All Chapters of WANTED BY THE LYCAN KING : Chapter 1 - Chapter 4

MaeraKael’s voice cuts the hall clean. “Where is her family? Before I give my final verdict, let them step forward.”Cold licks my knees where they press into the stone. The guards hold my shoulders like clamps. I turn, searching the rows of faces, desperate for the one place that should still be mine.I find them in the torchlight. My father’s shoulders are square, jaw locked. My mother twists her apron strings until they bite her fingers. Liora stands beside the boy who claimed her an hour ago, her braid neat, her eyes wide. His hand sits firm at her waist, already protective, already claiming. Banners hang still. Smoke threads the air. The hall doors yawn open to the night, letting in the cold breath of the forest. Torches spit and pop. Far off, festival drums thud like a pulse. The baker still dusted with flour stands near the midwife; both keep their eyes on the dais, pretending not to see me kneeling.“Father,” I call. My voice shakes, but it carries. “Mother. Liora.”My father

MaeraThe cold comes first, a hard edge that steals heat from my bones. I keep moving because stopping feels like surrender, and surrender is what they wanted when they cut me loose at the pack boundary. My feet drag. The cloak they threw over me is soaked and heavy; the ropes chafe where they rubbed my wrists. Every step sends a pulse of pain through the lash lines along my belly.On the third night the rogues find me.I hear them before I see them …low voices, the scrape of leather, the muted clink of metal, like rain on a roof. Torchlight threads through the trees, slow and hungry. They move like a thing that has learned how to look for weakness. My throat tightens. I flatten myself against a mound of roots, hair stuck damp to my forehead, and try to make myself as small as the soil.“Look,” one of them says, and his voice is a hook. “A pretty scrap left by the pack. Could fetch a coin.”“Or two,” another says. Their laughter is loose. It tastes like the inside of a wound.I hold m