Chapter 6 The City of Monsters

"Die, palace pet."

The words were cold. They were the first thing I heard when I opened my eyes.

I was lying on a bed of dry moss inside a tent. The air was thick with the smell of smoke and old blood. My head throbbed, and my shoulder sting was now a dull ache. I tried to move, but my hands were tied together with thick leather rope.

A man stood over me. He was huge. His face was covered in jagged scars, and one of his ears was half-gone. He held a long, rusted knife an inch from my throat.

"Wait," I croaked. My throat felt like it was full of sand. "Where am I?"

"The place where we kill people like you," the man spat.

He leaned in closer. His nose moved as he sniffed my neck. His eyes turned a dark, angry red.

"You smell like him," he hissed. He looked back at a group of people standing at the tent opening. "She smells like the Alpha King. She carries the scent of the man who hunted us like dogs!"

A roar of anger went up from the crowd outside. I could see them through the flap of the tent. These weren't the clean, pretty wolves of the Moonlight Pack. These wolves had missing limbs. They had messy hair and clothes made of animal skins. They looked like monsters.

"Kill her!" a woman yelled. "She is a spy!"

"Bring me her head!" another voice screamed. "The King wants us dead? We start with his woman!"

The man with the knife turned back to me. He raised the blade high. I didn't scream. I didn't beg. I curled my body into a ball, tucking my knees up to protect my stomach.

Not the baby, I thought. Please, not the baby.

"Stop."

The voice wasn't loud, but the entire camp went silent. It was a deep, heavy sound that felt like thunder in the ground.

The man with the knife froze. He looked toward the tent opening and stepped back, lowering his weapon.

A man walked in. He was taller than the others, with broad shoulders and dark, messy hair. He wore a long leather coat covered in silver studs. His eyes were a piercing, icy blue. He didn't look angry. He looked like he was carved out of the mountain itself.

This was the man I saw before I fainted. The one who smelled like rain and leather.

"Silas," the man with the knife whispered. "She smells like Valerius. She is his mate. We have to kill her."

Silas didn't look at the man. He walked over to me and knelt down. I pressed my back against the tent wall, my heart hammering against my ribs.

"The King's mate?" Silas asked. His voice was low. He leaned in, his nose brushing against the side of my neck, right over the silver 'X' scar.

I held my breath. I expected him to growl. I expected him to tear my throat out.

Instead, he stopped. He stayed there for a long time, sniffing the air around me. His blue eyes went wide. The anger in the room vanished, replaced by a strange, heavy silence.

"She doesn't just smell like the King," Silas said. He sounded breathless.

"What do you mean?" the scarred man asked.

Silas reached out and grabbed my chin. He turned my face toward the light of the fire outside. He looked at my eyes. Then, he looked at the silver scar on my neck.

"Look at the mark," Silas ordered.

The scarred man leaned in. "It’s an exile brand. He kicked her out."

"No," Silas said. He ran a thumb over the silver skin. "Look at the color. It’s not purple. It’s not black. It’s silver. And her scent... it isn't just wildflowers."

Silas looked me dead in the eye. I felt a weird shiver run down my spine. It wasn't fear. It was like a spark of electricity.

"Who are you?" Silas asked.

"I’m Elena," I whispered. "I was an Omega. Now I’m nothing."

"An Omega doesn't survive a fall into the Abyss," Silas said. He stood up and pulled a small dagger from his belt. I flinched, but he didn't stab me. He sliced through the ropes on my wrists with one quick motion.

"She’s a spy, Silas!" the man with the knife shouted. "The King sent her!"

"The King sent assassins to kill her," Silas barked. He looked at the crowd outside. "I saw them on the cliff. They were Shadow Claws. You don't send Shadow Claws to protect a spy. You send them to end a life."

He turned back to me. He reached out a hand. I hesitated, then took it. He pulled me to my feet. My legs were shaky, but he held me steady.

"Where am I?" I asked again.

Silas pulled back the tent flap. I gasped.

We weren't in a small camp. We were on a high ledge overlooking a massive valley. Below us was a city. It wasn't made of stone and gold like the palace. It was built into the trees and the cliffs. Thousands of fires burned in the dark. I saw wolves shifting in the streets—huge, powerful wolves of every color.

"This is the Citadel," Silas said. "The home of the Rogues. The place the King tells you is a graveyard."

"It’s beautiful," I whispered.

"It’s a fortress," Silas corrected.

He turned me around so the crowd could see me. Hundreds of Rogues were standing there, watching us. They looked hungry. They looked dangerous.

"Listen to me!" Silas yelled. His voice echoed off the valley walls. "For a hundred years, the elders told us a story. They told us of a woman who would come from the mist. A woman who carried the scent of the enemy, but the soul of the Moon."

The Rogues began to murmur. Some of them stepped back, their eyes wide.

"They said she would be a Moon-Blessed Queen," Silas continued. "They said she would be the one to lead the outcasts back to the light."

He looked at me, then back at his people.

"I smelled the flowers. I smelled the ozone of the spirit world. And I see the silver mark of a true survivor."

Silas dropped to one knee in the dirt.

My heart stopped. The most dangerous man I had ever seen was bowing to me.

One by one, the other Rogues followed. The man who tried to kill me dropped his knife and knelt. The woman who called me a spy bowed her head. Soon, the entire camp was on their knees in the mud.

"What are you doing?" I asked, my voice shaking. "I'm just a slave. I'm a Nameless."

Silas looked up at me. A small, dark smile touched his lips.

"The King called you a mistake, Elena," he said. "But to us, you are the prophecy. You aren't a slave anymore. You are the hope of the Dead Lands."

I looked out over the hidden city. I touched my stomach. I could feel the pup's heart beating fast, matching mine.

Valerius had thrown me into the dark to die. He thought the monsters would eat me.

He didn't know that the monsters were waiting for a leader.

"I don't know how to be a Queen," I said.

Silas stood up. He loomed over me, but he didn't feel like a threat. He felt like a wall of iron.

"You'll learn," he said. "And when you do, we're going to burn his kingdom to the ground."

I looked out over the hidden city of monsters. Thousands of eyes watched me from the shadows.

Valerius thought he'd thrown me away.

He'd actually just armed me.