Chapter 3

3

I don't know how I lost consciousness.

All I know is that when I woke up, I was lying on a massive wooden bed.

I was covered with a black wolf pelt.

My wounds had been treated and covered with a dark green herbal paste.

A man sat in a chair by the bed.

He looked to be about twenty-eight or twenty-nine.

He had dark hair, tan skin, and features that looked like they were carved with a knife.

His eyes were the most striking part.

Even in human form, his pupils were ringed with a faint golden glow.

“You’re awake?”

His voice was deep and slightly raspy, like the low notes of a cello.

“You...”

I tried to sit up, but the movement pulled at my wounds, and I hissed in pain.

“Don't move,” he said, placing a bowl of soup on the nightstand. “Drink.”

I looked at the soup. It smelled of herbs and some kind of unknown meat.

“Who are you?”

“They call me Malakai.”

My heart skipped a beat.

Malakai. I had heard that name before.

The Rogue King.

The man who had killed three Alphas and slaughtered half of the northern packs.

He was a legend in bedtime stories.

The elders would lower their voices when mentioning him, calling him a killer cursed by the Moon Mother.

They said anyone who went near him would die.

“Then why didn't you kill me?”

He looked at me.

It was a strange look.

He wasn't looking at me like I was prey, nor was he looking at me like I was trash.

“Because you have the Golden Bloodline.”

“What?”

“The Golden Bloodline, lost for three hundred years.”

He stood up and walked to the bedside.

His shadow loomed over me, drowning me in darkness.

“The people of the Moon Shadow Pack are blind fools.

They raised you like a waste for eighteen years.

Not a single one of them realized what color the blood in your veins truly is.”

He leaned down.

His hand pressed against my chest, in the same spot as before in the forest.

“I can see it. It’s gold. Like liquid sunlight.”

His palm was scalding hot.

Even through the bandages, I could feel that heat.

“There are fewer than three wolves in this world who can see the Golden Bloodline.”

He straightened up, the light in his golden eyes flashing for a moment.

“I am one of them.”

I stared at the ceiling, my mind a complete blank.

“So... you’re saying I’m not a waste?”

He laughed.

It wasn't a gentle smile, but the kind of laugh you give when you see something truly amusing.

“A waste?” he repeated.

“The power flowing inside you could make any pack a supreme ruler overnight.

The Moon Shadow Pack threw you away like garbage―”

He bent down to look me in the eye.

“So I claimed you.”