After My Alpha Rejected Me, I Became the Lycan Princess

The helicopter blades beat the air into submission before I heard the engines.

I was still in wolf form, standing at the center of camp with my silver-white fur catching the pale Arctic light. My body felt too large, too powerful, like I'd been wearing a cage for ten years and someone had finally ripped it off. Every sense was sharper than it should have been. I could smell the fuel in the helicopters, the sweat on the warriors around me, the fear rolling off Bentley in waves.

The enforcers descended in formation. Armored. Precise. Their boots hit the ice in perfect synchronization.

Frostclaw's warriors froze.

I shifted back to human form without meaning to. One moment I was wolf, the next I was kneeling on the ice in shredded clothes, my skin burning from the cold. An enforcer was already moving toward me with a coat—thick, lined, carrying the Lycan royal crest on the shoulder. He draped it over me without a word.

The lead enforcer approached. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with the kind of face that didn't waste expression. His eyes locked on mine. Then his nostrils flared.

He stopped mid-step.

For three seconds, nothing happened. He just stood there, staring at me like I'd appeared out of thin air. Then his knee hit the ice.

"Princess," he said.

The word hung in the frozen air.

Behind him, the other enforcers dropped to one knee in unison. The sound of their armor hitting ice echoed across the camp.

I didn't move. Couldn't. My brain was trying to process the word and failing.

Princess.

Bentley made a sound—something between a cough and a choke. I didn't look at him. I kept my eyes on the enforcer, whose head was still bowed, whose entire posture radiated a deference I had never seen directed at me in my life.

"Your scent," the enforcer said quietly. "It carries the Lycan royal bloodline. You are the King's daughter."

The King's daughter.

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Tried again.

"I don't—" My voice came out hoarse. "I'm not—"

"You are," he said, and his certainty was absolute. "We've been searching for you for years."

Behind me, I heard Yara's breathing go shallow and fast. A warrior whispered something I couldn't make out. Bentley said nothing.

The enforcer rose to his feet and gestured toward the collapsed ice shelf. "We'll excavate immediately. Can you tell me what happened here?"

I pulled the coat tighter around myself and stood. My legs shook, but I locked my knees and stayed upright.

"The shelf collapsed," I said. "Someone is buried under there. Bentley severed the mind-link relay to prevent a distress call."

The enforcer's expression didn't change, but something in his eyes went very cold. He turned toward Bentley.

Bentley stepped forward, his Alpha aura flaring. It didn't work the way it used to. The enforcers didn't even blink.

"There was a safety concern," Bentley said. His voice was steady, controlled. "I made a tactical decision to—"

"To cover up a death," I said.

Bentley's head snapped toward me. For a moment I saw the man I'd spent ten years with—the man who had used his Alpha tone to keep me small, who had let his mother poison my food, who had stood by while his warriors mocked me. Then I saw something else. Fear.

"Blair," he said quietly. "You don't understand what you're—"

"I understand perfectly," I said. "You chose her." I nodded toward Yara, who had gone very still. "You chose to protect her instead of the man under that ice. And then you rejected me so there would be no witness you couldn't control."

The enforcers moved toward the collapse site without waiting for further instruction. They worked in coordinated silence, shifting debris with mechanical efficiency. I walked to the perimeter and watched. My senses—these new, overwhelming senses—were recording everything. The scent signatures in the rubble. The faint chemical traces still lingering in the air. The residue of mind-link communications that had passed through the relay before Damon cut it.

The body came free in pieces. First an arm. Then a shoulder. Then the face.

Not Aldo.

The scent hit me before I could see the features clearly. Spencer bloodline. Unmistakable.

Bentley's wolf howled.

It was involuntary—a raw, grief-stricken sound that tore out of him before he could stop it. Every wolf in camp heard it. Every wolf understood what it meant.

Kin.

The lead enforcer turned the body over carefully. The face was frozen, pale, but recognizable. I didn't know him. But Bentley did.

"Chance," someone whispered.

Bentley staggered backward. His face had gone white.

The enforcer looked at him for a long moment. Then he looked at me.

"Who is this?" he asked.

"Bentley's half-brother," I said. My voice was steady. Clinical. "Joanna Spencer—Bentley's mother—had him erased from the family records. She bribed the expedition logistics team to strand him on the ice. She wanted him dead."

The enforcer's jaw tightened. "How do you know this?"

"I can hear the mind-link fragments," I said. "My wolf—" I stopped. My wolf. I had a wolf now. "My senses are stronger than they should be. I heard the communications before the relay was cut. Joanna paid three wolves to make sure Chance ended up on the unstable section of the shelf."

Bentley was shaking his head. "That's not—she wouldn't—"

"She did," I said. "And you were going to dump his body in the Arctic sea so no one would ask questions. Because Yara triggered the collapse and you didn't want her charged with manslaughter."

Yara made a small, choked sound. I didn't look at her.

The enforcer studied me for a moment. Then he pulled out a communication device and spoke into it in a low, clipped tone. More helicopters, I assumed. More enforcers. Maybe the Council itself.

Bentley tried to step toward me. The enforcers moved between us without a word.

"Blair," Bentley said. His voice cracked. "Please. You have to understand—"

"I understand," I said. I met his eyes across the space between us. "You rejected me. The Moon Goddess heard you. There's nothing left to understand."

The second helicopter landed before he could respond.

A man stepped off. Tall, dark-haired, moving with the controlled precision of a trained fighter. He wasn't in enforcer armor. He wore a heavy coat and boots built for ice, and his eyes scanned the camp with the focus of someone who had been searching for something specific.

His gaze landed on me.

He stopped walking.

For a moment we just stared at each other. Then he crossed the ice in long, deliberate strides and stopped three feet away.

"Blair," he said.

My name in his mouth sounded like a question and an answer at the same time.

"Do I know you?" I asked.

He shook his head slowly. "No. But I know you."

Something in his voice made my chest tighten.

"My name is Aldo," he said. "I'm your brother. And I've been looking for you since the day you were taken."

The world tilted.

I stared at him. At the shape of his face, the color of his eyes, the way he stood—solid, immovable, like he'd planted himself there and nothing could shift him.

"I didn't know I was lost," I whispered.

Aldo's expression cracked, just for a second. Then he stepped to my left side and stayed there.

"You're not lost anymore," he said.