Chapter 173

Damon

The wax was already cooling when the runner reached me; it was dark red, pressed with a crest of a wolf with split horns. Asher’s mark.

I cut the seal with a claw and unfolded the single scrap of thick paper. The page contained just a place and an hour, written in Asher’s even hand.

The designated location was a ridge beyond the south woods where the old lightning tree had split the rock and left a bald, blasted clearing.

“He expects you to go alone,” Jackson said behind me.

He didn’t reach for the letter. He watched me instead, the way he had watched me learn to ride as a boy – measuring whether I’d fall and how badly. “Which is precisely why you won’t.”

“I will.” My voice came out cold. “He wants me, not an audience.”

“Then starve him of attention completely and don’t play into this obvious trap,” Jackson snapped. “You’re not some adolescent spoiling for a brawl behind the stables, you’re the King.”

The letter crumpled in my fist. A King, yes. And a man who lives in nothing but grief and rage.

Ronan stepped in then, silent as a shadow. His expression was composed, but his eyes flicked to the crest in my hand and stuck there for a heartbeat too long.

“You shouldn’t go,” he said, even, careful. “Not alone.”

“You’re both being stubborn old hens” I said.

Ronan’s gaze lifted to mine. Something pain-filled moved there and was gone as quickly.

Jackson planted both hands on the table, knuckles whitening over the map of the southern reaches. “He’ll have Rogues in the brush, archers in the rocks, a second exit to cut you off if you come with any kind of support. It’s a funnel.”

“Then I won’t bring support.”

Jackson’s nostrils flared. “You call us stubborn. Listen to yourself.”

Ronan didn’t argue. He stepped closer and took the letter without asking, eyes sliding over the handwriting before handing it back.

“At least wear leathers,” he said. Then softer, he added, “Take the south gate. It’s quieter at this hour.”

Jackson’s head snapped toward him. “What are you—”

“—I’m keeping him alive,” Ronan said, too quickly. He looked at me, not Jackson. “If he’s determined, pretending we can stop him is a waste of everyone’s time. I’m curious what Asher wants.”

“I go alone,” I said again.

Jackson’s mouth thinned into a line that meant he was storing this as another argument for later. “Then make it an ambush of your own,” he said. “You know the ridge better than he does.”

I pocketed the letter and turned, the decision made. Armor would slow me so I tied on a reinforced cloak instead, blades at my back and in my boots, and left the crown sitting on the edge of the table.

The gate guards pretended not to see me. Ronan had arranged for my horse to be saddled, steam rising from his flanks into the cold like breath from a sleeping beast.

Ronan stood with a hand on the bridle, not meeting my eyes until I took the reins.

“You taught me to count to ten when I wanted to tear out throats,” I said, mounting. “Remember?”

“I taught you to calm your rage enough to gain a clear head and win,” he said. He stepped back, and I heard everything he didn’t say. Don’t die. Don’t make me save your ass.

Without another word, I rode straight into the night.

The forest tightened around me the deeper I went, branches knitting over the path to catch at my cloak like jealous fingers.

I crossed the dry creek bed where the water ran only in warmer months, then passed the old logging road, half devoured by saplings. Above, the clouds dragged thin over a coin of moon.

When the trees thinned at last, the lightning tree rose before me, charred trunk split down the middle, its blackened branches hooked toward the sky like a cage torn open.

The clearing spread in a pale oval, ringed by rock and brush. With no cover in sight, it was exactly the trap Jackson had described.

I dismounted and let the reins fall. The horse stamped once and went still, trained to wait.

There was only silence, then, the smallest shift. The hush of bodies holding their breath in the undergrowth to my left and right. Rogues.

I kept my blade sheathed. I wanted Asher to see my hands empty and know I wasn’t afraid to tear him apart with them.

“Cousin.” The voice rang out from the shadow between two boulders, familiar as the scar he gave me when I was ten. Asher stepped into the open with the easy grace of a man arriving late to his own celebration.

He wore no armor. Carried no visible weapons. A King of nothing crowned in the very audacity of it all. I tasted blood and realized I’d bitten the inside of my cheek. Zane lunged against my skin. End him now.

“Let’s skip the pleasantries,” I said, each word a growl. “You asked for me. Here I am and I’m listening.”

Asher smiled, slowly. “Good. I’d hate to repeat myself.”

My claws pricked, half-formed. “Say what you dragged me out here for.”

He tilted his head, studying my face like a jeweler weighing a flawed gem. When he finally spoke, his voice held a mockery of concern.

“She’s alive.”

The clearing contracted around me at those words. For a moment I thought I’d imagined them, a trick of grief and what I wanted to hear.

“Liar,” I rasped, but the word rang hollow even to me.

Asher’s smirk deepened, shadow sliding across his as he dropped the mask. “You think I’d waste my time with bold-faced lies? I could have let you rot in the belief she died screaming in that fire. But I thought you deserved the truth.”

Zane surged forward, claws raking against the cage of my ribs. Alive. Ours. Find her.

“Where is she?” My voice cracked like a whip.

Asher strolled closer, unconcerned by the Rogues shifting in the tree line. Their eyes glimmered faintly, patient hounds waiting on their master’s hand. “That depends. How badly do you want to know?”

I forced my hands to stay open at my sides. If I struck, I’d end his smugness in seconds, but I’d lose the only thing that mattered: Hope that I would see my mate again.

He studied me thoroughly, then tilted his head. “Abandon the throne. Walk away from your father’s seat, your armies, your crown. Do that, and I’ll return her to you myself. Unharmed, even.”

The demand wasn’t entirely unexpected. Asher had always wanted what was mine. My teeth bared in challenge. “You mistake me for a male who bargains.”

“Then you mistake me for a male bluffing.” His voice dropped, grew cold. “You’ve lived your entire life under a lie. You wear the crown of a King whose blood you don’t carry. Your father isn’t your father, cousin. You’re nothing but a bastard and if you won’t yield the throne, I’ll make sure everyone knows it.”

The words gutted me before I could stop them. Heat and ice warred in my chest.

Illegitimate. The truth I’d buried among my grief, dragged into the open. I held still, but the crack had already formed.

He saw it and his smile was a knife twisting. “Ah. There it is. That little flicker of recognition. You knew, didn’t you? Some part of you always suspected.”

Zane snarled, battering at the edges of my control. Rage, grief, terror…all tangled into a single roar inside me.

Asher leaned in just enough that only I could hear the final cut. “And when she left you… she didn’t do it alone. Ronan helped her. Your loyal Beta. The one you trusted most.”

The name detonated in me. Ronan. My shield. My brother-in-arms. My betrayer.

If that was even true. But I couldn’t make my body get that message.

My vision fractured at the edges. I could barely hear over the blood pounding through my skull. Asher stepped back, satisfied. “You see? You’ve already lost more than you think. The rest is just waiting to be taken.”

Then he was gone, slipping back into the trees with his Rogues melting after him, the clearing emptying as quickly as it had filled.

I stood alone beneath the lightning tree, chest heaving, hands curled into fists that shook uncontrollably.

Alive. Lila was alive.

But every word Asher had left me with was poison. My bloodline, my throne, my Beta… all corroded by betrayal.

Zane threw himself against my ribs, howling for everyone’s blood. My throat ached with the urge to answer. But no sound left me.