They All Forgot Me, So the Lycan King Marched for Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The North Fence

The Lycan King's army lines up at the border and demands the girl with gray eyes; Wynn's parents shield her as a stranger.

The whole pack ran for the north fence, and I ran with them.

Nobody told me to stay behind, because nobody knew I belonged in the house.

Dad reached the gate first, with Ellis and the twins at his shoulders.

Lester stayed close behind Dad, and I stayed close behind Lester.

On the other side of the chain link, a hundred wolves in black coats stood in the frost.

They didn't shout or wave anything.

They stood in rows, still and silent, and the morning breath came off them in clouds.

Behind them, a line of trucks sat with their engines off, and a gray banner hung from the lead one.

The banner showed a black wolf with a crown of thorns.

My stomach turned over.

"The Lycan King's colors," Ellis said quietly. "That's the Marchmont banner."

"I can see that," Dad said.

I had seen that banner in my history books, never at my own fence.

A tall man walked out of the front rank and stopped ten feet from the gate.

He wore a worn black coat, and his dark hair was going gray at the sides.

His face looked tired in a way sleep wouldn't fix.

I knew his voice before he spoke.

"Alpha Kinross," he said. "I am Aldric Marchmont."

Dad didn't bow, and he didn't lower his eyes.

"I know who you are, my King," Dad said. "And I know I wasn't told you were coming."

"No," the King agreed. "I didn't tell anyone."

He looked along the line of our people, one face at a time.

"I am here for a girl," he said. "Sixteen years old. Gray eyes."

A mutter went through the crowd.

I felt about a hundred heads turn, and then turn away again, because nobody had a girl like that to point at.

I stood very still.

"I woke at dawn," the King went on, "and a voice was inside my head. It said her name. It came from behind this fence."

Dad's jaw tightened.

"We have no girl here who fits that," he said.

I almost laughed, because my father was looking straight at my eyes when he said it.

I saw him notice that he was doing it, and frown, and look away.

Lester stepped up beside Dad and spoke softly, so only the front of the crowd could hear.

"My King, we are a small pack," he said. "Surely if your people searched every house, you'd be satisfied. But I would never ask you to trouble yourself."

His voice was so friendly that it took me a second to hear what he was doing.

He was talking the King out of searching.

I didn't understand why, and I put it away for later.

"I'll trouble myself," the King said.

"No," Dad said.

He said it flat and loud, so everyone behind him could hear.

"No army walks through my homes. Not even yours, my King."

The black-coated wolves shifted all at once.

Dad had just told the Lycan King no, in front of the whole pack.

"Glenn," Mom whispered from somewhere behind me.

She had followed us out in her cardigan with her hands pressed together.

Her eyes found me in the crowd, and she took a step toward me.

"Sweetheart, you shouldn't be out here," she said. "Come back to the house with me."

She put her arm around my shoulders as she said it, the way she always did.

My throat closed up, because she was holding me like her daughter and talking to me like a stranger.

"Mom," I said, very small. "I'm fine."

"Go on, now," she said gently, and steered me back toward the house.

I looked over my shoulder.

I couldn't help it.

Across the fence, the King's eyes had left my father's face.

They were moving along the crowd, row by row, hunting.

I felt him in my head before I saw him, a quiet pull at the back of my head.

Wynn, he said, in my link. Wynn, show me.

I shouldn't have.

I really shouldn't have, with Lester standing between us and watching every face.

But I turned around and stopped, with Mom's arm still around me, and I looked at him.

Aldric Marchmont's gray eyes found mine over the heads of the whole pack.

His face changed.

Something that had been held tight in it for a very long time let go.

"There you are," he said out loud, and every wolf in Ironwood turned to see who he meant.

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