Bled By My Alpha Parents Adopted By The Lycan King Chapter 08
Someone’s Daughter
I woke under a canopy of heavy embroidered silk.
Cream. Silver stitching. The Silvermoon crest.
I tried to sit up and a hand pressed gently against my shoulder.
“Easy, pup. You’re safe. Lie still. You’re hurt, you shouldn’t be moving.”
I froze.
Well… I was not actually a pup.
The she-wolf from the ditch was sitting beside me. Cleaned up. Hair combed. A fresh bandage wrapped high on her temple. Her eyes were red like she’d been crying.
She looked at me the way I had spent fifteen years dreaming of being looked at.
“You saved me, didn’t you, sweet thing. I was half awake. I saw you.”
Something in my chest cracked in a way I did not have a name for.
I opened my dry mouth. “It was nothing, my lady. Please don’t trouble yourself.”
Her eyes went redder. “Sweet pup. All those scars on your arms. What kind of pack did that to you.”
A tear slid down her cheek and landed on the back of my hand.
It was warm.
She was crying for me.
“Mother!”
The door burst open.
A tall young Alpha with wind in his hair came through it at a half-run. Behind him, a broader male, older, quieter, with the kind of eyes that made servants stand up straighter.
The Lycan King. And the Lycan Prince.
Which meant… the she-wolf holding my hand was the Lycan Queen herself.
I found out later she had been coming back from the Moon Sanctuary when Rogues jumped her carriage. Her guards were dead. She had crawled off the road to hide.
I had almost walked past her.
The Lycan King inclined his head. His voice was warm but low. “You saved the Queen’s life. This palace is in your debt. Tell me, do you have kin in the capital we can send for?”
I thought of the Ashborne wolves who had bled me for eight years.
I thought of the Luna three halls away who had never once spoken my name.
I shook my head.
The Queen’s hand tightened around mine.
“Then be mine.”
I stared at her.
“I’ve always wanted a daughter, pup. I only ever got this loud thing here.” She flicked a look at the young Prince, who mock-clutched his chest. “Be my daughter. Just say yes.”
Prince Lyle dropped down on one knee beside the bed and grinned at me like we’d known each other since we were pups. “You’d be my little sister!”
I opened my mouth.
I couldn’t say it.
She-wolves like me didn’t get pulled out of ditches by queens.
She-wolves like me didn’t get called daughter.
There had to be a catch. There had to be a reason.
Maybe they had found out about my blood.
Maybe they wanted a Purebred on a leash.
I slid my hand out of the Queen’s.
I dropped my eyes.
“My lady. I’m nothing. I don’t deserve—”
She didn’t let me finish.
“I don’t know what your old pack did to you. I don’t need to know today. Just stay until you’re healed. Let me feed you. Let me put you in something warm. And if you still want to leave, I’ll walk you to the gate myself.”
Her eyes were wet and steady.
I nodded.
Just for a little while, I told myself.
…
In the days that followed, the Lycan King sent for the royal healers to look me over.
The Queen stood in the kitchens watching them brew my broths. She had silks pulled from the royal vaults and she sat with them across her lap every afternoon, humming as she stitched me new gowns. She pulled jewels out of the treasury like they were nothing.
Prince Lyle came home every evening with his arms full of strange little trinkets, and he dumped them onto my bed and told me I had to keep every single one.
“There’s a whole palace of things. Why are you bringing her more?” the Queen would laugh.
“These are special. I picked them out. She’ll love these,” Lyle would insist.
I watched them bicker and something warm rose in my chest.
Something warm, and something… insecure.
I did not want to leave this palace.