The Lycan King's Unwanted Mate

Lena's POV

The first thing I heard after I died was a man's voice calling me a whore.

"I, Kael Wolven, Lycan King of the Bloodmoon Pack, reject Lena Steele as my mate."

The words reached me through a ringing fog, and for a moment, they meant nothing. Then a woman's sob broke the silence.

"I will not bind myself to a woman who spreads her legs for a guard on the night of our pact," the voice continued, cold and calm. "I will not take a whore for my Luna."

A gasp rose from what sounded like a hundred people at once.

My head felt heavy, and my arms were so weak they hardly felt like mine. I knew that feeling from patients waking up after being given strong drugs. The dry mouth, the heavy limbs, and the strange feeling of being late to a conversation about your own life.

I forced my eyes open.

I was lying on a stone floor in a large, dim hall. Candles burned in iron holders on the walls, and there wasn't a single electric light in sight. All around me stood a crowd of people dressed as if they had stepped out of an old movie. The men wore long coats with high collars, while the women wore tight velvet gowns. They were all staring at me with the kind of interest people showed when someone else's life was falling apart.

My first thought, God help me, was to look for the cameras.

There weren't any. But a large man in a dark uniform lay a few inches from my shoulder. His shirt was torn, and blood ran from a wound on his forehead. He was completely out cold.

"Look at them!" a girl's voice cried. "On the night of the pact! How could you do this to us, Lena? You're my own sister!"

I looked down at myself. The sleeve of my silk gown was torn at the shoulder, my hair hung loose, and one of my slippers was missing. I didn't need a medical degree to understand what everyone thought they were seeing.

The last thing I remembered was Vanessa's scalpel, her free hand resting on her pregnant belly, and my husband, William, watching me bleed with his hands in his pockets.

I had died. I was certain of it.

So why was I lying on a cold floor while a stranger called me a whore?

I looked up.

He stood in the doorway, and the crowd had left plenty of space around him, as if getting too close could be dangerous. He was taller than every man in the room, with black hair, sharp features, and pale golden eyes that looked at me as though I were dirt on his boot.

He wasn't shouting. He wasn't even angry. He looked like a man who had already made up his mind about me before he walked into the room.

"That's the Supreme Lycan King," a woman whispered nearby, her voice filled with awe. "Half the unmated she-wolves alive would do anything to stand where she's standing, and she throws it all away for a guard."

Lycan King. Mate. Luna. Pact.

It sounded like a bad fantasy novel, except nobody here was laughing. In my world, a man who called himself a king would have been escorted out by security. Here, a hundred people held their breath for him.

"I have rejected her," Kael Wolven said, and his voice carried to every corner of the room. "Let everyone here witness it. What becomes of her is mine to decide."

The crowd burst into noise. Someone shouted, "Wolf-less trash!" Others joined in, throwing my name around as if it were something dirty.

I looked down at my hands, and a cold feeling spread through me. They were small and pale, with slender fingers that looked nothing like mine. I pressed two fingers against my wrist and felt a fast, uneven pulse.

This wasn't my body, and I had no idea whose body I was in.

Near the front, the girl who had called me her sister stood beside an older woman. She was beautiful, dressed in pale blue, and crying as she clung to the woman's arm. But something about her tears felt fake. Real tears made your nose run. Hers left her looking almost perfect.

Beside them stood a man with a hard face, watching me without a trace of concern.

"That's Alpha Colton," someone whispered. "Her father. He won't even defend her."

I understood what the crowd wanted. They wanted me to cry, crawl across the floor, and beg the most powerful man in the room to take back his words.

I had spent years keeping my head clear in operating rooms, and I had just been murdered by the two people I trusted most. I wasn't about to beg anyone to treat me like a human being.

It took me three tries to stand. The room spun around me, and my body felt weak, as if the drugs were still working through my system. But I forced my legs to hold me up and lifted my chin until I was looking straight at the Lycan King.

"Are you finished?" I asked.

The room fell silent.

Kael didn't blink. If anything, his face grew colder.

"Do you have anything to say in your defense?"

"I'd like to know what I'm supposed to have done. You've told a hundred people what happened, but you haven't asked me a single question."

"I don't need to ask. I have eyes."

His gaze moved to the unconscious man beside me before returning to my face.

"You were found with him, half-dressed, on the night you were supposed to become my mate. There is nothing left to ask."

"I don't remember anything. I don't know that man, and I don't know this place."

"Of course you don't."

He began walking towards me, and the crowd moved aside to let him pass. He stopped so close that I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes.

"We're not finished," he said quietly.

He leaned down until his lips were almost against my ear.

What he whispered next made my blood run cold.