Chapter 1

One

My scream dies in the back of my throat as Rueven jumps off the balcony. His wings move powerfully around me as bitter cold air rushes through my body, freezing the air in my lungs. I cling to him despite every instinct screaming at me to grab my dagger and press it through his heart for his betrayal.

If I wasn’t certain I would plummet to my death, I’d do just that.

Rueven more than betrayed me. He tricked me.

Before he reaches the clouds and the mist engulfs our bodies, I look down at the bloodshed below, and my heart squeezes in my chest. Both Elias and Lazuri are howling from me on the balcony I was taken from. I shouldn’t be able to hear them from this distance, or feel the agony in their howls, but it’s as if I’m right there with them.

As if I’m the one howling for my mate who’s just been stolen from me.

I bury my face into Rueven’s chest and close my eyes, wishing I could close my ears too. Tears slide down my cheeks as I fail to drown out their suffering. Rueven’s grip on me softens a little, and even though I hate him right now, his embrace is welcome.

Time passes quickly in Rueven’s arms. It feels like only minutes pass when he lowers through the clouds and swoops down over a forest covered in freshly fallen rain. His wings brush the glittering treetops as he cuts through them and lands smoothly in the middle of a clearing. The ground trembles when he lands and the leaves rustle around us. But then everything goes quiet and his wings, wrapped protectively around me, pull away as he settles me on the ground beside him. He lifts my chin with surprising tenderness and pulls his lips into a grin.

“We really need to stop meeting like this, Mercy.”

His emerald eyes, glittering in a way they never have before, pull me into him, and my breath hitches, my throat turning dry. For the briefest moment I almost forget about what just happened. As if breaking his spell over me, I swat his hand away.

“You betrayed me!”

He steps around me with a grin that further boils my blood.

“I warned you not to trust a fae,” he murmurs. “You should have listened to me.”

I glare at him walking away as if our conversation is over. He doesn’t even look back to see if I’m following. After several moments of cussing him out and weighing up my options—which, so far, do not swing in my favour—I stomp after him. It’s then that I take in my surroundings of a gorgeous meadow filled with flowers of varying colours, each one of them glowing like kaleidoscopic tealights. I wade through them, following down the path carved out by the fae, until an abandoned cottage appears within sight. The cottage is old, almost attacked by the elements and from the outside, I wonder how it’s even standing. Ivy with sharp thorns cover nearly all of the red brick, apart from two tiny windows with fogged glass. Under the windows are weathered flower baskets, like someone loved decorating this place once.

Rueven waves his hand. The thorns covering the entrance melt away to reveal the wooden, large front door. It opens for Rueven before he reaches it. He enters the cottage once again without a backwards glance. Rage boils within me. I trudge after him and storm inside, refusing to be amazed by the way the lanterns and candles floating from the ceiling and walls magically light themselves. Inside is the opposite to outside. Thick, plush carpets and curtains make the small furniture even more cosy, and everything from the table with two chairs, to the roaring warm fireplace is made for comfort. The walls are littered with art, handmade objects with runes all over them.

Rueven strides through to the kitchen at the back of the cottage. He unlocks the door there and steps outside. I remain fuming in the back doorway with my arms folded and watch him draw pails of water from a well in the middle of a beautiful and well-maintained garden. From a distance, the place had looked derelict, but it’s clear now that it was probably another spell. Possibly some kind of concealment charm to ward off any squatters or thieves. The books alone could fetch a lot of money.

At the well, Rueven fills two large pails and carries them over to a wooden basin tucked underneath the kitchen window. He pulls off his shirt, revealing painful-looking bruises on his back and arms, and uses a sponge to wash himself. In the kitchen window, his reflection shows more bruising on his chest and burn marks from the iron shackles, as well as some kind of tool that must have been used to hurt him. My anger slowly fades at the sight of his many injuries.

Yes, I never should have trusted the fae. But am I not to blame for the way he’s been treated? He was only imprisoned in the first place because he decided on a whim to spare my life. Doesn’t that make me partly responsible?

