LOGIN[Elian’s POV]
[POV: Lord Varis]The mountain watchtower was freezing. We did not have firewood. I sat at the rotting wooden table, rubbing my hands together to keep the blood moving. The other lords sat in the dark, shivering in their thin coats. No one spoke. We had been waiting for two days.Suddenly, heavy footsteps sounded on the stone stairs outside.Every lord in the room sat up straight. Kelan reached nervously for a small dagger on his belt.The wooden door was kicked open. It slammed hard against the stone wall.A man walked into the room. He wore dark, dirty leather armor. He was not the mercenary captain we had originally hired. This man was missing half of his left ear, and his face was covered in a fresh layer of dirt and dried blood. He walked directly to the table. He did not bow. He did not say a word of greeting.He reached behind his back, pulled out a massive object, and dropped it right in the center of the wooden table.It hit the wood with a heavy, deafening crash. The table s
Northern Garrison Captain's POVI hit the mercenary captain with the heavy iron edge of my shield. The impact caught him right in the jaw. The bone cracked loudly. He dropped his poisoned knife and fell backward into the mud, rolling away from the King.I did not stop to finish him off. I dropped my shield completely and dropped to my knees beside Kaelen.The giant Alpha was face down in the dirt. He was entirely rigid."Get him up!" I roared over the sound of clashing steel. "Do not let him stay on the ground! Move!"Three of my Northern guards broke away from the defensive circle. They rushed to my side, slipping in the wet mud. Arrows hissed through the air over our heads, thudding into the wooden walls of the village houses. We didn't have time to form a plan. We just grabbed Kaelen by the thick leather straps of his armor.He was impossibly heavy. Kaelen was a massive man, built from twenty years of surviving in the wild, and right now he was completely dead weight. His eyes were
I rode near the front of the patrol. We had exactly fifteen men. Ten of them were Northern guards, the elite soldiers Cillian had left behind to help me hold my walls. Five of them were new Eastern recruits. The Eastern boys were very young. They held their spears too tight. They looked nervously at the dark trees lining the dirt road. They were still afraid of me. They remembered the stories of the feral rogue. But they followed my orders without question.We were heading to a small border village at the very edge of my territory. A scout had reported that armed men were threatening the farmers there. The corrupt lords I banished were gone, but the territory was still unstable. I did not send a captain to handle the problem. I went myself. A king does not hide behind thick stone walls while his people are in danger. A king protects his own borders.We rode down the narrow dirt path. The sun was low in the sky, casting long, dark shadows across the ground. My black warhorse walked at
[POV: Lord Varis]The wind howled through the broken wooden shutters of the old mountain watchtower.It was a freezing, miserable stone building located miles away from the capital. There was no fire in the hearth. There were no servants to bring hot wine. There were no expensive red rugs on the floor.I sat at a rotting wooden table in the center of the dark room. My hands were freezing. I pulled my thin coat tighter around my shoulders, shivering violently.The other banished lords sat around the table with me. They looked awful. Their faces were dirty. Their hair was a mess. They looked like the exact peasants we used to rule."I cannot sleep on this floor another night," Lord Kelan complained bitterly. He rubbed his shaking hands together. "We are nobles. We should be sleeping in feather beds. That rogue beast humiliated us.""Complaining will not get our castle back," I snapped at him.I reached into my coat pocket. I pulled out a heavy, dark leather pouch. I dropped it onto the
Kaelen PovI stood in the mud at the center of the border village.The heavy wooden wagons behind me were loaded entirely with thick sacks of grain from the castle reserves. I did not send a lower guard or a politician to do this job. I came myself. The dirt road was completely quiet. The villagers stood in a wide circle around my horses, keeping a very safe distance.I looked at their faces. I saw mothers pulling their children behind their skirts. I saw thin, starving men holding farming tools with shaking hands. They stared at my scarred face, my massive size, and the heavy broadsword strapped across my back. They knew exactly who I was. They knew I was the feral rogue who took the throne by force. They expected me to demand taxes. They expected me to take their last winter supplies. They expected violence.I stepped up to the back of the first wagon. I reached down and drew the sharp hunting knife from my belt.Several villagers flinched violently. A few men took a step backward,
I left the terrified courtyard behind. I did not look back at the civilians shrinking away from my horse. My heavy boots hit the wide stone steps leading to the main keep. The Northern guards stayed outside in the dirt to secure the gates. I walked entirely alone. I did not want an armed escort to hold my hand as I walked back into my own house.The massive oak doors stood at the top of the stairs. They were thick, heavy, and bound in dark iron. I remembered these doors. I remembered them slamming shut twenty years ago when the now lycan father's men marched into the castle and dragged my parents out of their beds. I remembered hiding behind a wooden barrel in the hallway, pressing my small hands over my mouth to keep from crying out while the guards searched for me. I remembered when my mother tried to hide me and me running into the freezing night with nothing but the clothes on my back.I lifted my boot. I kicked the heavy wood right near the iron latch.The doors blew open. They b
I was not given food or water.A few hours after Cillian left me in the dark, the iron door shrieked open again. Two massive Beta guards dragged me out by the chains, my bare feet scraping against the freezing stone. The sudden influx of torchlight felt like daggers in my eyes. My head was pounding
The first thing I felt was cold. A heavy, damp chill seeped straight into my bones, sucking the life right out of me.Where was I? I tried to move, and a sharp, metallic clink echoed through the darkness. My breath caught. I pulled my arms toward my chest, stopping short as heavy iron chains bit
Several people screamed. I slapped both hands over my mouth to keep from making a sound, biting down on my own palm so hard I tasted blood. My heart was beating so fast against my sore ribs that I thought my chest was going to split open. Panic. Blind, total, animal panic. My body got hot fast.
My ribs ached before I opened my eyes. That was how every morning started. Pain. A dull, steady ache burned on my left side where Alpha Thorne had kicked me two days ago. My crime? I hadn't scrubbed the blood out of the training mats quick enough. It wasn't just that my ribs ached. The screaming







