Chapter 1

Elara's POV

My brother wants me to become a breeder for the Alpha Prince of an enemy wolf pack.

I overheard him last night when he was speaking quietly to another warrior outside his room. Those words stayed in my head all night and followed me into the morning as I did my usual chores.

I was still thinking about them when Brenna's voice suddenly broke through my thoughts, startling me.

"That is the third bowl you've made this week, girl. You spoil that prisoner better than you spoil your own brother.”

"It is not spoiling him," I said. "Kane told me to keep him alive. A dead prisoner is no use to the Alpha King."

Brenna snorted and went back to her own pot. "A month of this and he is still alive. Stubborn thing, that Southern wolf." She spat.

I did not answer. I wrapped a cloth around the hot bowl and lifted it carefully, then walked out of the kitchen and toward the stone steps that led down into the dungeon.

The air grew colder with every step. Torches lined the narrow hallway, their light flickering against damp stone walls. Two guards stood outside the last cell, spears crossed over the door. They uncrossed them when they saw me.

"Feeding time again?" one guard said, smirking. "That wolf should be dead by now but you keep stuffing him with food. He is too proud to surrender."

I sighed. "The Alpha king wants him alive," I said yet again, and stepped past them.

The cell door creaked open. Inside, silver chains hung from the stone wall, and at the end of those chains sat Lucian Frost, the Southern Alpha's son.

Even chained, even starved, even broken by a month of torture, he was still the most striking man I had ever seen.

Northern men were built like mountains, with thick necks and broad shoulders made for strength. Lucian was different. He was tall and lean, with strong muscles and a body built for speed rather than heavy strength.

Dried blood crusted along his arms and chest, mixed with fresh red lines from yesterday's whip, and yet somehow the wounds only made him look more dangerous, not weaker. His jaw was cut like stone, his dark hair damp and falling over storm gray eyes that missed nothing.

I hated that I noticed. I hated it more that my heart gave a small, foolish thump every single time I walked through that door and found him watching me before I even set the bowl down.

"You again," Lucian said, his voice rough. "Does the North have no other errand girl to send?"

"Eat," I said, kneeling beside him with the bowl. "You will not heal if you do not eat."

"Heal," he repeated, and laughed, though the laugh turned into a cough that made him wince. "Why would I want to heal? So your King can whip me again tomorrow?"

I dipped the wooden spoon into the broth. "If you do not eat, you will die. Is that what you want?" I asked in a low voice.

Lucian snorted. "Death would be a mercy compared to this place." His eyes narrowed at me. "You Northern wolves know nothing of mercy. You are savages who drink blood and call it a feast."

My hand paused over the bowl. I had heard these words from him many times now, and every time they stung a little less. "I am only bringing you food," I said quietly. "I did not build this dungeon."

"No," Lucian said. "You only serve the ones who did." His wrists strained against the chains, the metal clinking. "Tell your King this. I will surrender to no one. And when I am free, I will kill every wolf in this cursed pack. Every last one."

I sighed loudly. He always said this every time I came to the dungeons. "You cannot even lift a spoon," I mumbled. "How will you kill anyone?"

For a moment Lucian said nothing. His jaw tightened, and something flickered behind his eyes, something that was not quite anger.

"Watch me," he said finally.

I sighed and lifted the spoon to his mouth. He turned his face away.

"I do not need your help, Northern dog."

"You need to eat," I said again, "or the alpha's men will just force it down your throat with worse methods than mine. I have seen them do it to other prisoners. It is not gentle."

Lucian's eyes cut back to me, weighing my words. Slowly, reluctantly, he opened his mouth.

I fed him in silence for a while, spoonful after spoonful. Outside the cell, I could hear the guards laughing about something, their voices echoing down the stone hall. Lucian swallowed another mouthful, then spoke again, his voice lower this time.

"Blood drinking barbarians," he muttered. "That is what my father called your kind, growing up. I did not believe the stories were true until I came here."

"Then stop talking about it," I said, "before the guards hear you and drag you out for another beating."

