Mated to the Lycan King

The subterranean kitchens of the Obsidian Palace in Drakonspire were an underground labyrinth of choking ash, scorching iron, and perpetual terror.

Deep beneath the jagged glacial peaks of the Arctic Rim, three hundred enslaved workers labored twenty hours a day to feed the court of the Lycan King. For two centuries, Drakonspire had been the iron fist of the werewolf world—a fortress of black volcanic stone carved directly into the mountain glacier, where purebred Lycan lords ruled over subordinate wolves and human-hybrids with merciless discipline.

Clara Rivers knelt on the freezing stone flagstones of the scullery, her slender hands red and raw from scrubbing grease from massive brass cauldrons.

At twenty-one, Clara was a slave. She had been captured at nine years old along the southern border, her origin a mystery, her status stamped into her flesh by the cold iron collar bolted around her slender neck. Yet beneath the smudges of soot and her threadbare linen tunic, Clara was breathtakingly lovely: silken silver-blonde hair that tumbled in waves past her hips, striking violet eyes that held an uncanny, luminous depth, and a fragile, graceful beauty that had made her the target of cruel palace overseers for years.

A deafening blare of mammoth-ivory war horns echoed down the spiral stone stairwells, vibrating the granite floor.

"The King has returned!" Overseer Hektor barked, his rawhide whip cracking against the wooden pillars. "Drop the brushes, you dogs! Up to the Grand Banqueting Hall! Carry the roast venison and vintage mead! If any servant spills a single drop before the King, you will hang from the eastern ramparts by your heels!"