The Wolf King (Wolf King, #1)

by Lauren Palphreyman

The alpha stands there. He’s wearing a crumpled white linen shirt and high boots as well as his red tartan kilt. His face looks like it is carved from thunder and stone. “Out.” Magnus swallows, before a smile twists back onto his face and he turns. “It’s just a bit of fun—” “Now,” says the alpha.

The alpha is bigger than the other three wolves, and there’s something in his e...

“You. . . you won’t hurt me,” I say. He sighs. “That’s where you’re wrong. I won’t kill you. And I won’t lay a finger on you in the way those bastards were threatening. But you’re coming with me. And if I have to overpower you in order to make that happen, I can’t promise that won’t hurt.”

“Are you insane?” I snarl. “They’ll skin you alive for—” He throws open my wardrobe and the words die in my throat at the inopportune moment for my threat. In the current circumstance, guilt should not flood so powerfully through my chest at the sight of the wolf coat that hangs there. Nor should I want, desperately, to tell him that it was there when I arrived.

“You won’t get away with this,” I growl, regardless. “I will. Now be quiet.” “Where are you taking me?” “Home.”

Shouts fill the castle and torchlight flickers as I’m carried through a labyrinth of stone corridors. I struggle against my captor, but his thick arm only tightens around my waist.

I am not stone. I am not a statue. I am fire. And somehow it has taken this man, this beast, to make me see it.

These men are dangerous. They’re killers. They’re Wolves.

The alpha’s body stiffens. “I’m going to need to put you down for this, Princess,” he says softly. My breath hitches as he slides me down his front, and places me on the flagstones. The guards are charging, but everything feels still. His eyes bore into mine and they are as green and alive as the forest. Don’t run, he seems to be telling me. Don’t run.

He is a force of nature. He swings, and blocks, and dodges each lethal blow that comes his way. He impales one soldier on his own sword, then rams another into the far wall—smashing his head against the stone with such force that the chandelier above trembles.

“Princess, wait.” I turn. The alpha stands in the corridor behind me. His shirt is slick with sweat, and his biceps strain against his sleeves. He walks slowly, carefully, toward me. He’s like a predator, trying not to scare his prey.

“Princess, do you really—” He tenses when he reaches me, as if he hears something I cannot, then hooks an arm around my waist. My breathing sharpens as he draws me into a shadowy alcove. He pulls my back flush against his chest.

I feel the slight growl building in the alpha’s chest.

“Aye.” He runs a hand over the back of his neck. “And I can’t promise you it won’t be dangerous up in the Northlands. My people don’t much care for humans. But I promise you that I’ll protect you.” He swallows. “And I’ll give you the choice. Run now, and I won’t follow. Come with me, and no one will touch you. I swear it on the Moon Goddess.”

“What do you want with me?” I ask. He drags his teeth over his bottom lip, as if deciding whether to tell me. “Sebastian has something of ours. We want it back.” I let out a bitter laugh. “You want to hold me ransom. You think he will make a trade.”

“I heard what he said to you,” says the alpha, his voice quiet. “At the dog fight.” When I meet his eyes, there is a surprising amount of anger contained within them. “I will keep you safe. Then I will set you free. I swear it.”

He holds out his hand. I suck in a deep breath. I’m doing this to help my kingdom, I tell myself. Not because—even with blood on his shirt cuffs, and dirt on his face, and one of my guards, dead, at his feet—he is looking at me with kindness. No one looks at me with kindness. I place my hand in his.

I should be alarmed. Yet all my senses are trained on the alpha’s hand, clasped around mine. I feel the ungodly strength in his fingers, and the callouses that make his hand so very different to my mother’s, the only hand I have ever clasped before this one.

A sweet burst of panic surges through me. Am I really going to do this? The alpha turns and swings me off my feet and into his arms. I yelp, and reflexively hook my arms around his neck. His eyes latch onto mine—bright even in the darkness. “No time for second thoughts, now, Princess,” he says, rain running over his full lips.

Screaming!!

The alpha’s eyebrows dip in question, or confusion. “I want. . . I want you to put me down.” His gaze moves to the Western Gate that looms ahead, and the corner of his lip tugs up. “No you don’t.”

“I’m not leaving you, Princess. And that’s the end of the matter.” There’s a dark finality to his tone. This is a man who is used to having the last word. “You’re a monster,” I mutter—though I don’t quite mean it. He’s a killer, maybe. But I’m not sure he’s a monster. “Aye,” he says just as half-heartedly. “So you’d better do as you’re told.”

“Got yourself a wee snack for the road?” he says. “She’s under my protection.” The alpha stalks past him toward a grey mare near the front of the group. “Easy there, Dawn,” he says when the horse whinnies.

Ryan’s coppery hair is plastered to his forehead and he’s clasping the hand of a brunette girl around his age. She’s wearing the uniform of the kitchen maids, and has an angry scar across her cheek. My eyes narrow in distaste at the brand on her neck—one of Sebastian’s ways of identifying the Wolves he has working for him in the castle. “Ah, seeing to matters of the heart, I see,” says the red-haired guy. “Or cock,” says another, with an arched eyebrow.

The red-haired man glances at me again. “She’s a beauty, for sure. That doesn’t mean you can just swipe the lass. What’s the king going to say?” “What makes you think I didn’t take her on the king’s orders?” says the alpha, and I stiffen. “Not your king,” he adds in a whisper against my cheek. I frown, confused. There is only one king—unless you count the false king my brother is fighting a war against over on the continent. And surely the Wolves are too unruly, too disorganized, to be fighting for him.

