain I’ve lived on.

Outside the Den, Frostpine is all pine shadow and stone. Mountains shoulder up into the sky like old beasts sleeping. Winter stays long. The wind bites even when the sun is bright. The pack lives in thick timber halls and smaller cabins tucked between trees. Smoke curls from chimneys. The scent of resin never leaves your clothes.

Borders are watched. Always. Ward stones sit at the edges of our territory, old runes cut into them by hands that knew more than we do now. The sentinels say the wards hum at night. I don’t hear the hum, but I see what the wards do when something wrong tries to cross.

We are a vassal pack. That means our Alpha bows to a King none of us see.

The Nightfall Dominion, they call it, as if a name can make a crown less heavy. The Lycan King rules over packs like ours. We owe tithe and troops when called. In return, we get the promise that no outside teeth will take our throats. Most in Frostpine speak of the King like he’s a story for pups. Half fear him. Half worship him. None of them expect him to glance our way.

I don’t expect it either. I’ve spent my whole life learning how to be missed.

Still, the talk has been different lately. The scouts bring back uneasy reports. The sentinels come in with tight jaws, smelling of cold iron and tension. Maelis has been burning certain herbs at night, the kind that sharpens the head and settles the wolf.

We don’t say the word war in Frostpine. We say trouble. We say bad wind. We say border noise. We give it softer names so it won’t come closer.

It’s already close.

A young hunter sits on the Den’s bench while I wrap his forearm. The bite marks are shallow, but they’ll scar. He flinches when I press the cloth down.

“Hold still,” I tell him.

He tries to joke. “Omega hands hurt the worst.”

His friends laugh, and I feel the old sting in my ribs. That quick shame that wants to bend my spine. My fingers tighten instead. I tie the wrap firm enough to make a point.

Maelis clicks her tongue without looking up. “If you’re healthy enough to mock the healer, you’re healthy enough to haul water. Get out.”

They leave with their laughter, but not without glancing back as if the last word belongs to them. It usually does, out there.

Here, Maelis is the last word.

Tamsin Rook bursts in not long after, bringing cold air with her and the smell of running—snow, sweat, and pine. Her auburn hair is cropped short. Freckles dance across her nose. Her mouth is made for trouble and truth.

She tosses her gloves onto the table and nods at me. “Sera.”

I don’t smile. Not fully. I save full smiles for when I’m sure they won’t be used against me. “You’re late.”

“Blame the Alpha.” Her eyes cut toward the Den’s front room, as if Garrick Frost might be hiding in the cupboards. “He’s got the runners sweeping the south road again.”

“Why?”

Tamsin’s gaze slides to Maelis. Maelis doesn’t lift her head, but I see her listening in the set of her shoulders.

“Because he’s jumpy,” Tamsin says. “Because the elders are whispering. Because there’s talk of Winter Tribute coming sooner than expected.”

That makes my stomach turn.

Winter Tribute means the vassal packs send offerings and renew oaths. It means trouble can’t be ignored, only dressed up in ceremony. It means nobles and emissaries, and the way low-ranked wolves are made to feel like dirt beneath polished boots.

It also means strangers.

And strangers are dangerous to someone like me. A strange gaze can become a story. A story can become a reason. A reason can become a sentence.

Tamsin leans closer and drops her voice. “There’s more. The sentinels found blood near Knife Ridge. Not pack blood. Not deer.”

Maelis finally looks up. “How fresh?”

“Today,” Tamsin says. “Still wet in the snow.”

Maelis’s mouth becomes a thin line. “Then you stop running your mouth and start running your legs. Tell Garrick I want extra blankets boiled and ready. Tell the sentinels to keep their wounded out of the Hall and into my hands.”

Tamsin salutes with two fingers, mocking polite. “Yes, Master Healer.”

As she turns to go, she catches my wrist. Her grip is warm. Solid. Real.

“You’re pale,” she says softly, for me alone.

“I’m fine.”

She snorts. “Fine is what people say when they don’t want anyone to look too close.”

I pull free and reach for a jar of dried yarrow. “I don’t have time for close looking.”