“Rueven…” I say his name softly, despite the turmoil gathering within me. I need to get back to my guys and help them before it’s too late. Maybe if I can understand Rueven’s intentions with me I can alter them. “Why did you bring me here?”

“It’s the only place you’ll be safe. If you hadn’t warned me of the attack, we’d be dead.” He holds my reflection in the window. “So, consider your debt to me paid.”

The muscles in his back flex as he resumes dragging the sponge over his upper body. He makes a noise as washes himself, almost like a moan. I swallow the saliva pooling on my tongue and cut my gaze back to the back of his head.

“What is this place?” I ask, crossing my arms over my own chest.

“My home. I haven’t been here in years, but the land is still safe. Not even my father can get through the enchantments.”

He drops the sponge in the basin and walks back to the cottage. When I don’t move from the doorway, he pulls his eyebrows together, but I still don’t budge.

“You can’t be serious!” He laughs scathingly, his eyes widened with surprise. “Are you honestly refusing to let me into my own home?”

“Yup,” I say. “Not until you tell me what’s going on, so start from the beginning, Rueven.” I lift my chin and keep my arms crossed over my chest. “What do you want with me, and were you responsible for that attack?”

He runs his hand through his hair with a deep groan. “Fucking wolves. Why did you have to be half wolf, Mercy?”

I wait, tapping my foot, feeling like growling at him wouldn’t be a bad thing. “I want an answer.”

“I’m taking you into the land of the fae. It’s where you belong, and I am more powerful there. I will be able to keep you safe from your father, from everyone.”

“I’m not going with you,” I snap, shaking my head at him.

His eyes harden into cold slits. “Yes. You are.”

“No. I’m not.” I don’t move when he steps towards me. “Go ahead. Pick me up and fly away again. But if you think I’m going to go with you willingly and leave my guys, you don’t know me at all. I won’t leave them to die.”

He looksfrustrated as he stares at me. Did he really believe I’d be delighted at his plan? Kidnap me from my mates, from my new home, and then take me to the fae lands. A world of monsters. “The border is merely two feet behind this cottage. I wouldn’t need to pick you up and fly. I could literally grab your arm and drag you there if I wanted to.” He cocks his head to the side. Stars above, my enemy is handsome. He shouldn’t be allowed to look like this, not when he attacked the pack and stole me. His wild dark hair flicks over his forehead in the wind and right now, they match the stormy depths of his eye colour. “Don’t you want to know what part of you has been lurking there, right in your soul, waiting to come out?” He steps closer and now I want to move back, but holding the doorway is important. It’s important against him. I know if I take a step back and that’s it—he wins. That dominant, controlling, overbearing part of him that makes him Rune, wins if I back down. I never will. I learnt that doing that, even once, being weak, even once, can lose you everything. Kris. With her name firmly in my mind, I snarl at the fae. “I don’t want your protection or anything to do with you! Let me go. I’ll find my own way back to the wolves.”

He laughs, the sound hollow and empty. “Is that all you want to do with your life? Run back to them and never learn about your fae side? You want to play the pretty Omega for them to fuck, breed, and do whatever they want with for the rest of your life?” His features twist in a grimace. “Don’t you want more than that? Don’t you want to be able to fight for yourself?”

He steps so close that we’re a breath away, and flashbacks of the dungeon come back to me. How close he’s been before. I shake my head and try to step back but the boldness of his stare holds me still. I look up into his eyes as Darcia’s words come back to haunt me. I don’t know if she was lying or telling the truth, but I know Rueven is wrong about my guys. They want to love me, cherish me, and I would be so much more than what he is suggesting. My wolf wouldn’t have reacted the way she did when Rueven took me away from them. I almost feel like I can’t breathe as we stare at each other.

“I’ve had enough of this. I want you to tell me the truth.” I pull away, scarcely able to breathe, he”s too close to me. “Did you attack the packs?”

