Chapter 2 : The King

The stone walls of the throne room trembled beneath his roar.

Another chalice shattered against the marble floor, crimson wine bleeding like spilled blood across the veins of the palace. Servants scurried like mice into the shadows, too wise to linger.

The Lycan King Aries remained on his feet, fists clenched at his sides, chest heaving with fury.

“I told them I didn’t want another Ceremony.”

High Chancellor Theron flinched but didn’t retreat. Of all the the servants and people in the palace, he alone still dared speak to the King when his temper burned. “It is law, Your Majesty. The elders—”

“Let them rot.” Aries turned sharply, his bright purple eyes flashing in the firelight. “What has their law given me? Ten long years of paraded girls, empty vows, and broken promises. Ten long years of wasted time. And for what?”

Theron’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Hope, sire.”

The King laughed. A low, bitter sound that echoed like thunder. “Hope is for men with something to lose.”

He sank onto his throne—iron and obsidian, jagged and uncomfortable, forged by the first of his kind when blood still ran freely across the Northlands. Aries had ruled for 10 years, his reign unchallenged, his dominance absolute. And yet he sat alone.

Always alone.

His fate had promised a mate. Every Lycan king was born with the mark, a sigil burned into the flesh above the heart that would only fade upon bonding. Aries mark still burned—bright and cruel, a reminder of the one thing he would never possess.

He’d searched. Gods, he’d searched. Through wars and kingdoms, across cities and continents. Every year, the elders demanded the Ceremony. Every year, he endured it. A line of trembling girls, barely women, dressed in white and doused in fear, brought before him like offerings to a savage god.

And none of them were hers.

None of them ever would be.

“I should burn the tradition to ash,” Aries muttered, more to himself than to Theron. “I should end it. End them.”

Theron said nothing. Perhaps for the first time, he agreed.

Aries hand drifted to the scar along his jaw—a gift from a traitor he’d torn apart in his youth. He welcomed pain. Pain meant he was still alive. Still capable of rage, if nothing else.

Outside the great windows, the moon had begun to rise. Not the full moon, not yet. But soon.

His instincts clawed at his skin. The wolf beneath his flesh stirred, restless and blood-hungry. Even now, after all these years, it whispered of claiming. Of bonding. Of things he no longer believed in.

His fate was a lie. For a decade he had searched far and wide for his fated mate, and he had long lost hope in finding her.

And yet… the Ceremony would proceed.

Against his wishes, the elders had summoned girls from every province. Every year each girl over the age of 18, would be summoned delivered to the palace. Pure. Untouched. Prepared. As if he were a beast to be satisfied by scent alone. As if he hadn’t already grown sick of their trembling eyes and false smiles.

He didn’t want them.

He didn’t want her, whoever she was. Not anymore.

If fate had not given her to him by now, he would take no mate.

He would rule alone.

A commotion stirred at the doors to the chamber. Aries snapped his head up, eyes narrowing.

The guards parted to allow a messenger through—a boy, barely old enough to shave, pale with sweat and fear. He dropped to his knees before the throne and held out a sealed scroll.

“Sire,” he stammered. “The first of the girls has arrived. From the silver crest pack.”

Aries stared at the parchment as if it might catch fire in the boy’s hands.

A small, half-forgotten pack tucked near the woods. Remote. Obedient. Irrelevant.

He took the scroll and snapped the wax seal between two fingers.

One girl.

Eighteen years old.

Name: Aurora Price

Dark hair. Blue eyes. Marked by the moon at birth. Spirited temperament. Unbroken lineage.

Aries tossed the scroll aside.

“They will all kneel,” he growled. “Whether they are the one or not.”

Theron cleared his throat. “What shall we do with her, Your Majesty as it is her 18th birthday ? Perhaps we set up the largest of the girls rooms for her ?”

Aries stood again, taller than any man, every inch of him carved from muscle and malice. His voice was a low, dark rumble.

“Let her wait in the Hall of Silence until one of the guards comes to fetch her for her room. And tell the others—there will be no more Ceremonies. No more girls. No more lies. This is the last.”

“And if you do not find your mate?”

Kalen’s lip curled, a flash of anger behind it.

“Then I will rule alone, I’m not waiting any longer for my mate, if my mate is not in this lot of girls. No more ceremonies, if the elders do not agree they will understand. why the world fears a king with nothing left to lose.”

Theron understood the kings words completely he remembered a time when the king was a sweet boy. It had broken his heart to see the king like this. He had also watched Aries’ father turn into this cruel monster that stood before him until Aries father had taken a chosen mate. To have an heir to the throne, their relationship was anything but beautiful and he slowly saw Aries growing into the man he is today. Hateful and ruthless, the day his mother left the palace changed Aries’ life completely.

⸻

Aries left the throne room in silence, his footsteps echoing through the ancient halls. Statues of past rulers lined the corridors—some cruel, some wise, none of them remembered. All of them long dead.

He didn’t envy them. He pitied them.

They had died believing in fate.

He would not make that mistake.

Aries entered his private chamber and locked the door behind him. The room was dark, lit only by the dying embers in the fire place. He pulled the tunic from his chest and stared at the mark above his heart—still pulsing faintly, like a wound that refused to heal.

He dug his claws into it until blood welled.

Silence it, he thought. End it.

But it never did.

No matter how hard he tried, it never stopped burning.