“That’s the problem,” she says, but she doesn’t push. She never pushes too hard. She knows what it costs me when I let people in.

After she leaves, the Den quiets again. The usual rhythm returns—boiling water, grinding herbs, cleaning instruments, checking pulses. Maelis moves through it like she owns the air.

She points at a shelf. “New stock. Count it.”

I do. My fingers move automatically while my mind wanders into old places I don’t like.

Some wounds don’t bleed. They sit in you like stones.

Mine is simple. I learned early that if I stopped being useful, I would stop being safe. When Mother was alive, she could soften people. She could make them remember I was a child, not a rank. After she died, I became something to tolerate. A burden with a heartbeat. Bram fed me because he would not break his own blood oath, but even he taught me to expect nothing else.

That’s the wound that drives everything I do.

I don’t chase love. Love is a luxury. I chase stability. I chase the kind of quiet that means no one is looking for an excuse to hurt me. If I can earn a place by being needed, I can stay.

It’s not dignity. It’s survival.

I glance down at my hands. Strong hands. Scarred knuckles from chopping wood and grinding roots. Fingertips stained faint green from herbs. The thin scar at my collarbone catches the light when I shift my braid aside. I got it as a child, slipping on ice and catching myself on broken timber. Blood on snow. Bram’s sharp voice. No sympathy.

The pack never forgets what you are.

Outside, a horn sounds—one long note that rolls through the pines. Not the feast horn. Not the gathering horn. This one is tight and ugly. Border signal.

Maelis stills. Only for a breath. Then she snaps into motion like a blade drawn.

“Clear the middle,” she orders. “More water. Heat. Strip the table.”

My body obeys before my mind catches up. I shove crates aside, haul a table forward, lay clean cloth down. I set needles and thread where I can reach them. I pull out the good salve, the one Maelis makes from ash bark and honey, the one we save for deep cuts.

Another horn call, shorter this time. Closer.

The Den’s front room fills with that waiting hush, the kind that comes before someone starts screaming.

I hear boots outside. Many boots. Heavy. Fast.

A shout cracks through the air. “Healer! Open!”

Maelis strides to the door herself. She never makes a servant do what she can do with her own hands. She throws the latch and yanks it wide.

Cold air pours in. Snow dust swirls across the threshold. In the doorway, two sentinels stand straining under the weight of a body between them.

Not one of ours.

The man’s coat is dark and torn. Blood slicks his side, staining the cloth blacker than it already is. His head lolls forward, hair falling into his face. The scent that hits me isn’t Frostpine pine and smoke. It’s different—iron and storm, something sharp and clean under the blood, like cold stone struck by lightning.

My wolf, the quiet part of me that I keep leashed tight, lifts its head.

Maelis’s voice cuts hard. “Bring him in.”

The sentinels drag him across my floor, boots scraping stone, blood smearing a red trail through sanctuary.

I stand at the table with my hands ready, and I realize my whole life has been built around avoiding being seen.

Now a stranger is being laid in front of me, bleeding like a question, and every rule I ever lived by feels too small.

The door slams behind them, shutting out the wind.

Maelis looks at me. “Sera. To work.”

They lower the man onto the table, and I step in.

Blood at the Door

Blood never comes alone.

It brings noise with it—boots, curses, the scrape of a body dragged too fast across stone. It brings eyes. It brings blame, if you let it.

The stranger lay on our table like a question no one wanted to ask. Dark coat. Torn fabric. Too much red seeping out, soaking through the cloth and spreading in a slow fan. One sentinel kept his hands under the man’s shoulders. The other held his legs, jaw tight, eyes fixed anywhere but the wound.

Maelis didn’t look impressed. She looked busy.

“Clothes off,” she snapped. “Now. If you’re shy, go die in the snow instead.”

The sentinels hesitated. Outsiders weren’t common. Outsiders bleeding on our table was rarer. Outsiders who looked like they belonged somewhere above us—rarer still.

Their fingers fumbled with buttons.

“Move,” Maelis said again, and the air itself seemed to obey her.

My hands went to the basin, then to the clean cloth, then to the tray of needles. Habit took over, fast and sharp. It always did. If I let my mind drift, I’d start thinking about what this meant. Thinking never helped in the middle of blood.

