All Chapters of THE BRIDE OFFERED TO WOLVES: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The carriage stopped, and no one opened the door.I waited three seconds. Four. Then I understood that no one was going to, and I opened it myself, stepping down into a silence so complete I could hear my own heartbeat.Every wolf lowered its head. Not a single one stopped staring.I made myself walk forward instead of standing frozen on the carriage step. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else. The courtyard stretched wide and gray under a sky that hadn't decided yet whether it would rain, and every face turned to track me as I crossed it, the way a hundred pairs of eyes track something they've already decided is a threat. Somewhere behind me I heard Nessa's footsteps stop at the carriage door, too afraid to follow further until someone told her it was safe.A small boy near the front of the crowd tugged his mother's sleeve. "Why is there a human here?"She yanked him back so fast he nearly fell. She didn't answer him. She didn't have to. The way she pulled him away, like I

I came back to myself to the sound of shouting."She's cursed this kingdom!" Someone was screaming it, close enough that I felt the words more than heard them. "Seize her before sunrise!"Guards moved toward me. I tried to push myself up off the stone and found my arms wouldn't cooperate yet, the world still tilting at the edges.The Head Elder's voice rose above the rest. "The Oracle collapsed the moment she looked at her. That mark is no blessing. It's a warning. Take her."Then Kael was in front of me. I hadn't seen him move."No one touches my Queen."My breath caught.Queen.It was the first time he'd called me that. Not treaty. Not human. Not Princess.Queen.The word settled somewhere inside my chest where I hadn't realized I'd still been hoping to belong.I hated that it mattered, I hated even more that it did.The courtyard went silent.Not because he'd stopped them.Because he'd called me Queen.No one had expected it.Least of all me.Now it hung in the air over three hundr

Kael cleared the room himself.Guards. Healers. The advisors who'd crowded in after the arrow, all of them ushered out until only four of us remained. Kael. Me. Nessa, still pale by the wall. And the Oracle, unconscious on the chaise where they'd laid her, her breathing shallow but steady.Then he crossed to the door and locked it. Not gestured for a guard to do it. Locked it himself, the bolt sliding home with a sound that felt final, heavier than a simple latch had any right to sound."You don't trust your own guards," I said."I trust very few people.""Do you trust me?"A pause, longer than I wanted it to be."No."It hurt more than I expected it to, a small clean cut I hadn't braced for. But there was something underneath the hurt too, something almost like relief. He hadn't lied to soften it. In a palace full of people who smiled at me and meant nothing by it, an honest no felt like the closest thing to respect I'd been offered since I crossed the border."Then why lock the door

Kael was still staring at the words when I finally found my voice again."Who is she?""I don't know anymore." He folded the scrap of parchment once, carefully, and tucked it inside his coat as though putting it out of sight might put it out of mind. It didn't. I could see that much on his face.I didn't believe him. Not entirely. But I recognized, too, that whatever he was hiding wasn't mine to demand yet, not standing in a corridor still smoking from a battle we'd barely survived.The walk back through the palace showed me exactly what that battle had cost.Burned banners hung in shreds from the walls. Guards lay where they'd fallen, some still being carried away by wolves too exhausted to grieve properly yet. Entire sections of the outer wall had collapsed into rubble, and the smell of smoke clung to everything, thick enough that I could taste it. Somewhere further off, I heard a woman crying, quiet and steady, the kind of crying that had already run out of anything louder to give.

Kael stepped in front of me the moment the door finished opening, sword already drawn, his whole body angled between me and whatever waited in the dark beyond."Whatever is inside," he said quietly, "it reaches me before it reaches you."I noticed, standing there in the glow of the sanctuary behind us, that he hadn't said it the way he used to when he spoke of treaties and obligations. There was no duty left in his voice. Only something simpler, and somehow heavier for how simple it was.We walked in together.The chamber beyond stole whatever breath the fire and smoke hadn't already taken from me.This wasn't a tomb. It wasn't a palace either, not in the way I understood the word. It was a throne room, forgotten, waiting, an enormous silver throne rising from a dais at the far end beneath banners so old their wolf crests had nearly faded to silver-gray. Somehow moonlight poured down from an unseen source above us despite every sign that we stood deep beneath the earth. Crystal pillar