Chapter 2
The scent of frost and metal pulled me awake.
Kieran sat next to my bed, wrapping my injured finger with some ointment.
For a brief moment, it felt like I was back many years ago, when he was still the wounded Lycan Prince locked in my father’s dungeon, and I was the fool secretly bringing him medicine.
When I tried to move, he stopped me and tossed the ointment away.
“Don’t overthink it. Cassidy loves your music. Get better soon. You’ll play again.”
I asked, “Kieran… If I die, will I get to see my child?”
His shout shook the room. “You won’t die!” He pulled me up, his claws piercing my throat. “You still owe a debt!”
Then the pain hit me.
A howl escaped my mouth as the wolfsbane burned through my veins, his latest experiment.
“What… is this?” I gasped.
“Bloodbond,” he said coldly.
Itrembled without thinking.
We had used this curse before. When he took my fever onto himself and whispered, “Let me share your pain.”
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Now, he reversed it.
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“Cassidy suffers because of her pregnancy. You’ll carry that pain for her.”
Poison and curse fought inside me. I writhed in agony, my nails scraping
the wooden floor.
He murmured, “It’s just pregnancy symptoms. Don’t fake it.”
Darkness swallowed me again.
At sunset, whispers woke me up.
The servants stumble barefoot toward the graveyard, their eyes full of pity.
Someone grabbed my arm. “The king is in the Royal Burial Ground. He…”
your father’s
“He used your father’s bones to make a protective charm for Cassidy,” another voice finished softly.
As I stumbled into the ancestral tomb, the stench of upturned earth and ancient bones choked me.
I lost a shoe on the way and stood there, muddy and bleeding from my bare feet.
Kieran stood waist–deep in the broken coffin, while Cassidy’s thin fingers searched through my father’s bones like a child picking sweets.
“This spine bone will make beautiful beads,” she said, holding up my father’s spine in the torchlight.
My voice barely sounded like mine. “Are you digging up the
grave now?”
Kieran was sorting through ribs without looking up. “The Shadowfang Witch said ancestor bones can strengthen the protective spell. Cassidy is
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expecting…”
“Lies!” I stomped my bare foot on a broken thigh bone, which looked like my brother’s. “She’s casting a death curse, and you’re helping her!”
Cassidy’s laugh was sharp, like ice cracking. “Poor Jolene. Still mad that we wrapped these bones in your wedding veil?” She touched Kieran’s arm, and her sleeve slid down to reveal…
“It’s my mother’s bracelet!” The bronze serpent bracelet shone, stained with my mother’s blood from when she died protecting me. “You said it was lost during the siege!”
Kieran finally looked into my eyes, and at that moment, I remembered the boy who cried when I wrapped his injured claw after it got caught in a trap.
Then Cassidy started to cry, saying, “The baby kicked so hard…”
The spell was broken. Kieran grabbed the bracelet from her hands and raised it b
“No! Please… I pleaded.
He smashed it hard against the basement wall,
Pieces of bronze cut my hands as I desperately tried to gàther them. For three years, I had begged for this keepsake. For three years, he said it was destroyed in the fire.
Cassidy’s slippers slipped onto my fingers as she said, “Broken things are broken, honey.”
Something inside me snapped, louder than the torque of
of bone.
“I want your child to be born with its guts outside,” I whispered.
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The tomb grew quiet, and even the torches seemed to pause.
Kieran was the first to act, not by fighting me, but by holding Cassidy’s wrist when she tried to attack me. “That’s enough. The bones are
gathered.”
As they walked away, I saw blood dripping from his tight fists where the bracelet had cut him.
Werewolf kings
heal fast… unless the injury is caused by someone
they love.
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Chapter 3
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