All Chapters of Rejected By My Family, Claimed By The Lycan Prince: Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

They called her my sister while my blood ran into her arm.I lay on the narrow bed in the Silverpine healer house and watched a red drop crawl down the glass tube. It was the third time. My fingers had gone numb an hour ago. My head felt like a cracked bowl, and every sound reached me from far away.On the next bed, Lila lay under a white blanket with her golden curls spread across the pillow. Her lashes rested on her cheeks. She looked like a painting of a sleeping angel.“Is it working?” my mother asked. Her voice was soft and warm. It was the voice she saved for Lila.“Her color is returning,” the healer said. “A few more rounds and she should stabilize.”A few more rounds. I turned the words over in my slow, foggy mind. Nobody had said a few more rounds for me. Nobody had asked how many I could give.Lila had come to us ten years ago, a tiny girl with a torn dress and a dead father. Dorian Vale had served beside him in the last northern war. When the battlefield took the man, my f

Father had been preparing for three days. Mother had cleaned the house three times. Cael took leave from his post and waited at home in his best coat, hair slicked back like a boy at a school recital.I knew all of this because I heard it through the attic floor. I learned the rest from the way they treated me at dawn.“Wash your face,” Mother ordered, tossing a clean apron onto my bed. “You will serve the tea.”“I thought I was to stay out of sight.”“The prince asked for a full household welcome. Every member of the family. Don’t make me look foolish.”*The prince.*I got dressed with shaking hands. My face in the mirror was nearly transparent. Purple shadows ringed my eyes, and my hair hung limp. Mother handed me a tray with a silver pot, six cups, and a plate of honey cakes.“Don’t spill,” she warned. “And for goodness’ sake, smile.”I stood on the landing and listened to horses in the courtyard. Boots struck the stone. A deep voice said a few quiet words, and every hair on my arm

I woke up the next morning with sunlight on my face and no pain in my body. For a moment I lay still and simply enjoyed it. The room was warm. The blanket was soft. My arms looked like arms again, pale and thin but whole. Nara’s paste had done its work. Then I remembered Orrin and the little purple flower, and the warmth drained out of the day. A tray waited by the bed with hot porridge, honey, and a note in blocky handwriting. Eat. I will be on the east balcony. Come if you wish. K. I ate. Then I put on a clean dress and went to find him. *** The east balcony hung out over the valley like a ship’s deck. Snow lay in clean white sheets across the slopes, and the morning sun turned every ridge to gold. Kaelen stood at the stone rail, hands braced against it, in his shirtsleeves. “You look better,” he said without turning. “How do you always know when I am coming?” “The bond.” He glanced at me. “Or perhaps you walk loudly.” I stood beside him. The wind tugged at m

“You do not have to come,” Kaelen said for the third time.“I know.”“The ruins are cursed. No one has set foot in them for twenty years.”“I know that too.” I tightened my cloak. “That is exactly why I am going.”We rode north at dawn, Kaelen on a black stallion and I on a gray mare. Tobias stayed behind to guard the citadel, and Nara had pressed a small silver flask into my hand before we left.“Moon water,” she said. “For the Moonwell. Do not drink it until you have to. And Sera, whatever you see in the ruins, remember that it is only memory. It cannot hurt you.”“What will I see?”She only looked at me, with her black, sad eyes.The road climbed through bare hills. The snow thinned. After three hours, Kaelen drew rein at the top of a ridge, and I saw it below.The valley of Dark Moon Pack lay scorched and silent. Black walls leaned against a pale sky. A temple stood in the center, roofless, its great doors hanging off their hinges. Weeds had grown through the cracks. Not a bird