LOGINHumanity lives on the edge of extinction. Every season, the Northern lands demand a sacrifice of a human to be sent to the Ice Castle, to be given to the Lycan King and his court to be used, broken, and discarded. No sacrifice has ever returned. Serena Valiente is the disgraced daughter of a once-powerful family. When her father offers her as the next tribute to save his own status, Serena is dragged in chains across the frozen border. She expects death and humiliation. What she does not expect is the way the Lycan King looks at her. He does not look at her with hunger, but with pain. Because the moment King Alejandro's eyes fall on Serena, the mate bond awakens. A searing, undeniable, cruelly ironic truth: the human he was meant to destroy is the one the Moon Goddess has chosen for him. But in the Ice Castle, the bond is not a blessing. It is a weakness. Alejandro's enemies will use it against him. His court will mock him for wanting a human. And Serena, fragile and human and alone, must decide whether to run from the monster or trust the only creature in the frozen castle who looks at her like she is not a sacrifice, but salvation.
View MoreI found Ramona in the library the morning after Felipe brought Lady Veronica to the castle.The library was quiet this morning, nothing like the day I had seen Alejandro standing in the shadow of the bookshelf, watching me with those burning golden eyes.Today, the shelves stretched from floor to ceiling in peaceful silence, packed with books so old that their spines were cracked and their pages were yellowed with age. Dust motes floated in the pale light that streamed through the tall windows, and the air smelled of paper and ink and something else, something ancient and forgotten.Ramona was sitting in a tall chair by the window, with an open book in her lap, but her grey eyes were not moving across the pages. She was staring out at the snow, watching the flakes fall against the grey sky, and she looked as tired as I felt. The fire in the hearth had burned down to embers, and the room was cold, even colde
I was walking back to my room after another supervised walk through the halls, with my mind still full of the image of Alejandro breaking that guard's arm, when I heard voices coming from the throne room.The doors were open, which was unusual, and torchlight spilled out into the corridor like liquid gold, painting the stone floor in shades of orange and red.I should have kept walking. I should have gone back to my room and closed the door and pressed my back against the headboard and pretended I had not heard anything. That was what survival looked like. Keep your head down, make yourself small, and do not invite trouble. But something pulled me forward, something that felt like curiosity and fear and that quiet part of me that had been waking up ever since I arrived at this frozen castle.I stopped in the doorway and looked inside.The throne room was crowded with nobles, more than I
The window was high in the wall, hidden behind a tapestry I had pulled aside, and from this vantage point I could see the courtyard of the ice Castle below without being seen.The stone was cold against my palms, and the glass was frosted at the edges, but none of that mattered. Not when Alejandro was down there, moving like a storm made flesh, like something ancient and deadly that had no business being so beautiful.He was training with his guards. Ten of them, maybe twelve, all in leather armor with swords strapped to their backs and the kind of grim determination that came from knowing they were about to be humiliated. They circled him like wolves circling a stag, but the stag had claws and teeth and three hundred years of practice. The stag had killed more men than they had ever met.One guard lunged, his wooden sword swinging toward Alejandro's ribs. Alejandro sidestepped like he had all the time in t
Ramona came to my room again the next day, and this time she did not sit on the edge of the bed or stand by the window or look at me with those sad grey eyes that made me feel like a wounded animal being studied from a distance.She pulled the wooden chair from the corner of the room and set it beside the fire, and she motioned for me to sit across from her on the floor. The chair was old, older than anything I had ever seen, with carved arms and a faded cushion that had once been red but was now the color of dried blood."I am going to teach you something," she said. "Not about the king, or the bond, or the court. I am going to teach you about this land, about the war, about the treaty, and about the sacrifices."I did not move. I sat against the headboard with my back to the wall and my knees pulled to my chest, and I watched her arrange the chair and settle into it like she was preparing for a long conve






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