All Chapters of REJECTED BY MY ALPHA, CROWNED BY THE KING: Chapter 11 - Chapter 17

The morning after the poisoned wine, the palace woke to whispers. Guards doubled at every door of my wing, and my father sent word that no wine would be poured at my table until Master Corwin had tested it himself.I should have felt safer. I did not. Poison teaches you that the danger was already inside the room, wearing a servant's apron, smiling at your feast.Master Corwin sent for me before midday: a quiet, sealed message asking if I would walk in the herb garden, for my health after last night. That was the kind of sentence people used when they did not want the walls to hear the real reason.Ronan offered to come with me. I told him to stay with the guards and the kitchens, where the real answers were, and walked to the garden alone.Corwin was waiting among the rosemary, an old man with careful hands and a face that had learned, over decades of palace service, how to carry bad news without dropping it."Your Highness," he said, and bowed. "Forgive the secrecy. What I must tell

The morning after the Lockes' confession, I woke before dawn and went to the training yard with a sword I had never been allowed to hold and a wolf I was only just learning to hear.The yard was already full. Royal guards in dark leather, Enforcers in grey, young wolves who had grown up with their beasts singing under their skin. They stopped when they saw me, the way a room stops when a stranger walks in wearing a crown that does not quite fit yet.I understood the look. A week ago I had been the wolfless girl they pitied. Now I was the princess they were ordered to respect, and respect from an order is thin stuff.Ronan was waiting by the weapons rack, his arms folded, his face unreadable in the way it always was when he was deciding whether to protect me or to let me be tested."You do not have to do this today," he said quietly. "After last night, no one would blame you for resting.""Resting is what I did for ten years," I said. "While someone put wolfsbane in my tea. I am done r

We did not ride into Dunmere. We rode around it, the way Ronan had promised, through the woods where the trees stood black against the orange sky and every snapped twig sounded like a warning."They said they were waiting for the silver princess," I whispered to Ronan as we left the road behind. "If I walk into that village, I walk into a trap made for me.""Then we spring it on our terms," he said. "We find where they are hiding first. We find who is still alive. Then we decide what the trap is for."The Enforcers spread out around us in the dark, quiet as smoke. I had trained with them for one morning, and now I was riding into my first battle beside them. My hands were steady on the reins, until I realised that fear had stopped being the loudest thing in my head. Under it, patient and silver, my wolf was awake.We reached the ridge above Dunmere before midnight. Below us, the village was a ruin of firelight and shadow. Half the houses were burned to their frames. In the square, men