The Alpha King’s Stolen Daughter Chapter 01

The Alpha King’s Stolen Daughter Chapter 01 — Ember
The bruise over my ribs was three days old.

Milo’s medicine ran out two days ago.

My stepfather’s silver-buckled belt was still lying on the kitchen table, waiting for tonight.

In four months I turn eighteen.

That is the only reason I’m still breathing.

So I sat on the roof of a house that legally belongs to me and counted stars instead of counting reasons to jump.

Then a small voice said my name.

“Em? That’s really high.”

I looked down at my window. A seven-year-old stood there in a gray beanie, so thin the wind could have taken him.

I swung back inside before he could climb after me. “I’m fine, Bug. Why are you awake?”

He shrugged. “Wanted to see if you were sleeping.”

Translation: wanted to see if you were still alive.

“I’m here,” I said. “Go back to bed.”

He went. I stood in the dark until his beanie disappeared down the hall, and then I sat on the mattress on my floor — no bed frame, they sold it — and let myself breathe.

If I’m alive, it’s because of him.

Milo is my half-brother. He was four when they diagnosed him with silver sickness — the wasting disease that eats wolf pups from the inside before their wolf ever wakes. No cure. Not in a nothing pack like Ironclaw. The treatments took his hair. The beanie gives it back to him.

Our mother died when he was one. Her name was Selene. She worked three jobs and bought this little house with her own hands, and she loved me so hard it felt like armor.

Then Garrick moved in.

I was seven. He was sugar for a month. Then he was ice, but only when Mom wasn’t looking. Ice became shouting. Shouting became grounding. Grounding became “discipline,” which is the word he used while his hands did other things. By the time I was nine he’d figured out the trick that made it permanent: silver. Silver-laced buckles, silver-edged blades on my back where the shirt covers. It burns wolves. It scars us.

The problem is I don’t have a wolf.

Seventeen years old, born to two wolves, and nothing has ever moved under my skin. In a pack, that makes you furniture. It makes you the girl everyone looks past when she limps into school with a split lip.

That’s why nobody stopped him.

Mom collapsed in the kitchen when Milo was one. Brain bleed. Gone before the ambulance turned the corner. Garrick vanished for a week and came back with Marla, who informed me she’d been his mate for three years.

He tried to throw me out that same night. Mom’s lawyer showed up instead. She had left the house in my name. She left money for Milo’s treatment. She left the rest to me — released monthly, and locked, all of it locked, until I turn eighteen.

Garrick holds the card. Garrick holds Milo’s medicine.

They’re keeping me alive for four more months and then I’m disposable, and the worst part is Milo knows it. He told me last week he hoped he’d die first so he wouldn’t have to watch.

He’s seven.

I lay back on the mattress and I did the thing I do every night, which is ask my dead mother questions she can’t answer. Why did you never tell me my father’s name? Why did the birth certificate say Ember Lyall Vale when Vale is Garrick’s name and no one on earth is called Lyall? Why, whenever I asked about him, did you go into the bathroom and run the faucet so I couldn’t hear you cry?

Did he leave us? Did he ever want me?

I fell asleep with the answer I always give myself: he didn’t come, so no.

The alarm went at five. My ribs screamed. I stood under the coldest water the shower would give me until the reopened cuts on my back stopped bleeding, then I dressed in one of my two pairs of work pants, gave Milo his morning dose, made him toast, and slipped out before either of them woke up.

I work reception at the Ironclaw Lodge — the only real business this pack has. They hired me at sixteen because I’d taught myself six systems online and I never call in sick. I can’t afford to.

Today was the day. The Ashborne Group owns half this territory, and their heir was flying in to inspect us. My manager picked me to walk him through the property.

“Don’t smile too much,” she said. “Alphas hate teeth.”

I didn’t smile at all.

At nine sharp, a black car came up the drive like it had bought the road.

The man who stepped out was tall, dark-haired, all cut lines and cold money. He looked at me for exactly two seconds.

Then all the color drained out of his face.