My Family Sent Me to the Lycan King to Die, So I Walked In Alive novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Ledger
Saskia puts her own name over her adopted sister's in the Lycan King's offering ledger and learns her father never asked for it to be her.
The three names went up on the hall door at dusk, and the whole pack came to read them.
Cecily Fenn was the second one.
Every year our pack owed the Lycan King one grown she-wolf.
The Alpha chose three names, and the Beta drew one of them out of a bowl at dawn.
Nobody had ever put Cecily's name in the bowl before.
I stood at the back of the crowd with a tray of bread I was supposed to be carrying to the kitchen.
My father stood at the front with his arms crossed over his chest.
My brother Jonas stood beside him with one hand on Cecily's shoulder, and she was crying so quietly that only the people close to her could tell.
The pack was not quiet at all.
"Not Cecily," an old woman said. "Anyone but her."
"She's too soft for that road," said a man near me.
Then someone farther up said, "Send the Alpha's own girl. Saskia's got a knife and no mate."
People laughed, and turned to look for me.
Jonas answered before I could.
"Saskia could survive it," he said. "Cecily can't."
He said it kindly, and he meant it as praise.
I waited for my father to say something.
He turned his head, found the Beta, and spoke low, but I stood close enough to hear. "Cecily has cried enough for one night. If someone steps forward before the draw, I'll be glad of it."
"The draw is the draw, Alpha," the Beta said.
"Then let it be asked once more, gently."
My father did not look at me once.
I set the bread on the nearest bench and went out the side door.
Cecily found me twenty minutes later in the pantry, where I always went to be angry.
She had a cup of tea in both hands and her eyes were swollen.
"You skip supper when you're upset," she said. "So I made you this."
I took it. Her fingers were warm and perfectly steady, even though her face was wet.
"I'm so scared, Saskia."
"I know."
"If it's me, I'll go quietly. I just want you to know I'm sorry for everything." She wiped her cheek on her cardigan sleeve. "The escort is Father's best wolves, and they always come home safe. Whoever goes will be looked after."
She hugged me, tight and long, and I let her.
The tea was too bitter, so I left it on the shelf.
I stayed in the pantry after she left, listening to the pack still arguing in the hall.
Nobody in that hall had told Jonas he was wrong, and neither had I.
So I picked up my mother's dagger from the top shelf where I kept it, slid it into my boot, and walked to the Beta's office.
He was alone at his desk with the ledger open in front of him.
The ledger was a big book with a green cover, where the name of every girl we had ever sent was written in ink.
"I want my name on it instead of hers," I said.
The Beta set down his pen and stared at me.
"Miss Saskia, are you sure?" he asked. "Not one of those girls has ever sent word back."
"I know."
"Four of my wolves walk the girl to the border stone. By custom they go no further, and they're home in nine days." He leaned forward. "After the stone she goes on alone for five days, and then there is the king."
"I know what's there."
"Do you know what they say about him?"
I did.
He was more than a hundred years old and nobody had ever seen his face.
He had burned whole packs to the ground when their Alphas refused him.
One of them had been Ashfen, my mother's pack, with her sisters and her cousins and every child in it.
My mother had made me promise, in the last week of her life, and I had kept the promise every day for nine years.
"Yes," I said.
"Then why?"
I did not tell him. I took the pen out of his hand.
I crossed out Cecily Fenn and wrote Saskia Kitteridge over it in my own handwriting.
I was not going to that keep to die.
I was going to kill him.
The Beta blotted the page and shut the book slowly.
"Your father said he'd be glad of a volunteer," he said. "He never said it couldn't be you."
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