Thrown Away by the Alpha, Claimed by His King

The royal physician examined me at dawn.

Silas was old enough that his hair had gone almost white, but his hands were steady as he passed a clear diagnostic crystal over my sternum.

The crystal did not glow.

It darkened.

Cassian stood across the room with his arms folded.

"Again," he said.

Silas repeated the test.

The same thing happened.

"Her core is active," the physician said carefully. "It simply does not radiate outward."

"Meaning?" I asked.

Silas turned the crystal between his fingers. "Most wolves project. Scent, rank, instinct, dominance. You appear to do the opposite. You draw energy inward."

Cassian's gaze sharpened.

"A Scent Anchor," he said.

Silas looked at him. "A theoretical one. The old medical records mention null-signature wolves who could stabilize unstable Alphas, but the line was believed extinct."

I laughed once. "So the temple was wrong."

"The temple may have been fooled," Silas replied. "A null signature would be easy to misclassify if someone tampered with the awakening basin."

Vanessa's face flashed through my mind.

I remembered the priest refusing to show me the blood vial after my test. I remembered silver coins changing hands behind the curtain.

At the time, I had been too humiliated to question it.

"Can you prove it?" I asked.

"Not yet."

Cassian pushed away from the wall.

"Leave us."

Silas hesitated. "Your Majesty, I would prefer not to provoke your wolf while she is injured."

"Neither would I," I said.

Cassian looked at me.

The previous night he had given me a room with a lock on the inside, dry clothes, food, and a guard stationed outside with orders not to enter without permission. It was not freedom, but it was not the cage I expected after his first reaction in the ravine.

"You said one night," he reminded me. "You can leave at noon with an escort if that is still what you want."

Silas blinked.

Apparently the High Alpha King was not known for offering choices.

"And if I stay?" I asked.

"Then we find out what you are."

"Not what I am. What I can do."

Something like approval moved through his face.

"Fair distinction."

Silas packed his instruments and left.

Cassian waited until the door shut.

"Tell me about Ryan's trials."

I sat on the edge of the examination table. "Every time he pushed past his limit, I felt the backlash before he did. Fever. Bone pain. Alpha venom burning through the nerves. If I touched him, the symptoms left his body and settled in mine."

"And he allowed that?"

"He told himself I was calming him."

"You never told him the truth?"

"I tried. He preferred the version where his strength was natural."

Cassian's jaw tightened.

"That explains why you absorbed my aura in the ravine," he said. "You have been training without knowing it."

"If you call nearly dying several times training."

"I call survival a skill."

He moved toward the open space near the hearth.

"I want to test the upper limit."

I looked at him. "Controlled."

"Controlled."

"If I say stop, you stop."

His expression changed at the word.

"Yes."

I stepped off the table.

Cassian lifted one hand. "Ready?"

I nodded.

His aura expanded.

At first it felt like pressure before a storm. The curtains moved though the windows were closed. The fire bent low in the hearth.

I opened the strange hollow in my chest.

The pressure entered.

Heat spread along my ribs.

Cassian watched every breath I took.

"More?"

"More."

The second wave struck harder.

My knees flexed but did not buckle.

I pulled it in.

The room quieted.

Cassian's eyes shifted from silver to gold and back again.

"You are taking the madness with it," he said.

"I can feel it."

It was different from raw dominance. His bloodline curse moved inside the energy like static in a radio signal: sharp, violent, chaotic.

I separated it instinctively.

The chaos dissolved.

The power remained.

"Aria?"

"I'm fine."

"Your hands are glowing."

I looked down.

A faint silver light moved beneath my skin.

The force I had absorbed wanted somewhere to go.

"Cassian."

"Release it."

"At what?"

"Me."

"That seems unwise."

"Do it."

I pushed.

The stored aura left me in a clean, focused burst.

Cassian took one involuntary step back.

A crack split the stone tile beneath his boot.

We both stared at it.

He laughed.

The sound startled me more than the power had.

"Again," he said.

"No."

"Aria—"

"You promised controlled. I am tired."

He stopped immediately.

That mattered.

Ryan had never stopped when I said enough. He had always needed one more trial, one more border meeting, one more sacrifice.

Cassian crossed to a side table and poured water into a glass.

He handed it to me.

"You can still leave at noon."

I drank half before answering.

"If I stay, I am not your prisoner."

"Agreed."

"I am not your property."

His mouth tightened, as if the condition challenged an instinct he did not like admitting he had.

"Agreed."

"And you do not use my ability without asking."

This time he answered at once.

"Agreed."

I set the glass down.

"Then I will stay for a month."

Cassian held my gaze.

"A month."

He crossed to the writing desk and pulled open a drawer. Instead of another order, he placed a plain brass key on the table.

"Your room," he said. "The lock works from the inside. The guards have instructions to knock. If you decide to leave before the month is over, give that key to the gate captain and he will provide an escort to any neutral town you name."

I stared at the key. Ryan had taken choices from me so gradually that I had stopped noticing each one disappear. A dress selected by the elders. A seat moved farther from the council table. A bedroom door that never quite felt like mine. The little piece of brass should not have mattered. It did.

"You expect me to trust this?"

"No," Cassian said. "I expect you to test it."

I picked up the key. "And if I discover the gate captain was given different instructions?"

"Then Silas will have the unpleasant task of explaining why his king was found unconscious after you returned my own aura through my skull."

I laughed before I could stop myself.

Cassian looked almost pleased.

He extended his hand.

I took it.

The moment our palms touched, his aura quieted without effort.

Silas had called me a Scent Anchor.

For the first time in my life, the thing everyone had called emptiness had a name that sounded like power.