He Traded Me to the Most Feared King in the North to Dodge a War and Bed His New Mate — He Never Once Imagined the Butcher Had Demanded Me by Name, or That I Would Come Back to Crush Him

Part 1

Twelve hours before my wedding, the man I was promised to walked into my chambers wearing full armor.

I was standing at the gilded mirror in a midnight-blue gown, turning to greet my betrothed, expecting him to steal a moment before our wedding day.

The smile died on my mouth.

Edmund of House Carrow stood rigid in chain mail that caught the hearth light, his jaw set like winter stone, and behind him waited two of his elite guard with their hands resting on their sword hilts.

“Edmund,” I said.

“Why are you in armor?”

“King Garrick of House Drael has crossed the Bloodwater,” he said.

“The northern pack is marching on our borders.”

My blood ran cold and then, a heartbeat later, hot.

I am a daughter of House Ashford.

We do not faint at the word war.

We answer it.

“Then summon the banners,” I said.

“Fortify the narrow pass at Aldreth.

We have the high ground.

We can bottleneck him.”

“There will be no war.”

His voice had no feeling in it at all.

“I have negotiated a peace.”

For one foolish second I felt relief.

Then I saw the way he would not meet my eyes, and I understood that a proud alpha does not bow to a tyrant without paying a terrible price.

“At what price?”

I whispered.

“King Garrick demanded a tribute.

A bride of noble blood, delivered to his citadel by the next full moon.”

The silence stretched until I could hear my own heart.

“A bride,” I repeated.

“And you agreed.”

“I had to think of the pack, Maren.

Thousands would die.

The Carrow line would end.

Garrick is a monster, but he honors his treaties.”

“And who,” I asked, though I already knew, “is this sacrifice?”

That was when she stepped out of the corridor.

Lady Mirelle Crane, a minor banner-lord’s daughter, draped in silk and glowing with a smug, triumphant light.

She crossed the room and set herself at Edmund’s side, and he reached out and laid his hand on her waist as if he had done it a hundred times.

“I am sorry, Maren,” he said, and his voice steadied the moment he touched her.

“The moon goddess works in mysterious ways.

At the hunting festival three days ago, Mirelle and I realized we are fated mates.

I cannot bind my soul to you when my mate stands before me.”

The betrayal did not land as a single blow.

It landed as a thousand small ones, all at once.

He was not trading me only to save the pack.

He was using a monster’s threat to dispose of an inconvenient betrothed, so he could take his new lover to bed without ever answering to my family.

“You coward,” I breathed, and the grief in me turned white-hot.

I ripped his betrothal pendant from my throat, the chain snapping against my skin, and threw it at his boots.

“You dress it up as a noble sacrifice.

You are handing me to a butcher so you can warm your bed without consequence.”

“Watch your tongue,” Mirelle hissed.

“You are speaking to your alpha.”

“I am speaking to a weakling.”

I stood tall and looked only at Edmund.

“My ancestors bled to build the ground you stand on.

The Ashford name made your power.

And you toss me to the wolves to save your own skin.”

“It is done,” he snapped, his guilt curdling into anger.

“The carriage is in the courtyard.

You leave for the north tonight.”

I turned my back so he would not see the single tear I refused to let fall.

“Get out of my chambers,” I said.

“I will pack my own things.

I need no help from traitors.”

I did not weep in the carriage.

For ten days through the frozen passes I did not weep.

I am Maren of House Ashford, and as the black spires of the enemy’s citadel finally tore through the gray horizon, I made myself one cold promise.

If I was going to burn in that fortress, I would take some of the fire for myself.

They marched me through iron gates, up an endless wind of stone stairs, and through doors of black obsidian into a great hall lit by roaring hearths and hung with the silver wolf of a dynasty built on conquest.

And there, on a throne forged from the melted swords of dead men, sat the most feared king in the north.

“Leave us,” he said, and the guards bowed and shut the doors behind me with a sound like the lid of a tomb.

He rose and came down the steps with the slow, fluid grace of a thing that hunts, and he stopped close enough that I had to tilt my chin up to hold his ice-blue eyes.

“Maren of House Ashford,” he said.

“You do not tremble.

Most southern lords wet themselves where you are standing.”

“I am out of tears and out of patience,” I told him.

“If you mean to kill me to send my old alpha a message, make it quick.”

He laughed, low and dry and entirely sane, and what he said next was the last thing in the world I expected to hear.