All Chapters of The Lycan king's Forbidden Obssesion: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

 We stood there in the snow for what felt like hours, though it was probably only minutes, with his hand outstretched and my back against the tree and the frozen wind howling between us like a living thing that wanted to tear us apart.I did not take his hand, and I did not run either. He did not move, and the snow fell on both of us, soft and silent and endless.Then he stepped forward.I flinched, pressing myself harder against the tree trunk, but he did not reach for me. He did not grab my arm or wrap his fingers around my throat or do any of the things I expected him to do. He just bent down and scooped me up into his arms like I weighed nothing at all, like I was a child who had fallen asleep during a long journey and needed to be carried the rest of the way.I fought him.I kicked and thrashed and pushed against his chest with hands that were too cold to feel, with arms that were too tired to matter, and with a body that had give

 The day after Ramona visited me, a servant came to my room carrying something draped over her arms like it was made of glass instead of fabric. She did not speak, she just laid the bundle on the foot of my bed and left, closing the door behind her without a sound. I stared at it for a long time. The fabric was black, so dark that it seemed to swallow the light from the fire, and when I reached out to touch it, my fingers sank into wool so soft that I had never felt anything like it. I pulled the cloak toward me, and the weight of it was heavy in my hands, even heavier than anything I had owned in my entire life. It was lined with fur, thick and dark fur that smelled like pine and snow and something else, something wild. The stitching was perfect, with each seam straight and tight, and the clasp at the neck was made of silver, cool and smooth against my fingers. I did not understand.

 Ramona came to my room the next day, and I knew from the look on her face that she was not here to offer comfort or advice. Her grey eyes were darker than usual, and the lines around her mouth were deeper, and she moved like someone who was carrying a weight that had been pressing on her shoulders for a very long time. She did not knock. She simply walked inside, closed the door behind her, and stood at the foot of my bed with her arms crossed over her chest. Then she sat on the edge of the mattress without asking, and the old springs creaked under her weight. I pressed my back against the headboard and pulled my knees to my chest and waited. The fire crackled in the hearth, throwing shadows across her face that made her look older than she already was, and I realized that I had never asked how old she actually was. Hundreds of years, probably, or maybe more. "You need to know what happ

 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

 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