Steel instruments clinked as I laid them out.

Then the scent hit me.

Not pine smoke. Not Frostpine sweat. Not the earthy, familiar musk of our own.

This was cold stone and storm air, iron threaded through it like a blade. It punched straight through my nose and down into the place inside me that I kept locked tight. My stomach turned once, not from gore—my body had seen worse—but from the strange, wrong pull that came with it.

A tug. Like someone had tied a cord to my ribs and yanked.

My fingers froze over the needle case.

Maelis noticed everything. “Sera.”

The way she said my name made it a slap. Not cruel. Just precise. Get back in your skin.

I forced my breath steady and stepped closer.

The sentinels finally peeled the coat away. Underneath, the stranger wore a dark shirt, high collar, the kind you’d see on a man who had servants to iron it. The cloth was shredded at his side. Claw marks, deep and angled. Not wolf claws from a pack fight. These were… wild. Ragged. Like something that didn’t care about laws.

A low sound came from one of the sentinels. “We found him near Knife Ridge. Half dead.”

“Near the wards?” Maelis asked.

“Aye,” he said. “On our side.”

Maelis’s mouth thinned. “That’s trouble.”

Trouble, in Frostpine, meant two things: danger—and someone to punish after.

Maelis pressed her fingers near the wound, gentle but firm. The stranger didn’t flinch. If he was awake, he hid it well.

“He’s lost too much,” she said. “Sera, clean it. Stitch what you can. Don’t be precious.”

Precious. That was Maelis’s word for hesitation.

I took a cloth and dabbed away the blood. More spilled up at once, warm against my fingers. I worked fast, keeping pressure, clearing enough to see.

The edges of the gash were ugly. Clotted in places, still weeping in others. Whoever did this meant to open him like a fish.

My throat tightened, not from pity, but from that strange pull again. It grew worse the closer I leaned.

Green eyes with amber flecks—mine—caught the faintest reflection in a metal tray. The girl staring back looked calm. Useful. Safe.

Inside, something restless paced.

Bristle, I thought without meaning to. The name I never said aloud. The wolf part of me that I kept quiet for everyone’s comfort.

Bristle didn’t like this. Bristle didn’t like strangers on our table. Bristle didn’t like how my body wanted to lean closer, like the scent was a hook in my skin.

Maelis nudged my elbow. “Hands, girl.”

Heat rushed to my face. I bent over my work again.

Needle through skin. Thread pulled tight. Knot set.

Simple. Clean. Honest.

The Den around us filled with movement. Someone boiled water. Someone stoked the fire. A runner shoved the door open and shouted something about “more wounded coming,” then vanished again.

The sentinels stayed, watching like they expected the stranger to jump up and tear us apart.

“Hold him,” I said.

One sentinel scoffed. “He’s near dead.”

“Then hold him anyway,” I answered. My voice came out sharper than I meant. Not loud. Just edged.

He complied, palms braced on the stranger’s shoulders.

More stitches. The gash fought me. The skin was tough, like it had been trained to take hits and keep moving. My hands knew what to do, but my thoughts kept slipping to details that didn’t belong on a random traveler.

The cut of his shirt. The calluses on his palms. The faint marks on his wrists like he’d worn bracers or straps. The way his body lay heavy but controlled, even unconscious, as if his muscles remembered command.

A door slammed somewhere in the front room.

A voice boomed through the Den—male, harsh, used to being obeyed.

“Maelis!”

Alpha Garrick Frost didn’t ask for permission even in sanctuary. He didn’t step into fights here, but he pushed as close as he dared, as if the law should bend for him out of respect.

Maelis didn’t look up. She raised her voice just enough. “If you’re not bleeding, you’re in my way.”

Garrick’s boots thudded closer. I caught sight of him in the corner of my eye—tall, thick through the chest, ice-blue eyes that judged faster than they blinked. Graying blond hair pulled back. He smelled like cold air and authority.

His gaze slid past Maelis, past the sentinels, and landed on me.

Omega-born. He saw it like a stain, even with my hands working and someone’s life in them.