“No.” He drapes his arm over his chest in a vow. “I swear to the gods, I am not the one responsible for the attack. I’ve been done with war for a long time, Verena, ever since I looked into the eyes of a baby held in her dying mother’s arms.”

His answer, honest in every letter, rings through me. I so badly want to believe him. “Who?”

He shakes his head as he turns away from me. He doesn’t get to do that. I slam my hand into his shoulder, trying to yank him back around, but he suddenly grabs my hand and tugs me effortlessly against his chest. He doesn’t hurt me, but it’s clear he’s not letting me go. “Don’t. Do that. Again. No one gets away with that, not even you.”

I frown up at him despite the warning in his voice making me shiver. “Then tell me the truth.”

“Gods above, I didn’t attack them! My father did, and for whatever fucking reason, I went to help your pack.” His lip twitches as his mouth spreads out into a scowl. “Stop treating me like I’m your villain, Mercy. I’m the world’s villain, but not yours. Not unless you want me to be.”

Oh, how he wants me to believe that. My breath catches in my throat at the desperation in his eyes. I know his father is nothing short of evil, but I still can’t get Darcia’s words out of my head. She claimed Rueven was sent to destroy my family before the pack I was in grew too big. Too powerful.

“Why did he attack the pack?” I ask, my voice breathless.

He lets me go and his features soften a bit. “Because he’s king of the Fae and I might be the prince, but he rules absolute. I’m not letting him find out about you. He will ruin everything. Now we’re going to go through to the fae realm, where I’ll take you to a town that I own where I hide my army. I have a castle residence there and a throne. My father leaves me alone, but when word gets to him of how I intervened in the pack war, he will not be happy.” His eyes linger on me for a moment, before flicking away to the sky. “He’ll want to demonstrate his wrath to me by any means necessary. I’ve got to be ready for it.”

“Rune…” The sound of his nickname on my lips draws his attention black to me. “You have to stop him if he’s the one attacking the wolves. Don’t you want to stop him? Don’t you want…” I drift off as a ray of moonlight beams through the meadow, landing between us. “They are innocent.”

“Innocent?” he scoffs, stepping into the moonlight. “You call this fucking innocent?”

I swallow hard, once again taking in the many injuries on his body. The moonlight makes them all the clearer and highlights ones I never noticed before. Bite marks. Shame floods through me again as I turn my head away. This all happened because of me. Because I didn’t wear that stupid red dress.

“Look at what they did to me,” Rueven snarls. “Look at them! Why should I help them? Give me one good reason.” When I don’t answer him fast enough, he snarls, “You were as much of their prisoner as I was. You said so yourself. Why do you want to help them?”

“Because…” Tears slip quickly from my lashes. “Because they”re my mates and I want to be with them!”

Mates. I’ve never said the word out loud before. It feels so right. All these weeks, I’ve fought hard to deny the pull between us, but I can no longer deny the part of me that calls out for them whenever I’m not near them. It’s like my wolf is finally waking up, and she needs them—as infuriating, and as cruel as they are—as much as they need her.

I will never forgive them for how they treated Rueven. It was more than cruel.

It was vicious.

But I can’t just abandon them.

“You have every right to hate them for what they did,” I whisper, “but thousands of innocent people don’t deserve to die because of them. You’re better than that, Rune. You’re better than your father. Please.” I touch his arm gently and look up at him. “Help me.”

For a moment, I think he’s about to finally give in. There’s a softness that flashes in his eyes like it did when he looked at me in the dungeon, as if I meant something to him. Something special. But then he turns and heads back into the trees in the opposite direction. Panic and desperation flares through me, twisting my insides into knots. I run after him, stumbling through all the flowers and weeds while calling out his name. My voice sounds just as desperate as I feel inside.

“Please don’t do this!” The roots twisting over the ground claw at my legs and cut through my skin, drawing blood, but I keep going. I keep running after his shadow darting through the trees. “They need our help. Rune!”

I realise a second too late that I crossed the fae border, and all I can do is scream as agony rips up my spine like it’s cracking me in two.