OWNED BY THE TYRANT LYCAN KING

Adeline's POV

"Addie…" Teagan whispered in a trembling voice. Her fingers dug into my arm so hard I knew there would be bruises later.

If there was a later.

"I'm scared." Her voice cracked. "I'm really scared, Addie. What is he going to do to us?"

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

How was I supposed to tell her everything would be okay when I didn't believe it myself? How could I promise her safety when I couldn't even protect myself?

Teagan was only eighteen.

Young enough to believe we'd somehow walk away from this unscathed. Young enough to think someone would come for us before it was too late. Young enough to believe stories like ours were supposed to have happy endings.

I wanted her to keep believing that for a little while longer.

Because once that hope was gone, there would be nothing left but fear.

"Say something, Adeline! Please…" Her grip on my arm tightened painfully. "Tell me we’re going home. Tell me this is some kind of mistake...please, just say something!"

The desperation in her voice nearly broke me.

I glanced at Sam, silently begging her to step in and save me from having to answer.

She was sitting beside me on the cold floor with her arms wrapped tightly around herself, as if she was holding the pieces of herself together.

Out of the three of us, Sam was always the strongest. The loudest. The one who never backed down when life got ugly. She had a way of finding the right words even when everything was falling apart around us.

If anyone could convince Teagan that everything would be okay, it was her.

"Sam?" I called out softly.

She didn’t even look at me.

My gaze followed hers to the peeling wallpaper across the room. She was staring straight through it, like she wasn’t really here. When I saw the glint of tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, my stomach twisted into a painful knot.

Because Sam never cried.

She didn't do tears. Ever.

So watching her break like this felt like watching the sky collapse. If the strongest person I knew was this terrified, then the rest of us weren't just in trouble.

We were already dead.

"I heard that he releases his prisoners into the woods and has the alphas hunt them."

The voice was so unexpected that it took me a second to realize who had spoken.

I turned toward Mirabel.

For a moment, I genuinely thought I'd heard wrong. Mirabel never talked to us. Not unless she absolutely had to.

Back at the pack house, she walked past the three of us like we were invisible. Like acknowledging our existence was beneath her. Most days, I wasn't even sure she knew our names.

Yet here she was speaking to us.

And judging by the hollow look in her eyes, she believed every word she was saying.

"If you’re caught," she continued, staring straight ahead, "then the alpha is at liberty to do whatever he wants to you. However he wants. For as long as he wants."

Teagan made a small, choked sound and her grip on my arm tightened.

"Mirabel," I hissed, "stop."

"Why?" she shot back immediately. "She asked. I'm just answering the question nobody else has the guts to answer."

"Don't scare her," I said, frowning. "Those are just stories people tell to make everyone afraid of the Lycan King. They're rumors. Nothing more."

She let out a short, humorless laugh.

"You're kidding, right? Take a look around, Adeline."

She gestured at the room. "Do you think they dragged us across half the kingdom, stripped us, made us shower, and shoved us into these pathetic little nightgowns because there's a welcoming banquet waiting for us on the other side of those doors? Use your brain for once. We're here for the Hunt."

Her words settled heavily in my chest.

Because she was right.

And deep down, I knew it.

Everyone had heard the stories about the Lycan King.

It was rumored that whenever he conquered a pack, the defeated alpha was forced to offer tribute. The tribute wasn't gold, land, livestock, or anything else a king would normally demand.

It was people.

The fallen alpha had to surrender members of their own pack to the King's territory. The ones chosen were always the same: the weak, the forgotten, the unwanted. Omegas with no influence. Orphans with no one to defend them. Anyone whose life could be traded for the survival of everyone else.

And the terrifying part was that no one ever refused.

The stories claimed that any alpha foolish enough to deny the King's demands was slaughtered alongside their entire pack. Villages were burned to the ground. Bloodlines were erased. Entire territories vanished from maps as if they had never existed at all. Whether those stories were true or not, they served their purpose. Every defeated alpha eventually handed over the tribute.

What unsettled me most, however, was one detail that appeared in every version of the story. The Lycan King only ever demanded women. No one knew why. No one knew what happened to them once they crossed into his territory. Because not a single woman who had been taken as tribute had ever returned to tell the tale.

Some folks swore he locked the women in underground cells and forced them to bear pups for his endless army. Others claimed they spent their short lives scrubbing floors and breaking their backs under the whip until they dropped dead from exhaustion. But the story that truly made my blood run cold was the one Mirabel had just said.

The Hunt.

They said he released the prisoners into the woods surrounding his fortress and let his alphas chase them for sport. Once you were caught… you belonged to whoever dragged you down.

Before, those stories had been just that—stories. Horrible whispers exchanged between frightened pack members after dark. Tales that sounded too monstrous to be true.

But sitting here now, I wasn't so sure.

My eyes drifted around the hall, taking everything in for what felt like the first time.

Hundreds of young women filled the room, packed shoulder to shoulder across the cold stone floor. Every single one of us wore the same thin white nightgown.

We all looked exactly the same.

"What is going to happen to us, then?" Teagan sobbed.

"Only the Moon Goddess knows that," Mirabel muttered under her breath. "I hope she's feeling generous tonight."

I almost laughed.

Fuck the Moon Goddess.

She hadn't done anything for me before, so why would she start now?

If anything, she was the reason I was sitting here in the first place.

She was the one who had cursed me from birth with a sickness that left my body too weak to ever shift. While everyone else heard the voice of their wolf and celebrated their first transformation, I remained trapped inside a body that refused to cooperate.

Being wolfless meant being weak. And being weak meant being a burden.

In our world, weakness wasn't pitied. It was tolerated at best and discarded at worst.

I had spent my entire life watching the disappointment in people's eyes whenever they looked at me. The sympathy. The judgment. The unspoken question of why someone as useless as me had been allowed to remain in the pack at all.

So when our alpha chose me as tribute, I couldn't even bring myself to hate him for it.

At least he was honest.

Honest enough to admit what everyone else had been thinking for years.

That my life was useless.

That I was useless.

A wolfless girl with a sick body and no future wasn't worth protecting when there were stronger people to save.

So no, I wasn't placing my faith in the Moon Goddess. She'd had twenty three years to show me mercy and had failed every single time.

She could keep her blessings.

And she could choke on her generosity.

The soldiers lining the walls suddenly snapped to attention. One of them, a massive man with a scar on his lip, walked toward our section.

"Everyone on your knees!" he roared. "Heads down and eyes on the floor. If I see a single one of you look up, I’ll rip your guts out and feed them to the dogs!"

A shiver ran down my spine.

Well.

That didn't sound promising.

The sound of bodies hitting the floor filled the room, then disappeared just as fast.

I kept my eyes glued to the dirty floor between my knees and took a shaky breath. This was it. The moment we’d all been dreading since we were dragged here.

The Lycan King was coming.

Or his alphas.

Or maybe the whole damn hunting party.

Either way, somebody was about to decide our fate.