My Mate Humiliated Me Until the Lycan Prince Claimed Me

The text message from Colt came early the next morning: *Fitting room at ten. Be on time.*

I walked into the second-floor parlor expecting the pack seamstress. Instead, Poppy was already there. She stood by the velvet couch, running her manicured fingers over bolts of cream-colored ceremonial silk with an easy, mocking confidence.

Colt stood beside the window, an unlit cigarette between his fingers. When he saw me enter, his eyes dropped immediately to my throat.

Around my neck hung the Luna Moonstone. It had belonged to my late mother, Maren. The stone was smooth and milky white, and against my skin, it always gave off a soft, faint inner light—like trapped moonlight.

Colt didn’t say hello. He crossed the room in two strides.

Before I could take a breath, his hand shot out. He gripped the silver chain and yanked it violently sideways.

The metal snapped with a sharp *crack*. The link tore through my skin, and a thin line of warmth immediately trickled down my collarbone.

"Colt!" The word slipped out before I could stop it.

He ignored me. He turned and dropped the pendant directly into Poppy’s waiting, outstretched hand.

The very second the stone touched Poppy's palm, the faint glow died. It went completely, utterly black—a dull, gray pebble resting against her skin.

Poppy didn't seem to care. She curled her fingers tight around it, sliding the stone into the pocket of her dress with a smug little smirk.

"It's dead," I said, my voice shaking slightly. "It only answers to my blood."

Colt let out a dry, harsh chuckle. "A cheap trick, Averie. The stone is a Luna heirloom for the pack. It was wasted on a girl who can't even shift." He turned his back on me, picking up a tailor's tape. "Get out. You're ruining Poppy's mood."

A drop of blood slid down to my sternum. I touched the broken skin with my fingertips.

I didn't yell. I didn't beg.

I turned around and walked out of the room.

Once I reached the dim quiet of the concrete stairwell, I pulled my phone from my pocket. My hands were perfectly steady. I typed a second message to Cassian's private number:

*The ceremony is in three days. I'll be ready. Make sure you are.*

I pocketed the phone and started down toward my quarters. I didn't even make it to the main floor.

A high-pitched scream echoed down the central corridor.

Seconds later, Poppy rounded the corner, sobbing hysterically. Her sleeve was pushed up, showing three ragged, bleeding scratches down her forearm.

"She attacked me!" Poppy wailed, stumbling into the foyer just as Colt came down the stairs. "Colt, she ambushed me in the hall! She said if she couldn't have the title, she'd ruin my face!"

It was a clumsy lie. The scratches were shallow and pulled in the exact angle of someone clawing their own skin.

I opened my mouth. "I haven't been within ten feet of her—"

"Shut your mouth," Colt snarled.

He didn't ask for cameras. He didn't ask for witnesses. He simply raised a hand and whistled.

Gamma Vance stepped out from the security room, his face blank.

"Take her to the old border outpost," Colt ordered, not even looking at me as he wrapped an arm around Poppy’s trembling shoulders. "Put her in the silver cell until Saturday morning. Let her cool off."

The silver cell. A punishment box built fifty years ago for captured rogues.

Gamma Vance grabbed my arm with an iron grip. As he dragged me across the gravel courtyard toward the transport truck, I caught sight of Ryker standing beside the armory doors.

Our eyes met. Ryker’s jaw clenched, but after half a second, he looked down at the gravel, doing nothing.

The cell at the outpost was four paces wide. The stone walls were threaded with veins of raw silver ore.

The heavy iron door slammed shut, and the lock clicked into place.

The burning started within an hour.

Silver was poison to our blood. Even without a fully awakened wolf, the heavy silver dust in the air made my lungs ache and turned my skin raw. Red blisters began to rise on my forearms and shoulders. More than that, the silver pressed hard against my core, viciously suppressing the wild, restless spark that had begun growling inside me since the banquet.

For three days, no one brought food. No one brought water.

I sat curled in the dead center of the concrete floor, pulling my knees to my chest to stay as far from the walls as possible.

By the second night, fever had set in. My throat felt like sandpaper. Shivering violently against the damp chill, I closed my eyes, terrified that if I drifted off, my spirit would simply snuff out.

Then, a whisper grazed my mind.

It was faint, stretched paper-thin over miles of dark pine forest, but it carried the scent of crushed cedar and bitter winter smoke.

*Hold on.*

The voice was low, deep, and steady. Cassian.

I gasped into the dark, tears finally slipping down my dirty cheeks. I didn't know how he had reached through my unbonded mind-link, or how he knew I was suffering. But the sound of his voice acted like an anchor.

To keep my sanity, I began to hum. It was the slow, mournful melody my mother had sung to me as a child—a song of ancient snow and forgotten kings. I hummed it over and over until my voice gave out.

On the third morning, the iron bolt slid back.

The heavy door groaned open. Beta Ryker stood in the bright morning light, holding a jacket. He refused to look at my face.

"Get up, Averie," he said quietly. "It's Saturday. The Mate Ceremony starts in two hours."

I pushed myself off the floor. My legs shook, but I forced them straight.

Ryker held out the jacket to cover me, but I didn't take it.

I walked out past him into the freezing wind, letting the raw red silver burns on my shoulders, neck, and forearms show against my bare skin. When the transport brought me back to the Ironclaw packhouse, guards and pack members stopped to stare. No one said a word. No one asked what had happened.

For five years, I had kept a mental ledger of my life-debt to Colt. Every insult, every humiliation, every cold rejection had been logged against the memory of the wolf who took a rogue's claws for me in Colorado.

I looked up at the chapel spires cutting into the gray sky.

I didn't update the ledger today.

I closed it forever.