Ch. my mate gambled me away to the lycan King 10 my mate gambled me away to the lycan King 10

< Chapter 10 

Chapter 10 

I went completely still. 

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46 

“I was fourteen,” Alaric said, looking up at the moon. “My father sent me to live with a distant uncle near Silver Creek after an assassination attempt. Nobody knew who I was. I was small for my age. Sick. I couldn’t 

shift yet.” 

His voice was steady, but his hand had curled into a fist. 

“The older pups from the next town figured out I was weak. They chased me into the woods every day after school. One day they ran me into an old hunter’s trap. Silver wire. It cut my leg to the bone.” 

My breath caught. 

A memory was cracking open inside me. Pine needles. Blood on the snow. Somebody crying very quietly, 

trying not to be heard. 

“I thought I was going to die out there,” he said. “And then a little girl came crashing through the bushes. Chubby. Pigtails. Rain boots with frogs on them. She was screaming at the top of her lungs and swinging a 

broken branch like a sword.” 

I pressed a hand over my mouth. 

“Three boys twice her size,” he said, and a small smile touched his lips. “She chased every one of them 

off.” 

“I remember,” I whispered. “I remember. Your leg was bleeding so much. I didn’t know how to open the 

trap.” 

“You pried it open with your bare hands. You cut your fingers.” He reached for my hand and turned it over, his thumb running across a thin white scar on my palm that I’d forgotten the reason for. “Then you ran home and came back with a box of princess bandages. You put all of them on me. Every single one.” 

Tears filled my eyes. 

“And then you put your hands on your hips,” he said softly, “and you told me, ‘These are my woods. Nobody hurts anybody in my woods. I’ve got your back now.” 

I laughed through my tears. “I was nine.” 

“I still have the box,” he said. “The empty one. It’s been on my desk for twelve years.” 

The wind moved through the pines. Somewhere far off, a wolf howled at the Blood Moon. 

“When I became King, I went looking for you,” he said. “I found out your father had just died. That you’d 

11:28 Wed, Oct 21 

< Chapter 10 

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been claimed by a mate. I told myself the Moon Goddess had made her choice, and it wasn’t me.” His jaw tightened. “So I stayed away. I watched. I made sure your father’s will was safe. And I waited.” 

“Then Kane put me on the table,” I said. 

46 $ 

“Then Kane put you on the table.” His eyes darkened. “I didn’t care about the land. I would have given him the whole territory to make him stop saying your name like that. I took the bet so no one else could.” 

My heart was beating so hard it hurt. 

And then something strange happened. 

A scent rose in the air between us, warm and dark and impossibly sweet, like cedar and woodsmoke and rain. It wrapped around me and sank straight into my blood. 

Inside me, my wolf went utterly, completely still. 

Then she lifted her head. 

Alaric’s eyes widened. His nostrils flared. His hand tightened on mine, and I felt him tremble. 

He smelled it too. 

The Moon Goddess gives a rare gift to wolves who are cruelly rejected. Not always. Almost never. 

A second chance. 

My wolf pressed against the inside of my chest and whispered one word, clear as a church bell. 

Mate. 

11:28 Wed, Oct 21 

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