Chapter 1 Heat and the Price
[Kaelan's POV]
I was kneeling on cold stone outside Alpha Alaric's study, scrubbing mud from his boots with a filthy rag.
Maids and guards passed without a glance. They had long since stopped noticing me there.
So had I.
I had grown used to keeping my head down, staying silent, letting myself be forgotten.
I was once Alaric's daughter—the most anticipated Alpha heir of Wolfsbane Pack.
An Omega walked past carrying a basin, and water sloshed across my face. I touched the drops on my cheek, and for a moment I was back in the great hall—the smell of wine and leather thick in the air. A young Omega was kneeling in the center of the room. He had only fumbled a cup; a few drops had landed on my father's coat. Nothing more.
"Do it." My father's voice held no warmth. He said it was something every Alpha heir had to learn: obedience, punishing the weak, proving strength.
I stared at the whip. I did not reach for it. Instead I looked up at him.
If an Alpha can only prove his strength by hurting those weaker than himself, he has no right to lead anyone.
Every person in the hall drew a sharp breath. My father studied me for a long moment, his expression darkening.
The next morning, the guards at the training ground turned me away. They looked apologetic. Alpha's orders, they said.
I pressed my hand over the bracer on my wrist—the one he had given me the first time he ever praised me. I had believed it meant he saw me.
Standing there, watching the training ground from a distance, I finally understood: some things are not taken from you. They were never truly yours to begin with.
He stopped teaching me to fight. He stopped grooming me as his heir. Then he stripped the title from me entirely. In his eyes, a child who refused to obey a command had no right to carry his bloodline.
I never regretted it. That day I lost my father's approval—but I did not lose myself.
I did not know how long I had been kneeling on the stone when the air changed.
A deep, wrenching cramp seized me low in my pelvis, as though a fist had closed around something inside me and twisted. The spasm crawled up my inner thighs and plunged into my abdomen. I gripped the rag hard, my knuckles whitening, with no name for what was happening to my body. Heat surged from my core and spread in every direction. My skin burned hotter with each breath. Then the back of my neck erupted—scalding, pins-and-needles, as if someone had pressed a red-hot iron against it.
"Amaris."
Amaris—my wolf. No one knew she had awakened. I had kept her hidden; for a castaway Alpha heir, having no wolf was the safest story to tell. She had stayed with me through every hard year, the one companion I trusted completely.
Something was wrong with my body, and I could not control it. I needed her to tell me what.
"Heat," Amaris growled, low and certain.
The word locked every muscle in my body.
Before I could process it, Alaric's voice came from behind the study door.
"Bring her in."
A guard grabbed my arm and hauled me upright, barking at me to move. The heat made my legs unreliable. I swallowed the trembling, forced myself upright, clasped my hands behind my back—fingernails cutting into my palms—and walked in with my spine straight.
The study held only one lamp. My father stood at the window. Another man sat on the sofa: iron-grey coat, a wolf's-head ring on one finger.
Ironfang.
I could smell it on him—rust and iron soaked in blood, a stench that turned my stomach.
"This is her?" the man asked.
My father finally turned. I had forgotten the last time he had looked at me. But there was no warmth in his eyes—no recognition of a daughter, not even the acknowledgment of a person. He was appraising an object. "Pureblooded. Twenty years old. Healthy."
Another wave of heat rose through me. I clenched everything tighter—they could not find out. Instinct told me I was in danger, and hiding was my only cover.
But a small deception cannot fool an Alpha.
Alaric's nostrils flared. He glanced at me with faint surprise, scented the air again, and then a smile settled on his face—not a father's smile. A merchant's smile, the pleasure of discovering that the goods are worth more than expected. He let it fade, turned back to the Ironfang man, and said: "First heat, just begun. More than enough to cover Wytchwood Ridge."
The words hit me like a hammer dropping from a great height. My vision went white. My ears rang.
It took a long moment before I could see him again.
What did I just hear? He was selling me. He was selling his own daughter. I stared at him and waited—praying he would say it was a mistake, a dark joke. He said nothing. He was looking at the other man.
I turned. The Ironfang man was grinning, his eyes dragging from my face slowly down to my legs. "Worth every bit of it. Done."
My pupils contracted. I turned back to Alaric. One look—just one look at me. Please.
He did not look at me. He simply lifted his chin at the guards, his voice as flat as if he were settling a trade in pelts: "Don't let her cause trouble. Omegas in heat are unpredictable."
That last word landed in my ears like a stone.
I drove my fingernails into my palms.
The clank of armor drew closer. A guard's hand locked around my arm with crushing force, and the contact sent a fresh wave of heat searing up my neck—a spasm shot through the tops of my thighs, and I nearly buckled on the spot. The Ironfang man saw it. His grin widened.
"Take her out and clean her up," he said. "I don't want her making a mess in the transport cage."
I wrenched against the grip.
Crack.
The slap snapped my face to the side. Blood flooded my mouth. Amaris erupted inside me, snarling, clawing to break free and tear out their throats. But the heat was a burning hook sunk deep in my nerves, and I despised this body that would not obey me—that stripped away even the ability to pretend. I drove my nails harder into my palm and forced the fire back down.
I raised my head and looked at Alaric's face—a face that now made me want to be sick.
"You will regret this." My voice came out ruined and raw.
He looked at me then—finally. Not a trace of anything in his eyes.
"Take her."
They threw me into the transport cage like an animal.
All four limbs were shackled. The compartment was lightless and airless, the only ventilation a thin needle of wind through the gaps in the planks, carrying the cold of a pine forest. I curled in the corner, pressing my forehead hard against the iron bars, fighting down each wave of heat as it rolled in heavier than the last, forcing myself to stay conscious.
"Hear that? Wolfsbane's little Omega is in heat."
"Can't believe Alaric actually went through with it."
"Word is he traded her for land."
Their voices carried from outside the cage, easy and amused. They kept looking back, their eyes roaming over my body with ugly, satisfied smiles.
They wanted to see me cry. They wanted me begging.
I let my hair fall across my face and covered most of my breathing behind it. Through the strands, I kept my eyes fixed on them.
They would not get that from me.
Time dissolved. Then the wind changed.
The smell changed with it—colder, wilder, saturated with wet dark earth and the resin of ancient trees.
We had entered No Man's Land.
Amaris suddenly turned toward the forest and let out a soft, broken whimper—then went silent. Completely silent. I had never felt her go quiet like that before.
"Amaris, what's wrong?"
She did not answer.
I pressed my face against the slats and looked out at the trees. Nothing.
Then the cage lurched to a violent stop. Ahead, horses screamed. Steel sang against scabbards as the guards drew their blades.
"Who's there!"
The forest stilled. The insects that had been filling the night went quiet one by one. Distant birds startled awake—but did not fly.
Crack.
A branch broke somewhere in the trees. Then another. The sounds came closer, each one more distinct than the last, and something immense was moving toward us.
Every instinct I had said: dangerous.
A black wolf stepped out of the forest.
He moved across wet earth, each massive paw falling with a low, deliberate thud. Moonlight touched his fur and vanished—swallowed whole. He stood at the edge of the tree line, and even without moving he was the largest wolf I had ever seen. Power radiated from him the way cold radiates from stone, and something primitive in the base of my spine wanted to bow.
His amber eyes swept the convoy with flat, contemptuous calm. The male wolves who had been laughing at me moments ago began to shake.
Then his gaze found me.
He froze.
His eyes locked onto mine, and that foreign wave of heat crashed through me again, fiercer this time. A heartbeat later, his breathing changed—slow, heavy, like a wild thing that has felt the chain around its neck go taut. His amber eyes did not leave me.
"Is that a Blackthorn wolf?" one of the guards breathed.
"That size—is that the Blackthorn Alpha?"
The black wolf's gaze traveled: my flushed face, the Wolfsbane brand on my neck. His pupils narrowed to points. His nostrils moved once—a small, precise movement, like confirming a truth he did not want confirmed. The muscles across his shoulders and haunches rose. His claws sank into the earth. The air detonated with his aura—glacial, savage, so heavy that every guard outside the cage stumbled backward.
"Fire—"
Before the word finished, the black wolf lunged half a step forward.
And stopped dead.
Stopped as though something had seized him and hauled him back by force. A growl rolled out of his chest—low, barely audible, terrifying in its restraint. It was not aimed at the guards. It was aimed at himself—the sound of a beast biting down on its own chain, hard enough to bleed, but refusing to break it.
I did not know what that meant.
But Amaris pressed against the inside of my ribs and released a sound I had never heard from her before—long and low and aching. Like recognizing a presence that had been written into the bone before she was born, and meeting it, at last, too late.
The shadows took him. The trees closed over those amber eyes.
But until the very last moment, he was still watching me.
