bride of vengeance

valeria pov

I came to the Lycan Kingdom to kill a king.

The cold wind slid past my hair as I landed without a sound inside the palace grounds, my boots meeting stone with barely a whisper. Years of training had taught me how to move like a shadow, how to breathe without being heard, how to make my own heartbeat quiet enough that even I sometimes forgot it was there. Tonight, it refused to be quiet. It pounded with twelve years of waiting, twelve years of nightmares, twelve years of a single promise I'd made to two graves that never got proper headstones.

The silver badge hidden beneath my cloak felt heavier tonight than it ever had. It was the same badge I'd seen on the men who murdered my parents — the same crest, the same cold gleam, stitched into the collars of soldiers who had shown my family no mercy. I'd carried that image with me since I was small enough to still believe monsters only existed in stories.

Tonight, the Lycan King would finally pay for what his men had done.

My name is Valeria Montenegro, daughter of Gabriel and Isabel Montenegro. They killed my parents in cold blood while I hid beneath the floorboards of our home, too small to fight, too terrified to even cry out. I remembered the smell of smoke. I remembered my mother's hand pressing against my mouth, urging me to stay silent, stay hidden, stay alive — even as her own life slipped away just beyond the wall I hid behind.

I wasn't that girl anymore.

I had trained under masters who didn't believe girls belonged in war. I had survived winters with nothing but a blade and my own will. I had waited, patient as stone, until the day I was strong enough to walk into the heart of my enemy's kingdom without trembling.

Mom. Dad. I've come to avenge you.

A determined smile crossed my lips, sharp and humorless. Nothing would stop me tonight — not even if it cost me my own life in the process. I had made peace with that a long time ago.

My senses caught movement before I heard it — a shift in the air, the faint scent of leather and steel drifting on the breeze. I slipped behind a marble pillar carved with golden wolves mid-howl, ancient kings kneeling beneath them in tribute, and pressed my back to the cold stone. Footsteps. Voices. Getting closer, unhurried, easy — the walk of men who had never once had to fear what lurked in their own gardens.

I leaned just enough to see through the gap at the pillar's edge.

Two men. Both handsome in the effortless way only powerful men seemed to manage — but my eyes went straight to the taller one. The one wearing the crown.

The Lycan King.

Silver hair fell over his shoulders, catching moonlight like it had been spun from it. His face looked almost unreal, sharp and soft in all the places a face shouldn't be able to hold both at once, and his golden eyes carried a warmth that seemed to brighten the whole garden when he smiled. Broad-shouldered, dressed in embroidered velvet and ceremonial armor that caught the light with every small movement — he looked more like a prince from a fairy tale than the monster I'd built brick by brick in my mind for twelve long years.

What am I doing. Why am I staring.

I folded my hands tightly against my chest, nails biting crescents into my own palms. I refuse to be fooled by a handsome face. Monsters only smile — but they're worse than the devil himself. My parents trusted a smile once too, and it buried them.

Then I heard something that stopped my breath entirely.

"I want to choose a bride who can sit beside me and rule," the king said, his expression turning serious in a way that made the whole garden seem to still. "Since the Goddess has decided to leave me without a mate, I have no choice left. There is no strong Alpha without one — not truly. A king without a mate is a kingdom without a foundation."

He wanted a bride? Wasn't every Lycan destined to find one, bound by fate itself? I'd always believed the old stories — that every wolf walked toward a mate they were always meant to find, the way rivers walked toward the sea.

The man beside him — his beta, I guessed, by the deference in his posture — folded his arms. "And if your mate appears after the selection is done?"

His voice was so low I doubted anyone standing more than a few feet away could have caught the words. But my hearing had always reached farther than it should — one of the strange gifts I'd never fully understood, one my parents used to whisper about when they thought I was asleep.

The king let out a laugh with no happiness in it at all — dry, bitter, the kind of sound a man makes when he's already made peace with losing something. "Then fate is cruel."

Something in my chest tightened without my permission. I wasn't supposed to feel anything for him — not curiosity, not sympathy, certainly not this strange twist of understanding. For just a second, his eyes carried something I hadn't expected to find there: loneliness. Real, aching loneliness. Then it was gone, buried beneath the practiced ease of a king who knew a thousand eyes were always watching him.

The monster who killed my parents isn't supposed to look lonely. He isn't supposed to look like anything but the villain I've spent my whole life preparing to destroy.

I shook my head slowly, willing the thought away. Don't be stupid, Valeria. This is exactly how dangerous men survive — they hide behind beautiful smiles and sad eyes, and foolish girls believe them until it's far too late.

Crack.

My heart nearly stopped in my chest. A dry branch had snapped beneath my own foot — a mistake I hadn't made in years, the kind of mistake that got assassins killed before their blades ever left their sheaths.

The garden went utterly silent. Every word died in the king's throat as his head turned slowly, deliberately, toward my hiding place. My pulse roared in my ears loud enough that I feared he could hear it too. Please. Don't see me. Not now. Not after everything.

His golden eyes narrowed — then began to glow, faint and dangerous, like twin embers catching wind. The air around him shifted, growing heavy, charged, the way the sky feels just before lightning finds the ground.

"Who's there?"

His voice cut through the dark like a drawn blade. He took one step toward my hiding place. Then another, unhurried, certain, a predator who had never once needed to rush.

My fingers found the hilt of the dagger beneath my cloak, closing around it with practiced ease. If he found me, I would fight. Even if it killed me — especially if it killed me, rather than let him take me alive to be paraded before his court as the assassin who failed.

The beta moved swiftly in front of him. "Your Majesty, stay back — we don't know what's out there."

The king ignored him completely, his glowing eyes fixed on the pillar hiding me with an intensity that made my skin crawl. His presence pressed against me like a physical weight, heavier with every step he took — this was no ordinary king playing at power. This was an Alpha in the fullest sense of the word, and I was standing at the very heart of his territory, uninvited and unwelcome.

The footsteps stopped a few feet away from where I crouched.

Then, softer than before, almost gentle, he spoke a single word.

"Come out."

A strange shiver ran through my entire body, one I couldn't explain and didn't have time to question. I tightened my grip on the dagger until my knuckles ached.

Twelve years of training. Twelve years of waiting for this exact moment — and now it might all end here, in a garden lit by nothing but moonlight, before my mission had even truly begun.

Those golden eyes stared straight at where I hid, patient and knowing, and for reasons I couldn't explain, I had the terrible, undeniable feeling that my life was about to change forever.