After My Mate Sold Me to Rogues

The Lycan Court's gates appeared through the dawn mist like something out of a half-remembered dream. Stone. Ancient. Taller than any pack house I'd ever seen. I parked at the base of the hill and sat for a moment with my hands on the wheel, feeling the empty space in my chest where Ember used to be.

She was still there. Barely. A presence so diminished I had to concentrate to find her—like trying to hear a whisper through a closed door. She hadn't spoken since the rejection vow. Hadn't moved. Just curled in the dark inside me and went silent.

I reached for the border maps on the passenger seat. Three years of work. Rogue movement patterns, supply routes, weak points in pack defenses across the entire northeast. I had charted them alone, walking Ironvale's borders in the dark while the pack slept, because no one else was doing it and someone had to. The maps were detailed enough to be dangerous in the wrong hands.

I was betting they were valuable enough to buy me a seat at a table I had never been offered before.

I got out of the car and walked toward the gates.

A wolf was waiting. Tall, dark-haired, with the kind of stillness that came from years of standing beside someone powerful. He studied me as I approached—not hostile, just thorough. Taking my measure.

"Skylar Pierce," he said. Not a question.

"Yes."

"Marcus. Beta to Prince Caleb." He gestured toward the maps under my arm. "I reviewed your preliminary summary last night. The data on the Silverfang border movements alone is worth the trip. The Prince is waiting in the war council chamber."

Not the receiving hall. Not the guest quarters. The war council chamber.

I understood the distinction. I was not here as a refugee. I was here as an asset.

"Lead the way," I said.

Marcus turned without another word and walked through the gates. I followed.

The Lycan Court was different from any pack house I'd seen. Older. The stone walls carried centuries, and the air smelled like pine and cold water and something else—something that made the hair on the back of my neck rise in a way that had nothing to do with fear. Power. The kind that didn't need to announce itself.

We walked through corridors lit by narrow windows, past wolves who paused to watch me with curious eyes. Word had already spread. The rejected mate of Ironvale's Alpha, arriving at the Lycan Prince's gates at dawn with intelligence maps and no apology. I kept my head up and my steps even. Let them look.

Marcus stopped at a heavy wooden door. "He's inside," he said. Then, quieter: "The Prince doesn't waste people's time. If he asked you to bring the maps to the war council, he intends to use them."

I met his eyes. "Good."

Marcus opened the door.

The war council chamber was all stone and dark wood, with a massive table in the center covered in maps and markers. Tactical. Functional. No ceremony, no decoration. Just the tools of strategy laid out like an offering.

Caleb stood at the far end of the table, his hands flat on a map of the northeast territories. He looked up when I entered.

And the world cracked open.

White jasmine. Winter storm. The scent hit me so hard I stopped mid-step, and inside the empty space where Ember barely existed, something stirred. Not her voice. Not yet. But her head lifted. Slowly. Like an animal waking from a long, cold sleep and catching the scent of something it couldn't yet believe.

Across the room, Caleb went absolutely still.

His eyes found mine. Gold bleeding into the edges. His wolf surfacing.

And then Fenris roared.

The sound shook the stone walls. Rattled the tactical maps off their hooks. Sent a vibration through the floor that I felt in my bones. It was not a challenge. It was not a threat. It was recognition—ancient, certain, and so loud that every wolf in the court must have heard it.

The bond between us snapped into place like a live wire.

I felt it in my chest—not where Bentley's dead mark sat cold on my neck, but deeper. In the space where Ember was barely breathing. Warmth flooded through me, sudden and overwhelming, filling the emptiness with something I hadn't felt in so long I'd forgotten the shape of it.

Connection.

Ember lifted her head fully. Her eyes—dim and grieving since the rejection—opened. Not all the way. Not yet. But enough that I could feel her presence again, faint and fragile and utterly, completely still.

She was staring at something inside me. At the warmth. At the bond.

At Fenris.

Caleb's hands were still flat on the table. His knuckles were white. He was looking at me like he'd been waiting a decade to look at me—like he'd known this moment was coming and had spent every year since we were sixteen preparing for it, and now that it was here, he didn't trust himself to move.

"Skylar," he said.

His voice was steady. Controlled. But I heard the edge in it—the barely-contained weight of something enormous held in check.

I set the maps on the table between us. My hands didn't shake. The bond hummed in my chest, warm and insistent, and I let it sit there without reaching for it. Not yet. Not until I'd said what I came to say.

"Three years of rogue intelligence," I said. "Updated two days ago. Border patterns, supply routes, pack vulnerabilities across the entire northeast. I want a seat at this table."

Caleb's eyes didn't leave mine.

"You'll have it," he said.

The bond pulsed once, warm and certain, and inside me, Ember made a sound I hadn't heard since before the rejection. Not a howl. Not a whimper.

A breath.