Page 3 of The Alpha King's Mate

I bit my tongue until I tasted iron. At nineteen, Cora had already crowned herself Grayson’s Luna. The Alpha hadn’t been consulted.

I pulled the rug back. I scrubbed.

And I thought about the prophecy. The one my dying mother had pressed into my ear eight years ago.

One in a millennium. The Moon Goddess’s child.

A bitter laugh climbed my throat and died there.

If I was the Moon Goddess’s child, the Moon Goddess had a wicked sense of humour. She’d given me a wolf who had nevershifted, never growled, never so much as broken skin—a quiet, fading thing only I knew was there. She’d given me a father who saw a burden, a stepmother who saw a stain, and a stepsister who saw a toy.

She’d given me the memory of my mother’s touch and the promise of a mate I’d sworn to reject.

I scrubbed until the floorboards shone, then sat back on my heels, sweat rolling down my temples.

The house had gone quiet. Deeana and Cora had vanished to the back sunroom to gossip. My father was off doing whatever he did in the pack’s stores to keep the Alpha’s favour. For one moment, I was alone.

I let the silence hold me.

Then I heard it.

A low, rolling vibration. Not thunder. Heavier. It came from beyond the trees, from the ridge that bordered the Silvermere hunting grounds.

Paws. Hundreds of them. And the rhythm was wrong for a hunt or a search party.

It was a march.

I froze, fingers gripping the floor I’d just polished.

Slowly, I rose, crossed to the front window, and parted the heavy velvet curtains.

The tree line was moving.

I couldn’t make them out yet. Just shadows sliding between the trunks in perfect, terrible unison.

Black shadows.

And every wolf in Silvermere knew who ran black.

The first vehicle came to a halt. Another two followed. Diesel growled through the glass, and I dragged the curtain back to see a fourth. Deeana and Cora shoved me aside.

Deeana gasped.

“Hide. He will kill us. Cora, come with me,” she said, taking her daughter’s hand and dragging her away.

Their footsteps fled deeper into the house. The engines cut out, one by one, and the silence they left behind was worse.

A door opened.

With a thud, heavy boots landed. A gust of wind blew his dark hair over his face. My eyes widened. He was the largest Alpha I’d ever seen. He towered over his men and wolves. Ink covered his hands, his neck, a portion of his clavicle. It was a serpent. His eyes swept over the house. I ducked before they reached my window.

My heart slammed against my ribs. Beneath it, so faint I might have imagined it, something else stirred—a flutter, deep down, where Zira slept.

Muffled voices, cold and gruff, grew closer. Gravel crunched under boots. Then under paws.

I jumped as fists pounded on wood.

Sorin the Terrible was at our door.