The Woman I Called Worthless Was the One Who Brought Me to My Knees (Caleb's POV)

"CRASH—!!!"

I didn't hold back. My boot obliterated the twin golden doors of Starlight Cathedral — the ones they boasted had absolute defenses.

That obese pig reeking of rot was reaching out with his black-haired claw, trying to touch the woman under my protection.

Dead man.

Something savage and old detonated inside me the instant I saw that scene — the predator that had lived in my blood for a century, the part of me that was Lycan down to the bone, the oldest and most ruthless strain of wolf-kind that had ever walked these territories. It erupted without warning, without preamble, without any of the control I had spent decades building.

I unleashed my dominance without restraint. The scent of black truffle and spirits — thick, overwhelming — tore through the hall like a storm that had no name and no ceiling.

"Thud."

"Thud thud thud —"

The so-called elite Pack Lords who normally lorded over everyone, who prided themselves on their noble bloodlines, crumbled like insects under my pressure. Their vaunted Alpha pride shattered. Their legs gave out. They dropped in waves. The ones closest to me vomited blood and couldn't even lift their heads.

My gaze swept past the trembling heaps on the floor and landed on the center of the hall.

There stood the only woman in the room still on her feet — Chloe.

She wore the crimson-and-black war cloak I'd draped over her shoulders myself, crowned with the dark gold circlet I'd given her. Surrounded by hundreds of hostile eyes, her spine remained perfectly straight.

Half an hour ago, in that freezing cell where they'd left her to die, I'd dragged her back from the edge.

My plan had been to stay in the shadows. Let her tear apart the people who'd humiliated her. Let her savor the revenge herself.

But when I heard that blind fool Caleb wave around dissolution papers — when I watched that nouveau riche scumbag try to buy her for a hundred thousand gold coins —

Something in my head snapped.

As I moved closer, a sensation I couldn't put into words slammed into me without warning.

A faint thread of scent — crisp, pure, like cold snow — slipped into my lungs and shot through my limbs.

That scent.

My body went rigid. My pupils contracted.

In that instant, my soul felt pierced by ten thousand volts. The Lycan bloodline that ran through me — oldest among wolf-kind, unbound by the moon's phases, seated at the absolute top of the hierarchy — let out a howl unlike any before. Something in me recognized her the way a lock recognizes its key: bone-deep, irrevocable, without the possibility of error.

Mate.

This woman — betrayed by her Alpha, scorned by her pack, auctioned off like livestock — was my fated mate. The one I'd searched for a hundred years. The one I thought I'd never find.

Euphoria crashed over me like a tidal wave, followed instantly by a tidal surge of apocalyptic rage.

The bond amplified my senses a thousandfold.

I smelled the reek of dried blood beneath her cloak.

I heard the faint grinding of joints pushed past their limit, damaged by the backlash of a bond she had been forced to sever alone.

I sensed her parched throat, cracked from three days without water.

And I knew, with razor clarity, the depths of humiliation she'd endured in this gilded hall.

They'd locked her in a stone cell in subzero cold. She'd survived on snow scraped from a ventilation crack.

And now her lawful Alpha — Caleb — was forcing her to sign dissolution papers to cover his gambling debts and salvage his pathetic standing. In front of the entire Pack Lands aristocracy, he was selling her to a reeking old predator.

They were treating my fated mate like merchandise.

They dared humiliate my woman.

"Crack — crack —"

The marble tiles beneath my feet couldn't withstand my fury. Spiderweb fractures exploded outward.

I walked to the center of the hall, one step at a time.

The crowd had already fled to the walls under the weight of my presence. The middle of the ballroom held only Chloe — standing tall — and Caleb and Boris, pinned facedown at her feet by my dominance.

"Ngh…"

Caleb fought to raise his head.

His eyes rolled upward and locked onto the Lycan King's crest on my chest. In an instant, every shred of arrogance drained from his face, replaced by raw terror. He wheezed like a broken bellows: "Lycan… Lycan King…"

"Your Majesty — mercy — please —"

Boris, the fat upstart who'd tried to touch my woman, lost control of himself entirely where he lay. He couldn't form a single coherent word.

I didn't waste a glance on either piece of trash.

I stopped in front of Chloe, ignoring the filth on the floor.

Looking at her pale, defiant face, the world-ending rage inside me stilled for just a moment — replaced by something deeper. Bone-deep. Obsessive. An all-consuming need to possess.

I peeled off my black leather glove, still damp from the snow outside, and tossed it onto Caleb's face.

Then I reached out slowly and took Chloe's hand — her fingers cold from exposure — and wrapped them securely in my palm.

The moment our skin touched, something crackled through both of us like live current — faint, nascent, the first tremor of a bond that had been waiting a very long time to be acknowledged.

I turned my head.

My eyes locked onto Caleb and Boris, still flattened on the floor.

"So," I said, my voice dropping to a lethal quiet. I tightened my grip on Chloe's hand and pulled her closer to my side. The temperature in the hall plummeted. "Who just said they'd pay a hundred thousand gold coins…"

My killing intent filled every inch of the room.

"…to buy my woman?"