Chapter 5: The Masked King

The courtyard emptied in about the time it took me to be afraid.

The Beta took the wolves out through the gate.

The guards went up the stairs.

In the silence I heard the iron door of the keep boom shut.

Then the king and I were alone at the bottom of the steps with the torches.

"Walk with me," he said.

His voice was lower than I'd expected, and rough.

"Where?"

"Inside. You're standing on a broken shoulder."

I followed him up the steps because my legs would not hold me in the courtyard much longer.

The great hall was long and bare, with a black stone chair at the far end and a fire burning in a hearth big enough to stand in.

He did not sit in the chair. He stood in front of the fire with his back to me.

I stayed by the door with the dagger low at my side, my hand sweating on the hilt.

This was the man.

My mother's voice in the dark came back to me, and I felt nothing but the weight of the knife.

"You crossed the stone alone," he said, without turning around.

"Yes."

"With that shoulder."

"Yes."

"Why did you come?" he asked.

"I was the offering."

"You were the offering."

"To serve you," I said. "That's what the law says."

He turned and looked at me through the mask.

His eyes were amber again, but a thread of silver still moved in them, and he was standing very carefully.

"A girl comes to serve," he said, "with a silver dagger, and the blood of a Redmoor wolf drying on it."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Family Sent Me to the Lycan King to Die, So I Walked In Alive from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.