The Lycan King’s Human Bride

Chapter 1

Layla

...

They said humans and werewolves once lived side by side—trading, building, leaning on each other the way old allies do.

Then greed came. Human greed, and the betrayals that followed it, wearing down trust the way water wears down stone until there was nothing left to hold. What followed was a war that swallowed thousands of werewolf lives whole.

After that, the Lycan King used magic old enough to bend memory itself, scrubbing every trace of werewolves from human minds. His people withdrew behind it, onto a hidden continent sealed by wards no human eye could find.

That was the bones of the story in the book I kept in my lap—the one I'd found years ago in the storage room behind my grandmother's house. A tragic love, human and werewolf, tangled together by a fate that was never supposed to let them touch.

It was my favorite book. I'd worn the spine soft rereading it, even on the days my hands shook too hard to hold it steady and my eyes gave out before the chapter did.

My name is Layla Luris.

I was lying in a hospital bed when the doctor told me how much time I had left. My face had thinned to something I barely recognized, my skin gone the color of old bruises, my hair falling out in fistfuls I found on my pillow every morning.

A month. Maybe.

I didn't cry anymore. I'd made my peace with it somewhere between the third surgery and the fifth. The only thing left that I wanted was to walk out of this hospital and see my husband.

Two years married. In love with him since I was young enough to still believe love worked the way it does in books.

Twenty-eight years old, and all I wanted before the end was one more good memory with him.

"Mrs. Luris, are you sure about this?"

Dorothy asked it gently. She was the maid I'd hired to look after me during the hospital stay—new, but careful with me in a way I'd come to trust.

I gave her the best smile I had left in me. "It's fine... I miss him. I want to surprise him—he's probably been drowning in work. I just want to see him smile."

I could already picture it. The only man I'd ever loved. My whole world, narrowed down to one face.

"As you wish, Mrs. Luris." Dorothy dipped her head and moved behind my wheelchair.

I couldn't walk far anymore. Some days I couldn't walk at all.

The wheels rolled us past a row of mirrors lining the hallway, and each one caught a version of me I didn't recognize. I lifted a hand and touched my own cheek, quiet for a moment.

What if he doesn't love me like this?

What if the illness had taken more from him than it took from me — what if it had changed how he looked at me too?

I wasn't beautiful anymore. Surely that changed things...

The thought sat heavy on my chest for a second before I shook it off.

No. Desmon Jones wasn't that kind of man. He'd promised forever, and I'd built the rest of my life on that promise like it was bedrock.

By the time I came back to myself, I was already in the car, Dorothy driving, the city sliding past the window in gray streaks.

It had been two weeks since I'd seen him. Two weeks of surgeries and waiting rooms and staring at the ceiling. I twisted my hands together in my lap, nineteen years old again in every way that mattered—restless, hopeful, counting down the minutes.

His car was already in the driveway when we pulled up. The one I'd bought him last birthday.

He was home. Not the office.

My fingers curled tighter around the armrest.

We came from money—Luris Corp, a name that opened doors on its own. I'd never wanted for anything in my life, and everything Desmon had, the status, the connections, the easy life, it had all come from marrying me.

Still, something in the house felt wrong the second we stepped inside.

No servants anywhere, in a house that was usually full of them.

I let it go. I didn't have room in me for anything except the bedroom at the end of the hall—the one where we'd slept tangled together for two years, where we'd told each other everything that mattered.

"Dorothy, I've got it from here. Go eat something."

I waited until her footsteps faded down the stairs before I pushed myself up out of the chair, one hand braced against the wall.

I didn't want him to see me like that. Wheeled in like something already half-buried.

I wanted, just once more, to look like the woman he married.

I smoothed my hair, pinched color into my cheeks, and opened the door.

And the world stopped.

"Babe—harder—you're breaking me—"

"Shameless... doing this in the bed you share with your wife..."

A woman's voice, wrecked and unbothered by it, drifting out from the room like it belonged there.

I knew that voice.

Cassie. My best friend since middle school. The one person I'd trusted with everything I never told anyone else.

Whatever was holding me up gave out. I stood frozen in the doorway, everything in me gone still and cold, like I was watching this happen to someone else.

"Don't talk about that sick woman. She'll be dead soon anyway. Once she's gone, everything she has is mine."

"I can't even look at her face without wanting to throw up. Hope it's quick."

Desmon's voice.

Every word landed like a blade dragged slowly across skin.

This isn't real... This is a dream. It has to be.

My grip found the door handle and locked there, knuckles gone bloodless.

I wouldn't accept it. Couldn't.

Whatever was building in my chest—rage, grief, something with no name—shoved the door open before I'd decided to move at all.

"Ah!"

Cassie's scream tore through the room as she scrambled for the sheets, naked and exposed, and Desmon's head snapped toward the door like he'd been caught by something worse than his wife.

