Wolfless Omega, Claimed by Prince Lycan King novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Closet
At her sister's mating to her ex, Hesper watches the Lycan King's closet open on live TV and sees her own name circled in a heart; her father strikes her from the line, she renounces the pack in front of the hall, and the King walks in to claim her.
The Lycan King's interview came on during my sister's mating ceremony, right after the vows.
Somebody had wheeled the big screen in from the rec room so the whole Moreland pack could watch.
Every pack in North America was watching.
I stood at the back of the hall with a cake knife in my hand.
I had baked the cake myself. Four tiers, lemon and white chocolate, because Lyla only liked white.
My father ordered it the same week my fiance broke our engagement to mate her.
On the screen, a host in a red dress was laughing in a dressing room at the Lycan Court.
"Alpha Redmayne, you're the most powerful Alpha in North America, and you can't find your own jacket?"
The King didn't answer.
He stood at the window with a phone at his ear, his back to the camera.
The host pulled open a tall closet door.
"Is it in here?"
The camera followed her in.
Dark suits. Pressed white shirts.
At the end of the rail hung an old academy shirt on a wooden hanger.
It was covered in faded black signatures.
I knew that shirt.
I had one just like it, folded at the bottom of a drawer I never opened.
The camera pushed in.
One name, low on the left side, had been circled in careful ink.
The circle was a heart.
The host leaned close and read it out.
"Hesper Moreland."
My name.
The King turned from the window and saw the open door.
The feed cut back to the studio.
The hall went so quiet I heard the ice settle in the punch bowl.
Two hundred wolves turned around to look at me.
Lyla laughed first.
She stood under the arch of white roses in her mating dress, holding my ex's hand.
"Oh my God. Hesper the wolfless?"
The hall laughed with her.
"He must have circled it so he'd remember who never to invite," she said.
My ex grinned at the floor.
For seven years he'd made me wait for a wedding.
A Moreland man doesn't marry a woman who can't shift, he said. Not until I could.
I never could.
Five weeks ago he stopped waiting and asked for Lyla.
My father stood up from the front row.
Halvard Moreland, Alpha of the valley, broad and gray-bearded, his gold pack ring on his fist.
He didn't look at the screen.
He looked at me.
"Since everyone's looking at her anyway," he said, "let's settle it tonight."
He spread his hands to the hall.
"My elder daughter is thirty. No wolf. No mate. No pups coming."
Somebody near the front coughed into a napkin.
"A dead branch doesn't stay on the tree. As of tonight, Hesper is struck from the Moreland line."
There was a murmur. Not a shocked one.
A relieved one.
"She'll go with her sister to the new house," my father said. "Lyla will need an omega to keep it."
Lyla squeezed my ex's arm and smiled at me.
"You can start by cutting the cake, Hes. Small slices. You know how you get."
A few people laughed.
My ex laughed too.
I looked down at the knife in my hand.
Then I set it down on the cake table, very gently, beside the top tier.
I walked up the aisle.
The rose petals Lyla had thrown were still on the floor, and I stepped on every one.
My father watched me come with his chin up, waiting for me to cry.
I had cried in this hall at nine, when he moved Lyla and her mother in eleven months after my own mother's funeral.
Lyla was six. Nobody had ever told me she existed.
I had cried at twenty-two, when I came home from the Academy with a fever, a scar over my heart and no wolf.
I wasn't going to do it at thirty.
I reached under my collar and pulled out the silver pendant every Moreland wolf wears.
The pack crest. A pine and a crescent moon.
I lifted the chain over my head.
"Hesper," my father said, low. "Put that back on."
I held it up so the back row could see.
"I, Hesper Moreland, renounce the Moreland pack," I said. "Its Alpha. Its land. Its name."
Lyla's mouth fell open.
"You can't do that. You'll be a rogue."
"I've been a rogue in this hall for eight years," I said. "I just didn't have the paperwork."
My father's face went dark red above the beard.
"A rogue omega with no wolf won't last a winter out there."
"Then you won't have to feed me through one."
I dropped the pendant into the punch bowl.
It sank through the ice and lay on the bottom, shining.
Nobody laughed now.
I turned around and walked back down the aisle toward the doors.
Behind me, Lyla hissed, "She's doing this for attention. Because of a stupid shirt."
I put both hands on the big doors and pushed.
They swung open by themselves before I touched them.
Cold mountain air rolled into the hall.
Headlights blazed across the gravel lot. Three black cars, engines running.
A man stood in the doorway.
Tall. Dark suit, collar open, wavy light brown hair wet with the first snow.
I had seen him an hour ago, on the screen, with his back to the camera.
I had seen him eight years ago, on the Academy steps, holding out a pen.
Every wolf in the hall felt him at the same moment.
Chairs scraped. Glasses tipped.
Two hundred people went down on their knees, my father among them, their heads bowed.
Their wolves couldn't help it.
Mine had never come, so I was the only one still standing.
Evander Redmayne, the Lycan King, looked down at me.
His gray eyes flickered, once, to pale gold.
Then he lifted his head and spoke over me, to the whole kneeling hall.
"I've come for what's mine."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend