My Mate Believed Her Lies, So I Married the Lycan King

The Marrow family castle still smelled like pine smoke and old money.

I stood in the arched doorway of the banquet hall. A tiny earpiece was tucked behind my hair.

"Talk to me," Loren said in my ear.

"Chandeliers. Ice sculptures. Two hundred wolves pretending they're happy to see each other."

"The helicopter's on the ridge. Four minutes to the east lawn."

"I won't need it."

"You don't decide that. I do." A pause. "Stay on the line."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

He made a low sound that might have been a laugh. I didn't get to find out.

The string quartet stopped playing.

Every head turned toward the grand staircase.

Lyla floated down in ice-blue silk. Her hair was pinned up with tiny silver stars, and her shoulders looked so thin that one hard wind might snap them. She held the railing with both hands, like every step cost her something.

"Poor thing," an old she-wolf whispered beside me. "She still can't stand the cold, you know. Ever since the river."

*She* couldn't stand the cold.

I took a glass of plum wine from a passing tray. My hand needed something to hold.

Lyla reached the bottom step. Her eyes swept the room.

Then they landed on me.

She froze. Her lower lip trembled. Her eyes went pink and wet in about two seconds flat. Impressive.

"Selvina?"

The whole room heard it. She made sure of that.

She hurried toward me, the silk whispering around her ankles, and stopped just out of reach. Her hands twisted together at her chest.

"You came back. I thought—I thought you hated me too much to ever come back." A tear slid down her cheek. "I missed you. Isn't that stupid? After everything, I still missed you."

"That's a nice speech," I said. "Did you practice it in the mirror?"

A few guests gasped.

Lyla's face crumpled. "I just wanted to say I forgive you."

"I didn't ask you to."

"Selvina, please—"

"I'm here for Grandma. Not for you. Not for anyone else in this room." I lifted my glass an inch. "So go cry somewhere I can't see it."

"That's enough."

Selena cut between us like a blade. She put herself in front of Lyla, one arm thrown back to shield her.

"She's trying to make peace with you, and you spit in her face?"

"She's trying to make a show. You're just the best seat in the house."

Heavy footsteps came from behind Lyla. Kalen stepped up close to her back, one hand settling on her shoulder. Like a wall. Like a promise.

My stomach turned over.

"You walk into this house," he said, "and the first thing you do is attack her."

"I answered her. There's a difference."

"Not the way you do it."

Jasper drifted in from the edge of the crowd, hands in his pockets. "Three years, Vina. You had three years to cool off. And you still come in here with your teeth out."

Nobody had called me Vina since I was twelve.

"Don't," I said.

"Just admit it." He shrugged, like it was easy. "Say you pushed her. Say you're sorry. Then everybody can eat cake and go home."

"Admit something I didn't do?"

"Admit what *happened*," Selena snapped.

Kalen's gray eyes held mine. "Do it, Selvina. Right here. Then this ends."

The chandeliers blurred.

For one second I wasn't in the hall. I was on a stone floor with frost creeping up my fingers. My breath came out in white puffs that got smaller every hour. Kalen's boots sat outside the bars, perfectly still.

Then they walked away.

"Selvina." Loren's voice was sharp in my ear. "Your heart rate just spiked. What's happening?"

I swallowed and opened my mouth to answer all of them at once.

"Three years ago, I was ten feet away from that river, and every one of you—"

The floor tilted.

I blinked. The floor stayed tilted.

Heat crawled up the back of my neck, then dropped straight into my legs, and my knees went soft as wet paper. My fingers started to twitch around the stem of the glass. Small at first. Then harder. My whole arm was shaking.

"Selvina?" Loren said. "Answer me."

My lips wouldn't make the word.

Across from me, Lyla had gone quiet. She was staring at the floor, her lashes lowered, the picture of a hurt little girl.

But at the corner of her mouth, just for a heartbeat, something curled up.

A smile.

My wolf howled inside me, then dropped flat, like she'd been hit with a tranquilizer.

Wolfsbane dust. A paralytic. It had to be. I'd smelled something sweet under the plum and thought nothing of it.

*The wine.*

My arm went dead.

Not numb. Dead. Like it belonged to somebody else.

The glass slipped out of my fingers.

It tipped in the air, and dark purple wine flew out in a wide arc. It splashed across Lyla's chest and down the front of that perfect ice-blue gown. The glass hit the marble and burst into a hundred pieces.

For one second, the hall was silent.

Then Lyla screamed.

It was a beautiful scream. High and broken. She folded down to the floor, clutching the stained silk to her body, sobbing so hard her shoulders jerked.

"Why?" she wailed. "Why do you keep hurting me?"

The room exploded.

"Did you see that?"

"She threw it right at her!"

"After everything that girl went through—"

A hand clamped around my arm. Kalen. His fingers dug in hard enough to bruise, and his Alpha power slammed down on me like a falling roof.

My spine bent. My legs shook. I couldn't even feel my own feet.

"Are you out of your mind?" he growled.

I forced my tongue to move. It felt thick and heavy, like a stone in my mouth.

"Dr-drugged." The word came out slurred. "My wine. Somebody—"

"Oh, please." Selena's voice rang over the noise. "Now she's playing sick."

"Kalen, look—" I tried to lift my dead arm. It hung there, useless. "Look at my hand."

"I'm looking at Lyla," he said. "That's all I need to see."

Jasper crouched beside Lyla and pulled his jacket around her wet shoulders. He glanced up at me. His face was hard, but his eyes didn't quite meet mine.

"That's low, Vina. Even for you."

I laughed.

It came out wet and crooked, half air, half nothing. My tongue was too slow to stop it. Selena's face went white with fury.

"Guards!"

Two men in gray uniforms pushed through the crowd.

"Take her to the west wing," my sister said. "The sealed room. Lock it."

"Selena." My voice was barely a whisper now. "Selena, please. It's me."

She looked right at me. Her chin was up and her eyes were dry.

"I know exactly who you are. That's the problem."

Rough hands caught me under both arms. My feet dragged across broken glass. I felt a sharp sting at my ankle and then felt nothing at all. Somewhere along the way, the earpiece slipped from behind my hair and vanished under a hundred stamping feet.

Loren's voice went with it.

The last thing I saw in that hall was Kalen kneeling beside Lyla. His big hand cupped the back of her head, so gentle.

He never looked at me once.

The west wing was cold. Always had been.

The guards shoved me through a narrow door, and I hit the stone floor on my side. I couldn't even lift my hands to catch myself.

"Wait," I mumbled. "Please. It's cold. I need—"

The door slammed.

A heavy iron lock dropped into place with a clang that I felt in my teeth.

Darkness swallowed everything.

Frost crept into my lungs with every shallow breath. My wolf didn't answer when I called her. My fingers wouldn't curl. The cold was already crawling up my legs, slow and patient, the way it had three years ago.

Exactly the way it had.

Loren said three days.

Lying there, shaking in the dark, I wasn't sure I had three hours.

Then something scraped against the other side of the door.

And a soft voice whispered through the crack.

"Selvina? Are you cold yet?"