The pain in my body went distant, drowned out by everything else roaring through me. I was thin, pale, barely upright—but I crossed the room anyway and closed my hand around the flower vase on the side table.

"Layla, why are you here?! Weren't you supposed to stay at the hospital?" Desmon snapped, yanking his robe closed.

No apology. No explanation. Just anger that I hadn't stayed where he'd put me, like a woman rotting quietly in a hospital bed was exactly where I belonged.

Cassie had the nerve to smile. A small, satisfied curl of her mouth, like she'd been waiting months for this exact moment—for me to walk in and hand her everything.

"Layla!"

Desmon's voice cracked through the room as I stumbled forward, the vase shaking in my grip, something wild taking over where reason used to be.

I didn't want to hear it. Any of it!

I wanted them both dead!!

He stepped closer, frowning, and the second he was in reach—

I swung.

I was too weak to make it count. He caught my wrist mid-air and tore the vase out of my hand like it was nothing.

"What the hell is wrong with you?! Don't look at me like that with those disgusting eyes."

"Look at yourself. You're hideous. You reek of medicine."

"Why don't you just go die in that hospital already?"

Loud. Shameless. Every word aimed to cut.

Something in me broke clean through. I couldn't speak anymore. I could only scream, my nails going for his face.

"How dare you—how dare you—!"

"Aaaa—!"

"I'll kill you both!"

"Aaaa—!"

I screamed until my throat gave out, until it felt raw enough to bleed. Desmon shoved me back, three long scratches burning red across his cheek, his temper finally snapping—

Crack.

The vase came down against my skull. Pain exploded white behind my eyes. I hit the floor, and blood started pooling beneath me before I'd even registered falling.

I stared up at the ceiling of my own bedroom, and for the first time that day, I cried.

Blood spread warm under my head. My vision flickered in and out, and I bit down on my lip hard enough to taste copper, trying to hold onto whatever was left of me.

I don't want to die.

I refuse!

I screamed with everything still in me, my chest caving in on the sound—but nothing came out. My voice had already gone, swallowed somewhere in the dark closing over my eyes.

The last thing I saw was Desmon, smiling.

NO! I DON'T WANT THIS! LET ME KILL THEM—

Nothing came out. My eyes burned wide, bloodshot, straining against a scream that never left my throat. In the end, death won. It always does, over rage, over hatred, over everything I had left to throw at it.

That day, my husband killed me.

...

"Ah—!"

I jolted upright, gasping, one hand flying to my chest like I could hold it together by force. My pulse slammed against my ribs, frantic, like it had forgotten how to keep time.

I touched my head. No wound. No blood. Nothing.

"Thank God..." I breathed, sagging with relief even as the memory of it stayed lodged in me—the crack of the vase, the warmth spreading under my skull, the scream that never made it out.

Then I frowned.

This wasn't the hospital. It wasn't my bedroom, either. The room around me was grand in a way that felt old rather than new—carved wood, warm gold light, the kind of elegance that took centuries to earn.

I turned, slow, and found a round mirror set in an ornate frame.

My eyes went wide.

The face in the glass was mine.

Younger. Healthier. Beautiful in a way I hadn't been in years.

"This is... my face. From when I was young. My hair's thick again, long, wavy—"

"What is going on?!" Panic clawed up through me, and I threw myself off the bed— and landed without a single ache anywhere in my body. No weakness. No shaking. I felt nineteen again down to the marrow.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

I flinched at the sound, still half-lost in my own reflection, my mind tangled somewhere between terror and something dangerously close to hope.

"Princess Swan, Alpha Hendry Gargan wishes to see you."

Everything went still.

I frowned, pressing my fingers hard into my own cheek, testing whether it would wake me.

"Am I still dreaming...?"

But under that, fear was already crawling in.

What if this wasn't a dream? What if I really had died, and this was—

My legs went unsteady beneath me, the room tilting—

BAM!

The door slammed open.

"LAYLA SWAN! How dare you punish Nagia all night! I'll kill you for this!"

"You ungrateful human!"

I didn't know the man standing in the doorway. Handsome, in the way a storm is beautiful right before it takes the roof off your house—but his eyes held nothing for me except fury.

I frowned, trying to piece together a world that made no sense.

"Nagia... Layla Swan... Alpha Hendry Gargan... why does all of this sound familiar—"

Then it hit me.

"OH. MY. GOD."

"Don't tell me..."

"I fell into the book. The one I was reading when I died?!"

The words slipped out before I could stop them.

Alpha Hendry Gargan and the woman beside him—her eyes red-rimmed, like she'd been crying for hours—both froze, staring at me like I'd grown a second head.

But his fury didn't fade. Not even a little.

...