TWO

~Kaius~

I had not set foot in Crescent Hollow in nine years, and I had hoped to keep it that way.

The Truce of the Four Packs was signed every year at the Blood Moon, and every year the Lycan King was expected to attend. For two years I had sent my general in my place. This year the old Alphas made it clear that if I did not come in person, the treaty would not be renewed. So I came, with forty riders and a foul temper, to a place where my brother wore my face.

I saw Dorian before I had finished dismounting. He stood on the steps of the great hall with the same jaw, the same dark hair and the same eyes as mine. He had grown broader since I last saw him. He looked at me the way a man looks at something he wants to scrape off his boot.

Then the wind turned, and I smelled her.

Night jasmine and rain. It went through me like a blade.

For six years my wolf had been something I managed rather than lived with, a low roar at the back of my skull with red at the edges of my sight, held down by routine and discipline. In one breath it went completely silent. Then it said a single word.

Mine.

She stood at the gate with both hands wrapped around the iron bars. She was a girl in a gray servant's dress, bare-armed in the cold, with a moonstone at her throat and tears running down her face. She was small and she looked as if someone had hit her. When she turned to look at me her eyes were the color of dark water, and she wasn't afraid. That was what undid me. She looked like she had nothing left to be afraid with.

"Mine," I said. I had not meant to say it aloud.

Dorian came down the steps fast. "Don't look at her."

"Who is she?"

"Nobody. An Omega." His voice cracked on the word. "She isn't yours."

"My wolf disagrees."

"Then your wolf is wrong." He stopped in front of me, close enough that my riders reached for their swords. "I rejected her ten minutes ago, Kaius. She has nothing to do with you."

For a second I could not hear anything at all.

Then I felt it. It was not only my own bond, new and bright, but the raw wound on hers, torn and bleeding. A rejection. She had just been rejected in front of her whole pack by the man standing in front of me, and she was my mate.

I don't remember crossing the courtyard. I remember Thane's hand on my arm and the taste of iron in my mouth where my teeth had started to change. I remember every wolf in the yard taking a step back.

"You rejected her," I said.

"She's an Omega without a wolf. She can't be Luna."

"She was your mate."

"She was. It's done." His mouth twisted. "And of course you'd take what I threw away. You always did like picking things up from the floor, murderer."

The word fell into the courtyard like a stone into a well. I had not heard it said aloud in nine years. I saw Thane's jaw tighten, and I felt the beast in me shift, but I did not let it come. Not in front of her.

"Is it done?" I said instead, and I turned away from my brother. The girl had not moved. I went to her slowly, the way you approach something wounded, and when I was close enough I dropped to one knee on the cold stones so my eyes were lower than hers. "What's your name?"

"Calla." It was barely a whisper.

"Calla. I'm Kaius."

"I know who you are." Her voice shook. "You're the Lycan King."

"Did you accept it?"

She blinked. "What?"

"His rejection. When he said the words. Did you answer him?"

A quiet spread across the courtyard. Dorian said sharply, "It doesn't matter what she..."

"It matters." Thane stepped forward. "Under the old law, a rejection is not complete until the rejected speaks the words of acceptance, Alpha. You know that."

"Calla," I said gently. "Did you say it?"

She looked from me to Dorian and back. Her mouth trembled. "No," she whispered. "I couldn't. I didn't say anything."

The silence was complete.

Dorian's face went gray. "That's not possible."

"It's the law," Thane said. "The bond between you stands, Alpha Ashcroft, until she severs it."

"Then she'll sever it now."

"I'm not going to say it because you told me to." Calla's voice was low and furious, and I saw the whole pack flinch. She was still shaking, but she lifted her chin. "You've said enough tonight."

Dorian opened his mouth.

That was when the moonstone at her throat flared silver, and a thin line of light slid up her left wrist and settled there, a delicate band the color of moonlight, as though drawn by an invisible pen.

I knew it. Every Lycan in the courtyard knew it. We had seen the same mark appear on my father's wrist the night he met my mother.

The second thread.

Behind me, my riders drew in a breath. In front of me, Dorian stared at the band of light on her wrist and then at the faint silver glow that still clung to his own, the leftover thread of their bond.

"Two threads," Thane said quietly. "A wolf cannot have two threads."

"Apparently," I said, "this one can."

I looked up and found Orsen Marlowe's gray eyes on me. I had met the man once, years ago at a pack gathering, and he had been charming then too. I disliked him on principle. Men who smiled at everything had always seemed to me to be hiding something. But the way he looked at the girl at my feet was not the look of a man who had just been surprised. It was the look of a man calculating what a thing was worth.

On the steps above us, Alpha Orsen Marlowe had stopped smiling.