Chapter 3 BLOODCITY
VELVELA POV
My eyes snapped open.
A sharp breath tore from my lungs as I jerked upright and pain immediately shot through my chest, stealing the air back before I could use it. For a moment I could only stare.. Trees, bushes, dark branches stretching overhead, the scent of damp earth filling my nose.
I blinked. Then realization settled over me like cold water.
"I'm... alive?"
My voice came out hoarse and unfamiliar, like something dragged up from a very long distance.
My hand moved slowly to my chest, fingers finding the place where Declan's sword had gone through me. The skin was smooth. Healed completely, not even a scar to prove it had happened, yet the pain remained, sitting deep and untouchable in a place no wound could reach.
"Lyra?"
Silence.
My heart dropped. "Lyra?"
Nothing came back. No sarcastic remark. No impatient growl. No warm presence pressing against the inside of my ribs the way she always had.
I closed my eyes and reached inward, searching through the dark for her, and found only the faintest ember, distant and fading, like a fire that had burned through everything it had to give.
The understanding came quietly and it was worse for being quiet. Lyra had used the last of her strength to heal me. And then she'd retreated somewhere I couldn't follow, gone.
"Lyra." Her name left me as barely a sound.
The memories returned in a wave. Declan. The rejection. The sword. The smile on his face as I bled. And then Vivienne stepping out of the shadows, leaning into his side, her voice reaching me from somewhere already far away. It was time for someone worthy to rule.
A broken sound escaped me, half laugh, half something I didn't have a name for. Everything was gone. My mate. My sister. My pack. My kingdom. The entire life I had clawed together from the wreckage of losing my father at sixteen, six years of building something solid out of grief and sheer will.. gone, in one night, by the two people I had actually trusted.
For the first time in years, nobody was watching. Nobody was expecting strength or steadiness or an Alpha. So I bent forward over the forest floor and cried, silent tears falling into the damp earth, grieving Lyra and myself and the future that had been stolen before I'd even had a chance to hold it.
Then… A snap.
My head shot up.
The sound came again. Branches breaking, multiple sets of footsteps moving fast through the trees. Every instinct I had screamed danger and I was on my feet before I'd made a conscious decision to move, though standing made my vision tilt dangerously. My body was still hollowed out from the inside. The healing had closed the wound but internally I was barely held together.
Still. I straightened. If I was dying here, I wouldn't die on my knees.
A figure stepped into view, tall, broad, hair covering most of his jaw, wearing clothing that belonged to neither rogue nor pack warrior. A rifle hung from his shoulder and several knives lined his belt. Behind him more figures emerged from between the trees, wolves I could smell but whose scent carried something unfamiliar, all of them loaded with weapons and wearing the same strange uniforms.
I dropped into a defensive stance, claws partially extended, heart pounding.
The bearded man raised both hands. "Easy."
I didn't trust him. Not for a single second. Something moved behind me and my instincts screamed but I was already too slow, a hand slammed into the side of my neck with precision, pain exploding through my skull as the world tilted sideways, and the last thing I registered before the darkness came was the bearded man's annoyed voice somewhere above me.
"Could've warned me before knocking her out."
The second time I woke up, I knew before I opened my eyes that I wasn't in the forest anymore. The scent was different, warm stone, wood polish, bodies moving through enclosed spaces. Sounds drifted in from somewhere outside, voices and footsteps and the general noise of a place that didn't sleep.
I opened my eyes. Wooden ceiling, stone walls, a window with pale light pressing through it. I sat up and immediately noticed my wrists were bound.
A short, unamused sound escaped me. Seriously.
A knock sounded and the door opened to admit an elderly woman who lit up the moment she saw me awake. "Oh good. You're finally up." She had grey hair and kind eyes and a warm smile that made me trust her less than I would have trusted a stranger with a weapon.
She crossed the room without hesitation and loosened the restraints around my wrists. I stood immediately, my legs threatening to give out beneath me before steadying.
"Where am I?" I asked.
"Straight to business." She seemed genuinely delighted by this. "I like that. My name is Madam Clarey. You were brought here by the Checkers."
"The what?"
"The Checkers." She smiled as if this explained everything. "The men who found you unconscious in the forest."
The men who'd knocked me unconscious, she meant. I kept that observation to myself. Madam Clarey clapped her hands together briskly and the door flew open, two young women rushing in before I could ask another question, one blonde, one brunette, both moving with the efficient energy of people permanently on a schedule.
Madam Clarey pointed at me. "Take her. Fill her in on everything."
Before I could protest, the blonde had my arm and was already moving. I went, because confused and walking was still better than confused and standing still.
"I'm Esmey," the blonde said, perfectly cheerful as we moved through a long corridor. "I clean the eastern dormitories." She nodded toward the brunette. "That's Hilda."
Hilda rolled her eyes with the expression of someone who had been introduced this way too many times. "Western side."
"Dormitories?" I repeated.
Neither of them answered. We reached a pair of giant doors and they pushed them open, and I stopped walking.
The scale of it hit me first.. Massive stone buildings spreading across the horizon, training grounds and watchtowers and barracks filling the space between, thousands of people moving through it all with the organized purpose of somewhere that had been built for war. Warriors, servants, students, merchants, all of them moving through a place that looked less like a city and more like a kingdom engineered specifically for war.
A cold feeling settled deep in my gut. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.
Esmey turned to me with a bright, oblivious grin.
"Welcome to Bloodcity."
The words landed like a blade.
My blood went cold. Bloodcity. The city ruled by the mask Lycan, the name that made Alphas lower their voices and increase their borders, the monster I had spent six years keeping away from everything I'd built and everyone I'd sworn to protect. The bloodthirsty king whose name alone was enough to make hardened warriors check over their shoulders.
I stared at the city stretching before me and couldn't speak, couldn't think, couldn't move, the sheer impossible cruelty of it pressing down on me until breathing required a conscious effort.
Out of every place in the entire world. I had ended up here.
