“I told you to SEDUCE Prince Alaric, not let him fuck you!” The whole kingdom knew Lycan king’s only son, Prince Alaric, was savage, bloodthirsty and coldly indifferent to women. Alpha Rowan feared his precious Seraphina would suffer if she married Alaric, so he forced me to pretend to be Seraphina and seduce him. “Just act slut enough, and Alaric will be so disgusted and dissolve the arrangement. Then I’ll come bring you home.” The morning after that one feral, ruinous night, I walked out of the Lycan Prince’s palace with one hand pressed flat against my lower back just to stay upright. Rowan rushed up to check my neck—no claiming mark, but covered in dark red bruises—and he exploded in rage. “I told you to perform,” he snarled, shaking where he stood. “Who told you to actually give yourself to him?!” “Are you that desperate for a male? You’d bait a man who kills without blinking?!” I met his fury with quiet, smoothing my collar back into place. “Alpha Rowan, you are wrong.” “Prince Alaric was…” I held his gaze. “…quite gentle.” Rowan lunged. His hand locked around my throat, grip designed to crush. “Gentle?” His voice cracked apart. “The man who put three Fated Mates in the ground—and you call him GENTLE?” “I sent you there for Blackwood Pack’s future. Not so you could offer yourself like some willing sacrifice!” “You belong to me. How DARE you let him touch you?!” I was forced to tilt my head back, face flushing red from the pressure building at my throat. But I didn’t fight him. I simply lowered my lashes and watched the rage consuming his face. “Alpha Rowan…” My voice stayed level. “Since the task is complete… the money you promised me…” He released me like I was something rotten, a sharp fling of his wrist. My legs buckled and I stumbled backward, colliding hard with the storage shelves behind me. He pulled a cloth from his pocket and wiped his fingers. Then dropped the cloth into the fire basin at his feet—watched the fabric curl, blacken, dissolve. Three years ago, when my family was convicted of treason, it was him who had knelt in the snow outside the Council Hall for three days and three nights, begging his father to spare my life. He had promised—no title, no formal bond, none of that mattered. He would protect me for the rest of my life. And now he had sent me into another male’s bed—and wouldn’t honor the money he’d promised. He stared at me, pain and jealousy churning raw in his eyes. “If Grandfather hadn’t demanded the Alliance, and if Seraphina hadn’t been too terrified of Alaric to go herself, I never would have—” He caught the blankness on my face. Saw I was looking only at the purse at his belt. The guilt in his expression curdled immediately into rage. He ripped the purse free and hurled it at me. “You only want money? Fine. Consider it a reward.” Coins exploded across the floor, rolling into the dust at the room’s edges. “Take it and go scrub yourself clean.” “Alaric is dangerously perceptive. If he suspects the deception, don’t come crying to me.” He turned to leave. I braced against the shelves and slowly lowered myself to the floor. My fingers moved across the cold stone. One coin. Two. I gathered each coin, blew the dust from them, and pressed them carefully against my chest. Rowan stopped at the door. Looked back. The contempt on his face sharpened into something vicious. “Of course. A traitor’s daughter—even if it’s money earned from selling yourself, you still treasure it.” It does. Because this gold keeps Caden breathing. I looked at him steadily and said nothing else. “Alpha Rowan. The birth control pill—” Rowan went still. He turned. Something complicated moved through his eyes. Fleeting. As if remembering the ghost of the girl I used to be—who once dazzled the kingdom at banquets with a single look. Then my poverty stabbed him, and the flicker hardened into deeper revulsion. “What—afraid you’re carrying the Lycan Prince’s pup?” He almost laughed. “Relax. The pack healer said your body ran cold too long in captivity. You’ll never carry a pup. Not in this lifetime.” “Stop worrying about impossible things.” The den curtain slammed shut behind him. Cold wind flooded in. I clutched the gold tighter against my chest. This amount—added to what I’d saved before—was just enough for one month of Caden’s medicine. I pulled myself to the small table, poured a cup of tea that had long gone cold, pressed a pinch of cheap pain-dulling herbs to my tongue, and swallowed both together. Bitterness spread across my throat. I didn’t care what Rowan thought of me. As long as Caden survived, I would gladly spend the rest of my life as Alaric’s unseen slave.
