4: Why are you doing this?

Ronnie's POV

I didn’t know how long it would be till I finally collapsed. My breath was stuck.

Every part of my body had gone still.

My eyes locked with his, one of his hands on my chin and the other on my waist to steady me.

“All rise!” He said, finally.

Everyone looked up, words falling out from them in whispers as they caught the awkward moment.

My eyes met with Elisha’s; his face was drained of all its colour.

Nothing in that event made sense anymore. Everyone kept staring back at him, even when he had gone up the stage to crown Elisha as the new Alpha.

Once the eyes on me had reduced, I slipped out of the venue.

My room felt too small.

The walls pressed in, tight and suffocating, the air heavy with cheap lavender incense. I’d lit it to drown out the scent of the ballroom, but it only made my head throb. Every breath tasted wrong.

I paced the length of the room, back and forth across the creaking floorboards. My heels lay abandoned in a corner, kicked off in frustration, but my mind still remembered the weight of a thousand bowed heads.

The Lycan King.

The man who’d watched me throw up in his hallway.

The man I’d insulted, pouted at, and called an asshole.

The ruler of every shifter alive.

He could erase my entire pack with a single order.

“Ronnie!” Jessie burst through the door, breathing hard, eyes wild with questions.

I didn’t even pause to give her a glance.

“Will you stop pacing for one second and talk to me?”

“I’m in deep shit, Jessie,” I whispered, finally stopping. I gripped the back of my desk chair so hard my knuckles turned white. “The kind of shit people don’t come back from.”

Jessie frowned. “Come on, Spill... why did the Lycan King hold you like you were something he lost once and didn’t want to lose again?”

“That’s the problem,” I snapped, spinning to face her. Panic clawed its way up my throat. “I have no idea why he held me like I meant something to him, after saying he’d never stoop so low to be with me.”

Jessie’s jaw dropped. “He’s the Hotel demigod?”

“Yes.”

“Ronnie,” she said slowly. “Did you... Did you sleep with the Lycan King?”

“No!” The word came out too fast. Too loud. Heat rushed to my face as his voice echoed in my head. “Nothing happened. I was drunk. I almost got hit by his car while he was driving late at night. He took me in because I was a disaster, and then he told me I was pathetic. And I... I called him an asshole.”

Once. Twice.

Maybe more.

Jessie stared at me as I’d confessed to murder. “You called the Lycan King an asshole… to his face?”

“I didn’t know!” I groaned, dragging my hands down my face. “He didn’t have a crown or guards or anything, just a driver, which he also refused to take that night.”

“To me, he was just a man in a white unbuttoned shirt with a really mean mouth.”

She sank onto my bed slowly. “Ronnie… if he hated you that much, why did he show up tonight?”

I opened my mouth to answer.

A knock cut me off.

Sharp. Heavy. Rhythmic.

Not a neighbour’s knock.

My mother’s voice came through the door, thin and shaken. “Ronnie? Sweetheart, please come out. There’s… there’s someone here for you.”

My heart slammed into my ribs.

I exchanged a look with Jessie before smoothing down my dress, the same midnight silk that now felt less like armour and more like a target. My legs carried me into the living room on instinct alone.

My mother stood near the door, pale, clutching a dish towel like it could shield her from whatever waited on the other side.

Four men stood in our entryway.

They weren’t pack guards.

They were taller. Broader. Dressed in obsidian tactical gear stamped with the silver crest of the Royal House.

Lycan guards.

“Ronnie of the Silver Moon,” the lead guard said, his voice rough and unyielding.

“Yes,” I managed.

“His Majesty requires your presence. Immediately.”

Not a request.

He stepped aside, revealing the black SUV idling at the curb, its tinted windows reflecting moonlight like polished stone.

The drive was silent.

I stared out the window, half-expecting the world to end before we arrived. When the Grand Hall came back into view, the party was still going, but the energy had curdled. Laughter was forced. And one could still hear their whisper over the strained music.

They led me past the crowd.

Past the ballroom.

Into the Alpha’s office.

Glass walls. Exotic plants. Shadows cling to every corner.

The Elders stood in a rigid line, hands clasped like children waiting for punishment. Elisha was there too, beside his father, face tight and pale.

And in the centre of it all...

The King.

He sat in a high-backed velvet chair, swirling dark amber liquid in a glass.

I stopped just inside the doorway.

His gaze lifted.

The air changed.

“So,” he said calmly, eyes locked on mine. “What do you want in exchange for this one?”

The words hit like a slap.

“What?”

Everyone looked at one another, trying to understand what had gotten into the asking.

“The girl,” he continued, gesturing toward me with his glass. “What will it take for you to surrender her?”

“Could have just taken her away, but I love making bargains. And most importantly, I want her to leave with dignity, not like someone that had been snatched from her pack by some cruel King.”

Elisha went red. Then pale. Then furious.

“Your Majesty,” the Head Elder stammered, bowing low. “She is of this pack. Daughter of our lineage...”

“She is a rejected mate,” the King cut in.

The glass walls rattled.

“By your own laws, she has no standing here. I’m offering to give her one.”

Elisha stepped forward. “With all due respect, I didn’t reject her so she could be taken like property.”

The King rose.

Slow. Fluid. Dangerous.

He stopped inches from Elisha’s face, towering over him.

“What belongs to me,” he murmured, “is not yours to deny.”

Then his eyes flicked to me.

Something dark flashed there.

“State your price,” he said, voice filling the room. “Or accept the loss.”

I stood frozen.

“But I... I don’t want to come with you?”

Instead of giving me a reply, he looked down at his wrist watch and looked back at me. “Two hours!”

“You all decide in two hours how much you’re willing to take. Once the time is over, she’s coming with me.”

He stood, his figure towering over us all. He and his four guards stepped out with him, the door slamming heavily behind them.

The Elders looked at me, as if waiting for a reply.

“Why does the Lycan King want you so bad?” Elisha growled, his eyes carrying something uncontrollable.

I shook my head, not in response to Elisha, but because I couldn’t sit back and let this happen.

I stormed out of the room, hurrying up to catch up with him.

“Why the heck are you doing this?” I yelled even before I could get to him.

He didn’t stop, but his guards stopped, as if trying to stop me from going any further.

“Let her!” He ordered, and they instantly parted the way.

“I thought you said I wasn’t at your level, so what’s all of...”

Before the words could completely make it out of my mouth, he pinned me against the wall. His breath on my neck.

My body stiffened instantly.

“Your fate is decided already. Nothing you do or say can change that.”