"Let them," Lucian said, louder now. "Let them hear. I will say it as many times as I want. Barbarians. Savages. You people know nothing but blood and war."

"Stop it," I hissed, glancing at the door.

"Why? Are you afraid of what they will do to me? Or afraid of what they will do to you, for failing to keep your pet prisoner quiet?"

His voice was rising, and my heart began to pound.

If the guards heard him insult the pack again, they would come in and drag him out, and the whip would come out with the aconite oil, and his wounds would never have the chance to close. I had seen it happen before, the poison eating into the cuts, making him scream through gritted teeth for hours.

I grabbed the spoon and shoved a large piece of meat toward his mouth, pressing it in before he could say another word.

Lucian's eyes went wide with surprise, then fury, as he was forced to chew or choke.

"There," I said, low and firm. "Now be quiet and eat."

He glared at me while he chewed, but he did not spit it out. When he swallowed, he did not speak again, not for insults, not for threats. The silence stretched between us, filled only by the crackle of the torch outside the cell.

I let out a slow breath. I knew what the Alpha wanted from him. Lucian was not just any prisoner. He was clever in ways the Northern warriors were not, skilled in strategy and battle plans that could break entire armies.

The Alpha King wanted to humble the South by turning its prince into a Northern weapon. If Lucian refused to serve, the whips would keep coming, laced with aconite that burned worse than fire.

Even I, who had grown up in the north, around blood and violence my whole life, found it hard to watch. I hoped, quietly, that he would surrender soon. Not for the alpha's sake, but so the torture would finally stop.

As if he could hear my thoughts, Lucian's eyes locked onto mine. Blood still stained his lips from the coughing fit earlier. He spat to the side and spoke through clenched teeth.

"I will never surrender to your Alpha king," he said. "Not now. Not ever."

"Then you will keep bleeding," I said softly. "Every day, until there is nothing left of you to bleed."

"Better to bleed as a Southern wolf," he said, "than to live as a Northern dog. That's betrayal."

I did not answer. This was the man my brother wanted me to bear a child for?

I finished feeding him the rest of the broth in silence, then stood, wiping my hands on my skirt. I left the bowl by the door for the guards to collect later and walked back up the stone steps without looking behind me.

I had barely reached the top of the stairs when a voice called my name.

"Elara."

I turned. My older brother stood waiting near the kitchen entrance, his broad shoulders filling the doorway. Even after a month back from battle, the scars on his arms had not faded.

"Kane," I said, wiping my hands again out of habit. "Is something wrong?"

"Come with me," he said. "The Alpha king has spoken. There is something I must tell you."

I followed him down the hall, my stomach tightening with a strange unease, though I already had a fair guess at what waited for me at the end of it. Better to let him say it himself, I thought.

"What is it?" I asked, keeping my voice light.

Kane stopped walking and turned to face me, but avoided my eyes. His face was unreadable, caught somewhere between duty and discomfort, the same look he wore whenever he had to give an order he did not like.

His jaw tightened. "It's about the prisoner. Southern wolves value family above all else. Blood and bloodline. The King believes that if the prisoner is given a wife," he paused, "and a son, he may finally agree to submit."

I stood still and let the silence hang between us. I already understood what my brother was saying.

He wanted me to become a breeder for the Alpha Prince of an enemy pack.

I was not surprised that he had come to me. In the Northern Pack, this was simply how things worked. A female wolf's duty was to bear children, to keep the bloodline strong, whether she loved the man or not. If a husband died, his brother might take his place, and the children kept coming all the same.

Because of Kane's status as the strongest warrior in the pack, my life had always been safer than most. I thought of the years he had spent fighting for me, bleeding for me, so I would never again know the hunger of our childhood.

If this was what he needed from me now, I would not refuse him.

"I understand," I said quietly.

Kane's eyes softened, just slightly. "Elara."

"I said I understand," I repeated, firmer this time.

But even as I said the words, my mind drifted back down to the cell below, to the prisoner chained against the wall, blood and beauty tangled together in one lean, dangerous body. He was not built like the massive Northern males.

If I was meant to carry his child, I wondered, could his battered body even endure the fierce sex?