Before dawn had even broken, rough hands were dragging me off my bed. “Leah. Alpha Rowan’s orders—there’s a Royal Banquet at the Royal Palace today. You’re to attend as the Miss Seraphina.” The servant’s grip was steel. It bruised. I held down the discomfort rising from yesterday’s injuries and let them paint my face. Seraphina was Rowan’s treasured childhood sweetheart—delicate and easily overwhelmed. She couldn’t endure the pressures of a Royal Banquet. Rowan had long used me as her stand-in—we were close enough in build that behind a veil, no one looked twice. In the carriage, Rowan sat with his eyes closed and gave me nothing—not a look, not a word. Only when we reached the royal palace’s gate did he speak, cold and precise. “Alaric will be there. Keep your head down and your mouth shut.” “If you let him see through the deception, you can start preparing a grave for your father.” At the mention of my father, my body went rigid. Father had been dead in prison for half a month—Rowan knew it, yet still used it to threaten me. I couldn’t tell him the truth. Caden still needed medicine. The fiction had to hold. “Yes,” I said quietly. The royal banquet was a sea of wine and conversation. I sat beside Rowan, eyes downcast, peeling grapes from the plate. A burning gaze never left my skin. I didn’t need to look up to know whose it was. Lycan Prince Alaric sat at the hall’s head—black robe, dark hair, an untouchable ferocity that his handsome did nothing to soften. He turned his goblet in slow circles. His eyes tracked every inch of me, without shame and without apology. He raised the goblet toward Rowan in a languid toast, but his gaze dragged across my body like a slow deliberate touch. “Alpha Rowan has excellent taste,” he said, faintly amused. “Your female companion may be fragile—but this figure…” “I feel as though I’ve encountered it before. Quite… memorable.” Rowan’s jaw turned to iron. He raised his cup and drank anyway, smiling through the humiliation. Under the table, his fingers drove a brutal pinch into my thigh. The pain jolted through me; my hand jerked and the grapes scattered to the floor. “Useless,” Rowan hissed under his breath. Three rounds of drink in, Lycan Prince Alaric rose from his seat. When he passed our table, his steps slowed almost imperceptibly. A jade pendant slipped from his sleeve—smooth, warm-toned, carved with a wolf sigil—and dropped precisely at my feet. Rare jade. Worth a year of medicine. The surrounding guests were all engaged in pleasantries, no one paying attention. I bent without thinking. The moment my fingertips touched the pendant, it was still warm from his skin. Alaric hadn’t moved on. His fingers lifted my chin, his thumb traced ambiguously across the corner of my lips. “These hands know exactly how to please a man.” “Keep this as your reward. Take it back and practice well.” Rowan’s grip on his goblet shattered the stem. Wine bled down his wrist. I kept my eyes down and said nothing. That jade could cover three years of Caden’s medicine. On the ride back, I tucked the pendant into my sleeve with care. “Hand it over.” Rowan’s voice cracked the silence. I stilled. I had no choice. I placed it in his open palm. Rowan held the jade pendant, then let out a cold laugh. “A jade pendant? Alaric’s being generous.” He glanced at me sideways. “You think this is a declaration? It’s how he collects females. A trick. You’re naive enough to treasure it.” He flicked his wrist. The pendant arced through the open carriage window and vanished into the dark drainage channel below the road. “No—that was—” I lurched for the window before I could stop myself, and Rowan caught me, yanking me back against his chest. “Shut up! It’s just a broken stone. Now it’s in the gutter where it belongs.” I pressed against the window frame, staring at the dark below. Cold flooded from my feet straight up through my skull. That wasn’t jade. That was Caden’s medicine. That was Caden’s last thread—the rope he was white-knuckling at death’s door. Rowan watched my devastation with something that looked like satisfaction. “Remember what you are,” he said quietly. “you’re just a substitute.” “Alaric wants Seraphina—the Pack Princess, the Alliance contract. Not you, Leah.”
By the time we returned to the Blackwood packhouse, it was the dead of night. Before I’d even reached my room, I heard it—the low, suppressed coughing from inside. Caden. My chest seized. I pushed the door open and was at his side in four steps. He was curled into himself on the narrow cot, his frame skeletal, cheeks blazing with fever-flush. “Leah…” he whispered, half-conscious, reaching for nothing. I pressed my palm to his forehead. Burning. The medicine was gone. The healer had been clear—without Moonflower to sustain him, he would not survive the winter. I turned out every pocket, every fold of my clothing. Only the few coins Rowan had thrown at me. Not enough to buy even a shred of Moonflower. I stood up, set my teeth together, and walked directly to the main house. Seraphina’s chambers blazed with lamplight. I knelt on the cold stone outside, forehead toward the door. “Alpha Rowan. I beg you. Caden won’t last the night—” “You promised me. You said if I followed your orders and went to Prince Alaric, you would keep Caden safe.” “Please. One Moon flower. Just enough to keep him breathing.” “As long as Caden lives, I will do whatever you ask of me—without a word of complaint.” Laughter and conversation drifted from inside the room. After a long silence, the door finally opened. Rowan walked out with Seraphina on his arm. Seraphina wore a thick fur cloak, her face rosy—where was there any sign of illness? “Leah. What scene are you making now?” I moved forward on my knees and caught the hem of Rowan’s coat. “Alpha Rowan. My brother is critical. He needs Moon flower to survive.” “I beg you—for the sake of how many times I’ve taken Miss Seraphina’s place—please save him!” Rowan’s brow creased faintly. “The storehouse does have several stalks of moonflower…” Seraphina cut him off with a soft, well-timed cough, pressing one hand to her chest. “Alpha Rowan, the healer said I must keep the moonflower tonic for my own strength.” Rowan’s attention snapped to her immediately. His hand steadied her elbow. “Seraphina’s health comes first. Naturally those Moonflower are reserved for her.” He looked back down at me, his tone turning almost gentle—the cruelty pressed beneath reason. “Caden’s illness is a bottomless pit, Leah. Moon flower only delays it. It’s a bottomless well.” I stared at him, unable to speak. I stared at him in disbelief. Seraphina only had a few coughs, while Caden was dying. “Alpha Rowan—Seraphina only needs the moonflower for recovery. My brother needs it to stay alive—” Rowan waved one hand without looking at me. “Seraphina’s worth cannot be weighed against your brother’s cursed life. Not one Moonflower—even if it’s the entire pack’s supply of medicine, as long as Seraphina needs it, she gets priority!” Seraphina leaned into his arm, tilting her gaze down at me. That small, winning smile. “Leah. it’s not that I won’t help you, but I truly cannot go without the moonflower tonic.” “How about this—I’ll have the kitchen save the used herb dregs for you, they should still have some medicinal properties.” Humiliation. Cold, deliberate, total humiliation. I pulled myself to my feet and wiped the tears from my eyes. “Don’t bother.” Rowan wouldn’t give me a way to survive—someone else would.
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