Rejected at Seventeen, Crowned by the Lycan King Chapter 11

Rejected at Seventeen, Crowned by the Lycan King Chapter 11 – Seven Wolves at My Gate

They came to the Ravenguard gate at 4 p.m.

I watched from a fourth-floor window, because apparently I’m still enough of a coward to want a wall between me and my own blood.

Two SUVS. My father in a suit he’d clearly slept in, and four of my brothers

Asher, Fletcher, Landon, Colton. Declan

and Hudson were in a hospital forty miles east with a collapsed lung and a shattered femur between them.

My father hadn’t shaved. Marcus Hale has shaved every day since 1989.

“Commander,” Fiona said behind me. “You don’t have to see them. I’ll tell them you’re deployed.”

“Go down,” Nyx said. “Not for them. For your mother.”

I went down.

They stood in the courtyard with their hands empty and their spines straight, the way our pack trains you to stand when you’re being judged.

Asher saw me first.

I watched my oldest brother – thirty-one, six-four, the wolf who taught me to ride a bike – look straight at my face and fail to recognize me for a full second, because of the hair, and the uniform, and the eight inches of distance in my

eyes.

Then he did recognize me.

And Asher Hale made a sound I’ll hear on my deathbed and went down on one knee in the gravel.

“Get up,” I said.

“Wren-”

“Get up.” My voice came out like an ice pick. “You don’t kneel in this courtyard. It belongs to the Crown, not to you.”

He got up.

My father hadn’t moved. He was looking at the crown on my collar. The bar on my sleeve.

“You’re a Ravenguard Commander.”

“Yes.”

“You’re eighteen years old.”

When-

“Do not” I said, ‘Say my name yet.”

You could hear the flags moving.

“Thirteen months,” I said. “I lived in your boathouse for eight of them. I ate breakfast alone at your table two hundred

times. I asked my mother for one afternoon, twelve separate times. On the night of the alliance dinner you toasted

your children and you named six.”

Fletcher made a small, broken noise.

“I pulled my own file out of your archive. Do you know what the last entry says?” I looked at my father. “W. turned seventeen today. Rejected by Drexel heir. No further action. That’s the whole record of my existence, in your

handwriting, in your house.”

“I know what it says,” my father said. His voice was sanded down to a rasp.

“The King told me why.”

“Then you know=”

“I know you had a reason. I know it was a good reason. And I need you to understand it doesn’t undo a single one of

those three hundred and sixty-five days, because I lived them not knowing. I lived them believing I was worth so little that seven wolves who share my blood could look through me like glass.”

I let that sit.

“You didn’t protect me,” I said. “You protected the secret. And you decided a scared girl was an acceptable loss.”

My father’s face broke apart.

Marcus Hale, who has stared down councils and hurricanes, stood in a courtyard and cried in front of his sons.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what I did.”

Something old and locked in my chest twisted at the sound. I hated it. I hated that after everything, part of me was

still eleven years old, sitting at a small desk in his office, waiting to be looked at.

“Where’s Mom.”

Asher stepped forward with a phone. “They sent this ninety minutes ago.”

A video. My mother, on a chair, in a room with no windows. Hair down. A cut on her cheekbone.

And behind her, a man in his sixties with silver hair and a signet ring. Cyrus Sablewood, Alpha of the pack that killed

Seraphine Hale.

“Marcus. Old friend. I’ve been patient a very long time.”

“Your wife tells me you have no daughter. Your archive says the same. Your wolves say the same. That’s very good

work – I nearly believed it.”

“But girls talk, Marcus. Especially girls you throw away.” He smiled. “I have it on excellent authority that a Wren Hale

posted the highest intake scores in Ravenguard history, and ended a two-year border war in ninety-four minutes by

asking two questions.”

“Two questions, Marcus. From a stranger. In a field of ninety armed wolves.”

“You know what she is. So do I.”

“You have until midnight to hand her to me, or I’ll send you Elowen in pieces and take the girl anyway.”

The video ended.

My whole unit had come down behind me. Nobody spoke.

“Wren,” my father said. “You are not going to that meet. I came here to tell you we’re handling it. I came here to make

sure you were behind these walls.”

I laughed. God help me, I actually laughed.

“You still don’t get it,” I said. “You spent a year hiding a weapon. You should have spent it training one.”

I turned to my Captains.

“Fiona, Beck – vehicles. Enzo, drone package. Talia, every property Sablewood owns within four hours of that coast

road. Filter for no windows, no cell signal.”

“Yes, Commander.”

“Vance.” I didn’t have to look. He was already there. “I need six of yours.”

“You’ve got twelve and me.”

I turned back to my father and my brothers, standing there with nothing left to give.

“Get in the car,” I said. “You’re not in charge. You’re not consulted. You’ll do exactly what I tell you or you’ll sit in a van

and listen.”

“Wren,” Asher whispered. “Why are you helping us?”

“I’m not,” I said. “I’m helping her.”