The Alpha King's Tribute

rel

for the

ways came. Garrick's wife had thrown salt at me once for less than a guttered candle. I stood in that map-hung room with the light dying under my nails and I braced for the King of Ash

idn't st

gers to look at the last of the glow fading from the beds of my nails - and there was no fear in his face at all. There was hung

he said quietly

aid the witch in my blood was rot. That it was why my mother died. Why I was - " I stopped. Why I was worth nothing. I would

er. Then, lower, with something that shook: "What you just did is

s. It went straight through me to the soft places no one had ever bothered to find, and I felt my eyes sting, and I hated i

ng under my own skin. Twenty-two years I'd been told what I was, and not one of those years had a single voice in it saying they lied to you. I could have lived a long time on those three words. T

do. I went loo

t surprise

ent

othing had happened. "You watched the lamps go out and the maps move and the light come out of my hands, and you didn't ask how. You asked what

rately, what to keep from me - I knew the look, I'd worn it myself across a thousand of Ga

s I can't tell y

repeated.

en't only mine to tell. Some of them - " his jaw worked " - would put you

distance, that hook behind my ribs hauling tight, and I leaned into the pain of it on purpose because pain, at least, I understood. "Here is what I know, then, since you won't fill in the rest. I am a thing your kingdom woul

understand how few people in the history of this kingdom have lived long enough to do what you just did in front of anyone? I have spent - " he caught himself, hard, on t

and because the way he'd cut himself off told me the truth

l keep my back to the wall. Same as always." I was proud of how steady

nd undo every wall I'd just rebuilt, and the bond leaned toward him so hard I had to set my feet. But what

s far as

d one look at the Beta's face told me the night was not fin

refully did not look at me. "The hunter. Marcus. He's gone over your head, Kaelen. He's petitioned the f

t." Kaelen's voice

would have. "He's invoked the Rite of Proving on the King's mate. A public test, before the council, for forbidden blood. By

n't ha

id, very low. "Marcus is a blade. Someone pointed him." His eyes went to the door, to the hall below it, to the cousin with the warm reasonable voice who had toasted me an hour befo

y, "you can't protect me. Not from t

nswer. That was

. And thanks to the thing that had risen to meet the King's mouth an hour