Ooop

“My father is the king,” I say. “He’s your king. He’s not ours.”

“I know you do as you please. Killing. Stealing. Invading the Southlands.” I think about what Sebastian said, about how Wolves take their women. I remember what Magnus did to that woman in the cell. My cheeks flame. “Doing other. . . beastly things.” “It seems you have the measure of us, Princess. We’re all animals up here. Running rampant around the mountains. Howling at the moon. Eating princesses for breakfast.” I tense and he laughs.

“The north is that way, you fool.” “You know, not many people speak to me like that.” “Not many people kidnap me and hold me hostage.” “I’m not people.” His lips are close to my ear, and his warm breath tickles my cheek. “I’m an animal, remember.”

Heheheheh

He digs his heels into the mare and we’re flying, leaping over the crumbling pile of rock. I gasp as we clear the border wall, and I feel the alpha smile behind me as we leave my homeland behind. “Welcome to the Northlands, Princess,” he whispers.

Before long, it seems, the sun is setting again—and I remember my mother’s lady-in-waiting telling me stories about how the gods and goddesses of the night staked their claim on the Northlands before they went to rest, making the days shorter and the nights longer so the creatures that revered them had more time for worship.

“Steady, Princess,” he says. “I suppose you’re not used to riding. Never mind. I’ve got you.” He scoops me up into his arms while the other men dismount around us.

“Back in the castle, I told you that if you ran, I wouldn’t chase you. I need you to know that is no longer the case.” In the dusk, his eyes are the color of the deepest part of the forest. “If you run, I will catch you. We’re not in the south any longer. Understood?”

We’re in the middle of nowhere. I have no idea where I am. Where does he think I would run to? I give him a look.

“I’m not a...

There’s a crunch as the alpha steps on a twig beside me, and his warmth wraps around me. “If you’re cold, Magnus, there’s some whisky in my pack that’ll warm you up,” says the alpha. “I suggest you go and drink it before you and I have a problem.”

“Where are we going?” I ask, my chest feeling a little looser. His arm tightens around my waist. “I’m taking you to the Wolf King.”

“The first wolf?” I say. “Yes. Everyone knows about that.” He lets the silence extend, waiting for me to fill it. “He conspired with the Moon and betrayed the Sun and the first men,” I say. “He was cursed to roam the earth on four legs, and live in a manner as beastly as his actions were.”

“The Elderwolf lived here long before the first men arrived,” he says, “when all kinds of ancient dangerous creatures roamed the earth. The Moon—or Ghealach as we call her—would watch him as he endured. Impressed by his strength and his will to survive, she fell in love with him. Now, some say the Moon herself was a wolf, while others say the Wolves were merely her favored ones, but whichever is true, she would send her creatures to protect him.”

“He began to leave her gifts and offerings, to thank her. And so began a secret courtship that lasted many years. They fell deeply, and irrevocably, in love.”

“When the first men invaded the Northlands, the Elderwolf was gravely injured. The Moon left her post in the sky to come to him—though it was forbidden. She shared her wild and dangerous power with him, and he was able to transform—to heal, and to seek vengeance on those who had tried to kill him.” I hear the smile in his voice. “It was a blessing.” “A blessing? You said you were cursed.”

“The Elderwolf embraced his new power,” he continues. “You see, it felt as if the wolf was part of him all along. And perhaps it was. Perhaps that was why he and the Moon were drawn to one another in the first place. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there. Because the Sun is a jealous and vengeful goddess.”

“When the Sun found out, she set out to punish them both. The Moon was banished. She was given to the God of Night to be locked within his prison in the sky. And the Elderwolf? Well, the wolf inside him was caged—only ever able to break free of his chains when the Moon was the closest and her power could reach him.” “On the night of a full moon.”

“You’re saying the Elderwolf was once able to change whenever he wanted,” I say.

“But the Sun had underestimated the power of the Moon’s love. So distraught to have been parted from him, to see him suffer from her prison in the sky, she ripped out her own heart. She cast it down to the earth so he could keep it, and he could always be close to her power.”

“He did. It landed in the center of Glen Ghealach, high up in the Northlands, and created the valley itself. And when he found it, he kept it close. Until one day, the Sun led the first men to him. Though he fought bravely, though he protected the heart that had been entrusted to him, there were too many of them. He was slaughtered, and the Moon’s heart was stolen.”

“Aye, we do. Of course, the story is steeped in myth—but there is evidence throughout history of a relic that has passed between hands. A type of rock, we think.”

“And there is evidence it holds the power for us to shift whenever we choose, to be free.”

“Aye,” he says, his voice dark as shadow and laced with intent. “We’re searching for the Cridhe na Ghealach—the Heart of the Moon. Because with it, we’ll have the power to shift when we want. With it, we’ll have the power to win this war

I have no doubt Sebastian will wage war to get me back. I am his property, and I have been stolen from him. He will not let that go unanswered. But he does not care whether I live or die. Not really.

And the alpha is naïve if he thinks Sebastian will trade this powerful relic for me. I am worth nothing.

“People really don’t talk to me that way.” “Yes, you said.” “They call this place Glen Marb—the Valley of Death,” says the alpha.