“What is that?” he demanded, chin tipping toward the stranger.

“A man who’ll die if you keep barking,” Maelis said.

Garrick’s nostrils flared. He caught the stranger’s scent too. Everyone in the Den did. A few pack members shifted nervously, shoulders tight, as if their wolves didn’t trust the air.

“This is Frostpine,” Garrick said. “We don’t take in outsiders. Not now. Not with Winter Tribute close.”

Winter Tribute. There it was.

My fingers didn’t stop, but my spine stiffened. Winter Tribute meant we’d be watched. Me especially. The pack didn’t like being reminded they had an Omega-born in the healer ranks. It made them look… messy.

Maelis finally lifted her head. “You want him dead on your threshold? You want his blood on your snow? Because that’s the quicker path to trouble.”

Garrick’s jaw worked. “Trouble is already here if he crossed our wards.”

“He didn’t cross them clean,” Maelis said. “Look at him.”

Garrick looked. Really looked. His eyes narrowed.

“Knife Ridge,” he said, as if tasting the words. “Who found him?”

The sentinel nearest the door straightened. “We did, Alpha.”

“Did you see what did it?”

“No, Alpha. Only tracks. Strange ones.”

Strange tracks made Garrick’s face go harder. “Then he’s bait.”

My stomach turned, and not from blood. Bait meant trap. Trap meant someone would die. In Frostpine, it was often the lowest-ranking who paid first.

Maelis’s voice cut clean. “He’s a patient.”

Garrick stepped closer, stopping at the edge of the table like the sanctuary law physically held him back. His eyes flicked to my hands.

“You,” he said to me. Not my name. Just you. “If this goes bad, if this outsider brings danger, it’s your work that will be questioned first. Understand?”

A familiar chill crawled up the back of my neck. The old lesson. Useful until blamed.

I didn’t look up. “I understand, Alpha.”

Maelis’s stare could have cracked stone. “Threaten her again in my Den and you’ll sleep outside like a pup.”

Garrick’s lips twitched like he wanted to say more, but he swallowed it. Pride didn’t let him back down easily. Still, even Garrick obeyed sanctuary… most days.

He turned sharply toward the door. “Keep him under watch. No one speaks of this outside these walls until I say so. Winter Tribute is close. We do not give the dominion a reason to sniff around our faults.”

His eyes swept the room. They landed on me one more time. “Especially not the ones we already carry.”

Then he was gone, his boots retreating, the cold of him leaving a trail behind.

The Den felt warmer after he left, and I hated that I noticed.

Maelis exhaled through her nose. “Ignore him.”

Easy words. Heavy to live.

My hands kept moving. The wound closed slowly, thread drawing skin together like a reluctant promise.

The stranger’s breathing hitched once. A low sound, almost a growl, slipped from his throat. The sentinel holding him flinched.

“He’s turning,” the sentinel muttered, alarm in his voice.

Maelis leaned in and pressed two fingers to the stranger’s neck. “No. Fever, maybe. Shock. His wolf is fighting to keep him here.”

The stranger’s lashes fluttered.

For a moment, I thought he’d stay under. Then his eyes cracked open.

Gray.

Not pale gray. Not cloudy.

Steel gray, sharp even through pain, focused like a blade finding its target.

Those eyes locked on me as if the whole world narrowed down to the space between my face and his.

The pull in my ribs snapped tight. Hard. My breath went strange, shallow, as if my lungs forgot how to work properly.

My fingers faltered with the needle.

Maelis noticed at once. “Sera—”

Too late.

His hand moved faster than it should have. A big hand, rough and warm, shooting out to clamp around my wrist.

The contact was like stepping into fire and winter at once.

The sentinel swore and tried to pry him off, but the stranger’s grip was iron.

“Easy,” Maelis said, voice turning low, commanding in a different way. “Sir, you’re safe.”

Safe. A lie we told bleeding men so they didn’t panic.

His eyes didn’t leave mine. His pupils widened slightly, then narrowed, like he was fighting himself.

His mouth opened.

Blood stained his lips.

One word came out, scraped raw, barely sound at all.

“Kael.”

The name hit the air and landed heavy.

