The Wolf King

Aurora stops a death match and earns a wolf's attention

Aurora, princess of the Southlands, sits beside her betrothed Lord Sebastian in his Borderlands castle, watching captured wolves fight to the death.

Aurora stops a death match and earns a wolf's attention

Aurora, princess of the Southlands, sits beside her betrothed Lord Sebastian in his Borderlands castle, watching captured wolves fight to the death. She is twenty, red-haired, and trained since childhood to be silent and obedient—a prize her father trades for alliances. When a massive blond alpha is pitted against a terrified boy named Ryan from his own clan, Aurora cannot stay quiet. She leaps to her feet and demands the fight stop, calling it murder. The hall goes silent. Sebastian, furious but performing generosity, grants her request—the boy will be spared as a wedding gift. Privately, he whispers threats about their wedding night, promising to throw her to the wolves afterward. The alpha watches Aurora with dark green eyes that stir something she has spent her whole life suppressing.

A princess disguised as a whore tends to a wounded wolf boy

That night, Aurora steals bandages and willow bark from the apothecary and descends to the underground cells, telling the guards she was sent from the brothel. She finds Ryan slumped and bleeding in the last cage. In the adjacent cell, the alpha—Callum, of the Highfell Clan—watches her through the iron bars. He pops Ryan's dislocated shoulder back into place while Aurora fashions a sling. When she panics at witnessing a graphic sexual encounter in a nearby cell, Callum talks her steady with a commanding voice. Before she leaves, he reveals two things: he plans to escape, and Sebastian will never touch her. She returns to her chambers and lies awake, clutching a silver letter opener. She doesn't report him. She chooses silence.

She strikes a guard and flees the castle with the alpha

Hours before her wedding, three wolves burst into Aurora's bedchamber with violent intent. Callum appears in the doorway and orders them out, then tells her she is coming with him—the siege was planned all along. She fights him. He throws her over his shoulder. As they flee through the castle, she sees dead guards and a screaming maid. A soldier corners them with a silver-bullet musket aimed at Callum's chest. Aurora grabs a torch from the wall and cracks it against the guard's head. It barely staggers him, but Callum snaps his neck in the opening she created. He offers his hand. She takes it—not because she trusts him, but because intelligence gathered among wolves might buy her freedom from Sebastian. Together they bolt into the wild Northlands night.