The rogue beside me was not dead.
He clawed at the frost with both hands, dragging his broken body away from the red eyes in the fog.
"Help me," he sobbed.
"Be quiet," I whispered.
"It is coming."
The chain scraped over stone.
The mist parted.
A wolf stepped into the moonlight, if something that size could still be called a wolf. Dark silver fur covered shoulders nearly level with my head even while he stood on four legs. A rusted iron cuff locked around one rear ankle. The chain behind it had carved trenches into the gorge floor.
His eyes were solid red.
No pupil. No recognition.
Only rage.
I had seen an illustration like him in one of my father's locked military journals. The Silver Rot, scholars called it. A disease of the old Lycan bloodline. It began with fever and violent shifts, then ate memory and judgment until the afflicted became stronger than ordinary wolves and less human by the day.
The last Lycan King had vanished years ago.
Apparently, he had not vanished far enough.
The rogue whimpered.
The beast's head snapped toward him.
"Do not move," I hissed.
Panic won.
The rogue screamed and tried to crawl.
The Lycan crossed the distance in a blur. His jaws closed around the rogue's torso. Bone cracked. One brutal shake silenced him.
I pressed my fist to my mouth.
The wolf dropped what remained of the body and turned toward me.
Blood darkened his muzzle.
I could not run. One shoulder hung uselessly. At least two ribs were broken. My back was slick with blood from the claws that had sent me over the cliff.
The Lycan lowered his head.
A growl shook grit from the rocks.
"I cannot run," I told him, because terror had apparently stripped me of good sense. "So if you are going to kill me, do it quickly."
He lunged.
I lifted my blood-covered right hand in front of my face.
The impact never came.
Hot breath hit my palm.
I opened one eye.
His muzzle hovered inches from me. My palm rested flat against his nose.
The wolf shuddered.
A sound escaped him that did not belong to a monster.
A wounded whine.
The red in his eyes flickered.
Black appeared around the edges, spreading inward until awareness returned in jagged pieces. His breathing turned ragged. The muscles under the silver fur trembled.
"What are you doing?" I whispered.
The beast folded.
Bones shifted with a series of brutal cracks. Fur receded. Claws became hands pressed into the frost.
A man knelt where the wolf had been.
He was enormous even in human form, scarred across one shoulder and down his ribs. The iron cuff remained on his ankle. His dark hair hung wet over his forehead, and his eyes, now black, fixed on my hand.
"You stopped it," he said.
His voice was rough from disuse.
"Stopped what?"
"The rot."
He looked at my face. His attention paused on the black crescent.
I waited for disgust.
None came.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Adrian."
"Adrian what?"
A humorless smile touched his mouth. "You are bleeding to death and interrogating me."
"I prefer information before dying."
He reached for my injured shoulder.
I flinched back. "Do not."
"It is dislocated."
"I noticed."
His gaze sharpened. "If I leave it like that, you may lose use of the arm."
"And if you decide to become a wolf again?"
"Touch me."
I stared at him.
"You calmed the shift once. Do it again if you need to."
I almost laughed. "That is not reassuring."
He moved before I could argue, one hand bracing my upper arm, the other locking around the joint. "Bite down on something."
"On what?"
He tore a strip from the least bloody part of my dress and looped it into a crude sling before I could object. When I tried to shift away, he pointed at the blood soaking my back.
"You can hate me after you stop leaking onto my floor."
"Your floor?"
His gaze swept the gorge. "Everything inside the old seal is crown land. Technically, you trespassed."
"Then file a complaint."
Something almost human touched his expression. "I might, if you survive."
I screamed and struck him hard across the chest with my good hand.
He barely moved.
"You could have warned me."
"You would have refused."
"Correct."
"Then my method was efficient."
I hated him immediately.
I also could not deny that the joint sat where it belonged again.
A distant horn sounded high above the gorge.
Adrian's expression changed.
He stood and looked toward a narrow break in the cliff wall.
"My guard."
"Your guard?"
"They felt the seal break."
The pressure in the valley shifted with his mood. I understood then that the chain was not merely imprisonment. The entire gorge had been built to contain him.
"You are the missing King," I said.
His gaze came back to mine.
"Not missing. Contained."
"By whom?"
"People who preferred a mad King in chains to a sane one on a throne."
That answer carried more history than I could ask about while bleeding into the dirt.
Adrian crouched and slid one arm behind my back, the other beneath my knees.
"No."
"You cannot stand."
"That does not mean you get to carry me."
"You fell off a cliff. Pride can wait."
He lifted me.
My hand caught his bare shoulder on instinct.
The instant our skin met, heat tore through my body.
Not pain.
Recognition.
My pulse struck once, hard enough to make me gasp. His answered against my palm. The pressure in the gorge collapsed into a single line between us, bright and undeniable.
Adrian froze.
His black eyes widened.
"What was that?" I whispered.
His nostrils flared as he drew in my scent.
The red threatened the edges of his irises, but this time it was not madness. It was shock.
Above us, armored figures appeared through the fog.
"Your Majesty!" someone shouted.
Adrian did not look away from me.
"Say it," I demanded. "Whatever you just realized, say it."
His arm tightened around me.
"I know why your blood stopped my curse."
My heart kicked again.
"Why?"
The most feared Lycan on the continent stared at the wolfless outcast Lucas had thrown away.
"Because you are my mate."