The sentinel nearest me went still. “What did he say?”

“I heard it,” another muttered, fear creeping in. “That’s a high name.”

Maelis’s gaze sharpened, flicking from the stranger’s face to mine.

I couldn’t speak. My throat locked tight.

His hand tightened once, like he needed to make sure I was real. Like he needed me anchored.

Then his grip loosened. His eyes rolled back for a heartbeat. The steel look faded into darkness.

His arm fell, heavy, sliding off my wrist and thumping onto the table.

Out again.

The Den exhaled in one ragged breath.

My wrist burned where he’d held me, not from pain, but from something that felt too close to recognition. Like my body knew his hand better than my mind did.

Maelis watched me for a long moment, reading the quiet war in my face.

“You know that name?” she asked softly, so the sentinels wouldn’t hear.

“No,” I lied.

Maelis didn’t call me on it. Not yet. She returned to the wound, checking my stitches with a practiced eye.

“He’ll live,” she said after a moment. “If nothing else tears him open again.”

One sentinel rubbed the back of his neck. “Alpha Garrick will want him chained.”

“Alpha Garrick can want whatever he likes,” Maelis said. “He’ll not be chained in my Den.”

The sentinel swallowed. “Then where?”

Maelis’s gaze slid to the ceiling, toward the loft above the Den. Toward my room.

My stomach dropped.

“No,” I said before I could stop myself.

Maelis’s brows rose. “No?”

The sentinels stared at me like I’d just barked at the Alpha.

Heat crawled up my neck again, angry this time. Not shame. Not fear. Anger that my first instinct was to refuse anything that might bring trouble—because trouble always came for me first.

Maelis lowered her voice. “Sera. Listen.”

The Den’s front room was busy now—another wounded hunter groaning on a cot, herbs being crushed, water steaming. Too many ears. Too many eyes.

Maelis leaned closer, her words meant only for me. “If Garrick hears that name, he’ll do something foolish. If the pack starts whispering, they’ll blame you, and they’ll blame me, and they’ll blame the law of sanctuary if they can. We keep this quiet until we know what we have.”

“What we have is a bleeding stranger,” I hissed.

“And a name that makes wolves nervous,” Maelis replied. “So we put him where fewer tongues can reach him. Your loft is above my Den. It’s still sanctuary. And you can keep watch.”

My throat went dry. “Why me?”

Maelis’s eyes softened by a hair. “Because you’re steady. Because you won’t steal from him. Because you won’t let your fear make you cruel.”

My hands curled around the bloodied cloth I’d been using, twisting it without thinking. “You don’t know what my fear makes me.”

“Oh, I do,” she said. “It makes you survive. That’s not a sin.”

The sentinels shifted, impatient.

Maelis straightened and turned to them. “Help her carry him. Quietly. No talk. If you gossip, you’ll spend a week scrubbing chamber pots with lye.”

They paled. That threat worked better than claws.

One sentinel cleared his throat. “If the Alpha asks—”

“I will answer the Alpha,” Maelis said. “You will answer to me.”

That was that.

The stranger’s weight was too much for me alone. Even healthy, I wasn’t built to haul a full-grown man up a narrow stair. The sentinels lifted him carefully, one under the shoulders, one under the knees. His head lolled toward my chest for a moment as they maneuvered, and the scent hit me again—storm and iron and something underneath that felt… old.

Not ancient like dust.

Old like stone that had been touched by many hands.

The stair up to my loft creaked as we climbed. The Den’s noise faded below, replaced by the quieter sounds of wood settling and wind pushing at the building’s seams.

At the top, my room waited. Small. Plain. A narrow bed, a scarred worktable, bundles of dried herbs hanging from twine. It smelled like bitter roots and smoke, like the life I’d built to stay invisible.

The sentinels lowered the stranger onto my bed. The mattress dipped under his weight. My blanket bunched around his hips.

He looked wrong there. Too large. Too sharp-edged. Like a wolf in a lamb pen.

“Set him on his side,” Maelis ordered from the doorway behind us. She’d followed up, limping but quick, carrying a small satchel of supplies.

The sentinels adjusted him, careful not to tear the stitches.