Rejected by the Prince, Chosen by the Lycan King

Juliet POV

Fire. It felt like liquid fire was being injected directly into my veins.

The agonizing burn of Silver tearing through flesh is something no werewolf can endure, let alone a frail, sixteen-year-old girl deemed a wolfless disgrace. The original owner of this broken body had already succumbed to the excruciating pain, her soul shattered by the Silver-laced whip.

But I was not her. I was a top-tier trauma surgeon and a covert operative in my past life. I had survived interrogations that would break grown men. As my consciousness violently fused with this battered shell, a flood of pathetic memories assaulted my brain.

A drunken pact made by my father, Alpha Harold, promising his favorite daughter, Charlize, to the crippled and notoriously cruel Prince Bryce. Charlize's tearful refusal. Her running to her secret lover, the arrogant Alpha Heir Braydon, twisting the truth to make me the sacrificial lamb.

I gasped, my lungs screaming as I tasted the metallic tang of my own blood against the freezing stone of the Packhouse courtyard.

*Smack!*

A heavy hand struck my cheek, snapping my head to the side.

"Stop playing dead, you wolfless trash," a male voice snarled.

I forced my heavy eyelids open. Standing over me was Braydon Scott, his handsome face twisted in a mask of disgust. Before I could even brace myself, his expensive leather shoe slammed into my chest, stealing the little breath I had left.

"Braydon, please, don't hit my sister anymore," a sickeningly sweet voice pleaded from behind him.

Charlize. She stepped forward, her cloying rose scent suffocating me. She looked like a fragile porcelain doll, her eyes brimming with fake tears. "She just doesn't understand her duty to the Palmer Pack. She's terrified of Prince Bryce."

I coughed, spitting a glob of dark blood onto the pristine toe of Braydon's shoe. I glared up at my half-sister, my eyes devoid of the fear she expected.

"Shameless bitch," I rasped, my voice sounding like crushed glass.

Charlize gasped, taking a dramatic step back into Braydon's protective embrace.

Before Braydon could retaliate, a sharp, agonizing pressure dug into my scalp. Carmen Gomez, my father's high-ranking mistress who paraded around as the Luna, grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked my head back. The stench of her cheap, overpowering perfume assaulted my nose-a desperate attempt to mask her low-born scent.

"Watch your mouth, you useless Omega," Carmen hissed. She drove the stiletto heel of her shoe directly into the back of my head, grinding it against my skull. "You will take my daughter's place, or I will peel the skin from your bones."

I didn't scream. I just locked my eyes on hers, memorizing the exact angle I would need to slice her throat open later.

Braydon crouched down, his Alpha aura pressing heavily against my weakened body. "Listen to me very carefully, Juliet. You are going to get in that transport tomorrow and serve Prince Bryce. If you refuse, or if you try to run, I will personally see to it that your blind mother, Estelle, is executed."

My heart stuttered. Estelle. The memory of the gentle, blind woman who had shielded this body from the world's cruelty surged forward, becoming my immediate weakness.

"We will tell the Elders she was caught whoring with a filthy Rogue," Braydon whispered, a wicked smirk playing on his lips. "The penalty is death by dismemberment. Your choice."

"Enough," a cold, authoritative voice boomed across the courtyard.

Alpha Harold stepped out from the shadows of the porch. He didn't even look at me with an ounce of paternal pity. He only saw a political tool.

"I, Alpha Harold, command you," he declared, unleashing the full, crushing weight of the Alpha's Command. It forced my face back down against the bloody stones, my muscles locking against my will. "You will be bound and thrown into the transport. You leave for the Royal Pack territory tomorrow."

The sheer force of the command, combined with the lethal toxicity of the Silver still embedded in my shredded back, was too much for this malnourished body. The edges of my vision rapidly darkened.

I let the darkness pull me under, but not before etching their faces into my mind. I was no longer the weak, crying Juliet they knew. I was a surgeon, and I knew exactly how to dissect a life piece by piece.