Cheated on by My Fiancé, Claimed by the Crown Prince

The broth smelled of honey, cloves, and heat.

When I refused the bowl, the largest man held me down and another poured it between my teeth. Most of the liquid ran down my chin, but enough reached my stomach. I recognized moonroot under the sweetness, mixed with concentrated heatflower.

It was not poison.

It was worse.

Heatflower was used to help bonded couples during difficult mating seasons. This dose would strip away judgment and send a wolf into a desperate false heat.

I spat broth across Seraphine's white dress.

She slapped me. "Ungrateful bitch."

"Cassian will smell them on you," she said. "He will see you with three rogues in your bed. By sunrise, you will be the faithless bride, and I will be the woman who comforted him."

She left with Veda, locking the door.

The three men looked at me. They wore Ashfang guard trousers, though their shirts had been removed. The largest, a scarred wolf named Bram, reached for my nightdress.

I drove my knee upward.

He folded with a curse. I grabbed the hidden dinner knife and slashed another man's forearm. For several seconds, surprise made me faster than them. I cut Bram across the chest, kicked the third man into a table, and ran for the window.

Heat spilled through my veins. My skin became painfully sensitive. Every breath carried male scent, turning my stomach and confusing my wolf. Astra howled from the chemical command consuming us.

Bram caught my hair. He threw me onto the bed.

"Hold her."

A roar shook the room.

The door exploded inward.

The wolf who entered was not fully shifted. His eyes burned a frozen blue, and a white streak cut through his dark hair. Blood already covered the leather armor across his chest.

Nightcrest.

Finn's brother.

He moved with terrifying silence. One attacker reached for a sword. The stranger broke his neck before the blade cleared its sheath. Bram shifted, but the black wolf tore through him mid-change. The last man tried to surrender.

The stranger looked at my torn nightdress, the drugged bowl, and the bruises forming on my arms.

He killed him too.

Then the room became quiet except for my breathing.

The stranger turned toward me. His face was sharp, controlled, and merciless. He looked older than Finn by perhaps eight years, broad through the shoulders, every inch of him carrying the dangerous stillness of royal alpha blood.

"Lady Elara," he said. "Finn sent me."

His voice went through me like a hand along bare skin.

The reaction was not the drug. It was deeper. Astra stopped howling and went utterly still.

Mate.

The word struck inside my skull.

The stranger inhaled. His icy expression cracked. His pupils widened until only a thin ring of blue remained.

"No," he whispered, as if the Moon Goddess had made an impossible choice.

Another cramp twisted through me. I slid from the bed. He caught me before I hit the floor, and the contact detonated every nerve in my body.

His scent was winter pine, steel, and distant snow. Clean. Powerful. Safe.

I clutched his armor. "Help me."

His jaw flexed. "You were drugged."

"I know."

He lifted me. My body pressed against his, and a broken sound escaped my throat. His muscles locked. Beneath discipline and cold command, I felt his wolf answer mine with a violent, possessive hunger.

That knowledge made the false heat worse.

I pulled his mouth down to mine.

For one blazing second, he kissed me back. His taste was rain and blood. His arm tightened around my waist, and the bond opened between us, raw as lightning.

Then he tore himself away.

"Not like this."

I tried to reach him again. Shame and need fought inside me. "Please. It hurts."

His expression changed. Not to disgust. To fury at the people who had done this.

He bit his own wrist and pressed the wound to my lips. "Nightcrest royal blood neutralizes most herbal compounds. Drink."

I did. His blood was hot and strangely sweet. The effect came slowly. The claws inside my veins dulled. My mind rose through the fever in pieces, but the mate bond remained, bright and undeniable.

He carried me through a hidden passage while fighting echoed elsewhere in the pack house. Nightcrest warriors had invaded to recover their prince. I heard Cassian shouting orders.

In the forest, the stranger laid me beneath a cloak while his healer checked my pulse.

"The drug is leaving her," the woman said. "She’ll come around soon, but the bond awakening will keep her body sensitive."

The stranger knelt a careful distance away. "My name is Kael Thorne. You are safe, Elara. No one will touch you without your permission. Not even me."

That promise broke something open in my chest.

Cassian had spoken of using my body for heirs. Seraphine had tried to ruin me. Kael, whose wolf burned for mine, sat with his fists clenched and refused to take what the bond offered.

I reached for him after the healer withdrew.

"The drug?" he asked.

"Mostly gone."

"Mostly is not enough."

I waited through another wave. I told him my full name, my age—twenty-four—and why I had entered Ashfang. I named my parents, my sister, and the first horse I had fallen from as a child. He was gentle to listen to me.

At last, I touched his face. "I know who you are. I know where I am. I know I may regret the timing. I do not consent because of the drug. I consent because you are my mate, and I need one true thing after everything they tried to make false."

His forehead rested against mine. "If you say stop, I stop."

"Yes."

This time, when he kissed me, there was no violence in it. Only restraint breaking layer by layer. I pulled him close, and he held me as if strength meant protecting rather than possessing. The forest, the raid, and the pain disappeared beneath the fierce warmth of the bond.

What passed between us belonged to us, not to the drug and not to our packs. It was urgent, imperfect, and tender in places I had not expected tenderness. Each time heat threatened to sweep my thoughts away, he made me look at him and choose again.

When relief finally came, it carried the bright snap of the true bond awakening. Astra curled around his wolf in my mind. Kael pressed his mouth to my temple, breathing as hard as I was.

"Mine," his wolf said through him.

"Not owned," I whispered.

His arms loosened immediately.

I caught them and pulled them back around me. "Chosen."

His eyes closed. "Chosen."

Exhaustion claimed me before I could ask what the bond would mean.

I woke in a bed beneath a silver canopy.

Sunlight poured across black stone walls. My wounds had been cleaned and dressed. A maid in Nightcrest blue hurried out when she saw my eyes open.

Minutes later, Finn burst into the room.

He looked clean, fed, and furious. "You took an arrow for me."

"It barely touched me."

"You were nearly executed."

"Also barely."

He laughed once, then hugged me so carefully my throat tightened.

Kael did not come with him.

I tried not to feel disappointed.

Finn sat beside the bed. "My brother says you are his true mate. He also says he will not announce it unless you wish him to."

That restraint hurt more than a claim might have. I wanted to see Kael. I feared what I would feel when I did.

First, I had a war to prevent—or choose.

I told Finn everything: my real identity, Cassian's affair, the attempted framing, and Ashfang's plan to exploit Silverpine. By the time I finished, Finn's youthful face had become royal and hard.

"Nightcrest will stand with you," he said.

I looked toward the northern mountains beyond the window.

"I want revenge." I said.