Sold to the Broken Throne
Ondine Skarrow was never worth claiming — unranked, unbonded, raised outside a pack that only remembered she existed the day they needed to pay off a debt. Sold at auction under wolf law, she expects a cage. She gets three men who move like they’ve commanded armies, and a bond that hits like a collision the second the tallest one looks at her.
Then he rejects it. On sight. In front of everyone.
Corvain Vaelth is the exiled heir to a throne stolen out from under him three years ago, hiding with the only two wolves who survived the massacre that took everything else. Claiming a mate while he’s landless and hunted isn’t romance — it’s a death sentence he refuses to hand her. So he denies the bond and walks away, and leaves Ondine legally his, emotionally nobody’s, and furious.
But Alpha Alaric Vaunt — the man who built his empire on Ashgrove’s ashes — has just ratified a law that claims every unbonded omega in the region for his own territory. Ondine isn’t just unclaimed. She’s a target with a deadline. And the only thing that puts her outside Vaunt’s reach is the bond Corvain threw away.
Reclaiming his throne was never just about Corvain anymore. Now it’s the only thing standing between Ondine and a cage with someone else’s name on it — and the only way any of them keep her is if all three of them are willing to fight, and choose her, for real.
อ่าน
Chapter: Chapter Eight - What Doesn’t Need a Name to Be TrueBarrick POVBarrick had spent the last hour watching three people take turns falling apart quietly, and he was done being the only one in the clearing who hadn’t said anything useful.“Someone tore a page out of a dead woman’s private ledger sometime in the last three years,” he said, “which means either it happened the night of the massacre, in which case whoever did it is long gone and we’re chasing a ghost, or it happened after, in which case someone’s had access to that ledger we don’t know about. Which is it, Fenwick?”“I don’t know yet.” Fenwick was still bent over the pages, close enough to the fire that the light caught the strain in his face. “The tear’s clean. Old. If it happened recently, in my care, I’d have noticed the ledger’s weight change. I think it happened before I ever had it — which means my mother did this herself.”“Why would she write the truth and then rip out the one page that named it?”“Because writing it down at all was already a risk she barely survived m
ปรับปรุงล่าสุด: 2026-08-06
Chapter: Chapter Seven - What My Mother Never Told MeFenwick POV“Someone from inside our own pack, someone who survived that night, may have hidden you on purpose — and never told either of us you existed.”Fenwick heard himself say it and watched it land on both their faces at once — Corvain’s going carefully, deliberately blank in the way he only managed when a thing hurt too much to let show. Ondine’s going somewhere quieter and harder to name, somewhere between hope and dread, as she’d learned better than to let either one win before the facts arrived.“There were three of us who survived,” Corvain said. “Barrick, me, and you. If someone hid her on purpose, that’s not a long list of who it could have been.”“It’s not,” Fenwick agreed, and made himself say the rest of it before his own nerve failed. “Which is why I need to check something before either of you spend one more minute suspecting each other of a lie that isn’t yours to carry.”He crossed to where his pack sat against a fallen log, undisturbed since the fighting, and drew
ปรับปรุงล่าสุด: 2026-08-06
Chapter: Chapter Six - The Right Kind of WantedOndine POV“Say that again,” Ondine said. “Slower. Because I need you to understand that I have spent my entire life being told exactly what I was worth, and it was never this.”Fenwick crouched by the dead fire, coaxing it back to life with hands that weren’t quite steady, and when he spoke it was in the careful, over-explained tone of a man trying not to make a bad night worse by rushing the wrong part of it. “The Ashgrove Sight isn’t proof you’re Corvain’s sister, if that’s the fear sitting underneath the question you actually asked. It runs in cadet branches — allied households, old marriage alliances, lines that split off from the direct throne two or three generations back and kept the trait without keeping the name. It’s rare. It’s not exclusive to one household’s immediate children.”“So I could be his cousin. Some relation. Distant.”“You could be a great many things,” Fenwick said. “Right now, honestly, we don’t know which one, and I’d rather tell you that plainly than hand
ปรับปรุงล่าสุด: 2026-08-06
Chapter: Chapter Five — What Wasn’t Supposed to Be HersOndine POV“That’s a war horn,” Barrick said. “That’s not one rider anymore.”Corvain moved before the echo died, and the clearing that had felt like a home a moment ago rearranged itself into something else entirely — Fenwick shouting positions, Barrick already stripping to shift, the fire kicked out under someone’s boot so it wouldn’t silhouette them against the dark. Ondine had exactly enough time to register that nobody was telling her to hide before the first riders broke the treeline, and by then there wasn’t time to be told anything at all.She counted six. Not an army — Fenwick had been right about that much, whatever this was, it wasn’t Vaunt’s full weight coming down on them tonight — but six armed men on a settlement with four defenders was still bad math by anyone’s count, and the banner one of them carried wasn’t Kessler colors at all.It was Greaves colors. Her old pack’s colors.The understanding hit her almost as hard as the bond had at the auction block — not Vaunt’s
ปรับปรุงล่าสุด: 2026-08-02
Chapter: Chapter Four — Paid TwiceCorvain POV“Say that again,” Corvain said, “slower.”“Someone knew we’d be at that auction,” Fenwick repeated, and if he heard the edge in Corvain’s voice, he didn’t let it change his pace. He turned the courier tag over once more in the firelight, reading whatever markings lived on the underside like the leather itself might apologize for what it meant. “This tag isn’t standard patrol issue. Kessler couriers carry these when they’re delivering a specific instruction, not running a general sweep. Someone told this rider to be at that trade post tonight, watching for exactly what he saw. That’s not luck. That’s a tip.”“A tip about what,” Barrick said. “Nobody knew Corvain was going to be there. We didn’t know until this morning.”“We knew this morning.” Fenwick’s eyes came up, and for the first time all night something like real fear moved behind the calm. “Which means whoever tipped Vaunt’s courier had the same morning we did to work with.”The clearing seemed to shrink around that
ปรับปรุงล่าสุด: 2026-08-02
Chapter: Chapter Three — What the Name CostsCorvain POV“Get inside,” Corvain said. “Now.”Ondine didn’t move.He should have expected that. Three weeks of knowing her wouldn’t have taught her to take an order without a reason, and he’d known her for three hours. “I mean it,” he said, already scanning the treeline, already counting exits she didn’t know existed yet. “That horn isn’t Fenwick’s, and it isn’t mine, which means it’s someone who found this place without an invitation.”“Then I’d rather see what’s coming than hide from it blind.”“That’s not—” He bit the rest of it off, because arguing was a luxury they didn’t have thirty seconds to spend. “Fine. Behind me. Not beside me.”She fell in behind him without another word, and some small, useless part of his chest noted that she’d listened the second the reason was real instead of just an order, and filed it away as one more thing about her he didn’t have time to feel anything about right now.Barrick was already at the treeline with a blade in each hand by the time they r
ปรับปรุงล่าสุด: 2026-08-02
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