My Mate Gambled me Away to the Lycan King

Ch. my mate gambled me away to the lycan King 12 my mate gambled me away to the lycan King 12

Chapter 12

The next three weeks were war.

Not with claws. With paper.

I walked into my father’s office for the first time in four years and found it exactly how Kane left it. My father’s photos shoved in a drawer. His books gone. Kane’s name on the door.

I took the nameplate off with my bare hands.

I went through every ledger. Kane had been draining the pack treasury for two years. Payments to his friends. A cabin in Aspen. Diamond earrings for Bianca, paid for by pack funds.

I called the elders together and put the proof on the table. The same old men who used to look past me at pack dinners like I was furniture.

Elder Graves, the oldest of them, read every page in silence. Then he stood, crossed the room, and bowed

his head.

“Alpha,” he said.

One by one, the others followed.

I rehired every warrior Kane had pushed out. Men who had served my father for twenty years. When I told old Marcus he could have his post back, the big gray-bearded fighter cried like a child.

Every night, Alaric came to dinner.

He never pushed. He never asked for anything. He just sat at my kitchen table, listened to me talk about budgets and border patrols, and quietly fixed anything in my house that was broken.

One night, I caught him staring at me over his coffee.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.” He smiled. “You’re good at this. Your father would be proud.”

I had to look away so he wouldn’t see me cry.

My official coronation was set for the next full moon.

The whole pack gathered in the clearing behind the pack house, under the same pines where I’d once found a bleeding boy in a silver trap. Torches burned in a circle. Elder Graves stood ready with the Alpha’s crown, a simple ring of silver.

11:28 Wed, Oct 21

< Chapter 12

Alaric stood at the edge of the circle, as guest and witness. When our eyes met, he nodded once.

I’m right here.

I knelt. Elder Graves raised the crown.

And a voice cut through the trees.

“I challenge.”

The entire pack spun around.

Kane walked out of the darkness.

He looked like a different person. Thin. Wild-eyed. Behind him came his Beta, twelve armed warriors, and at least thirty rogues, their eyes glowing yellow in the torchlight.

And at his side, in a black leather jacket, smirking, was Bianca.

“By the oldest law of Silver Creek,” Kane shouted, “any wolf may challenge for the Alpha seat before the

crown is placed. I challenge Lyra Ashford. To the death.”

Gasps rose all around me.

Alaric took one step forward, his eyes flashing gold. The air around him crackled with fury.

“No,” I said.

Everyone turned to look at me.

I rose from my knees and looked straight at the King. “If you fight this for me, they’ll always say I needed a

man to win it.”

His jaw was tight. His fists were shaking. But after a long, terrible moment, he stepped back.

I turned to face Kane.

“I accept.”