The Rogue Who Woke the Royal Dead

The squirrel stopped beneath a root, fluffy tail trembling.

My body lowered before I understood what I was doing. Damp leaves pressed into my palms. My nails lengthened into claws, and saliva flooded my mouth at the small, warm pulse under the squirrel's brown fur.

Eat, my wolf whimpered.

She had been silent since I ran from the Vale Pack. Starvation had reduced her from a proud presence in my mind to a weak ache behind my ribs. Now the smell of blood beneath that tiny skin dragged a growl from my throat.

The squirrel looked at me.

I looked back.

Then I slapped both hands over my face. “No. Absolutely not.”

It fled. Part of me wanted to cry. The rest wanted to chase it on all fours.

Cold rain slid down my neck. My stolen shirt hung from my shoulders, stiff with mud, and every step sent pain through the split skin beneath my bare feet. I had eaten berries yesterday. Or perhaps the day before. Hunger had blurred time into one long, shivering night.

I staggered between black pines until a stone wall rose through the mist. Beyond it stood rows of pale monuments, their carved wolves silver beneath the moon.

A graveyard.

The air smelled different inside—wet marble, old earth, melted candle wax, and something solemn that made my wolf lift her head. No guards appeared. I climbed the low wall and landed badly, my knee buckling.

Then another scent struck me.

Roasted meat.

I followed it to a broad tomb decorated with a crown and a snarling wolf. Someone had left a basket before it: dark bread, apples, cheese, and thick slices of venison wrapped in cloth.

My fingers hovered over the bread.

Mira’s voice returned as clearly as if my stepmother stood behind me. Thieves eat from the floor. They do not deserve plates.

When I was eight, she had poured soup into the yard because I asked for seconds. When I was twelve, she made me wash in ice water after I bled on a clean sheet. My father had watched my teeth chatter and said, “Stop provoking her, Lyra.”

On the night I escaped, I had found the monthly payments hidden in his desk. Lord Varrick’s seal had been stamped on every envelope. My father had not merely ignored what Mira did. Someone had paid him to keep me weak, hungry, and dosed with bitter wolfsbane tonic so my wolf would never wake.

He had sold my suffering.

My knees hit the ground before the tomb.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I know this is yours. I know stealing from a grave makes me disgusting. But if I don’t eat, I think I’ll die.”

I tore the loaf in half.

The first bite hurt. My dry mouth struggled to swallow, and my empty stomach cramped so violently that I folded over the basket. Still, I ate. Bread, then cheese, then venison. Salt and fat burst over my tongue. Heat seemed to spread into every frozen place inside me.

A sound came out of my throat, half sob and half laugh.

For five minutes, I was happy.

Then guilt arrived.

I wrapped the remaining food carefully and pushed it back toward the tomb. “Thank you. When I have money, I’ll replace everything. I promise.”

“Replace it?” a deep voice snapped. “With what? Stolen rat bones?”

I spun so fast I fell on my backside.

No one stood behind me.

“Alaric, stop frightening the child,” a woman said.

“Child? She robbed me.”

“She prayed first,” another man argued. “Very polite little girl.”

“Who’s there?” I crawled backward, claws sliding from my fingertips.

A translucent man stepped through the tomb.

He was tall and broad despite being dead, with white hair tied at his neck and a crown resting crookedly on his head. Moonlight shone through his embroidered coat. Beside him appeared a round-faced woman, then a thin man with spectacles, then half a dozen others in old-fashioned clothes.

My scream startled birds from the trees.

The crowned ghost scowled. “Now she’s waking the entire cemetery.”

I clamped both hands over my mouth.

The woman crouched near me. Her shape carried the faint scent of lavender and cold stone, though that should have been impossible. “Can you see us, sweetheart?”

I nodded.

“And hear us?”

I nodded again.

Every ghost began speaking at once.

“A Deathspeaker—”

“Impossible—”

“She’s too thin—”

“Did no one feed her?”

The crowned man roared, “Silence!”

They obeyed. Even dead, he carried Alpha command. My wolf flattened inside me, but another sensation threaded through the fear: recognition. Power stirred beneath my skin, bright as moonlight.

The dead were not hallucinations. I could feel each of them.

The old man looked at my wrists. My sleeves had fallen back, exposing white scars and fresh bruises. His scowl deepened.

“What pack lets one of its females reach this condition?”

“No pack.” I pulled my sleeves down. “I’m rogue.”

The word made several spirits hiss.

“Criminal?” asked the spectacled man.

“Runaway,” I said.

“Same thing, usually,” the old man muttered.

The woman slapped his transparent arm.

“You may call me Aunt Maeve,” she told me. “That rude fossil is Alaric.”

“King Alaric,” he corrected.

I stared at the crown. At the enormous tomb. At the wolves carved with jeweled collars.

I had not wandered into a village cemetery.

Before I could ask where I was, weakness rolled through me. My vision narrowed.

“Don’t you dare faint on my grave,” Alaric barked.

I fainted on his grave.

When I woke, dawn had turned the mist gold. A folded cloak covered me, though I had been alone when I collapsed.

No—not alone.

Aunt Maeve sat nearby humming. Two dead uncles argued over whether I needed broth or steak. Alaric stood at the cemetery gate, arms crossed.

“You should leave,” he said.

My chest tightened. Of course. Even the dead did not want me.

I pushed myself upright. “Thank you for the food.”

“I said you stole it.”

“Then thank you for not killing me.”

“I’m already dead. Murder would be administratively inconvenient.”

Maeve hid a smile.

I crawled to my feet. Before I reached the gate, Alaric spoke again.

“Wait until midday.”

I glanced back.

He examined a crack in his tomb as if it fascinated him. “My useless grandson may bring an offering. Royal tradition. Wasteful nonsense. Someone should make certain it isn’t eaten by crows.”

The words were more painful than hunger. “You told him about me?”

“I did no such thing.”

The other ghosts groaned.

Alaric lifted his chin. “I merely invaded his dream, threatened to haunt him naked, and ordered him to bring enough breakfast for six soldiers.”

Despite everything, a laugh escaped me.

His expression softened for one heartbeat. “Do not misunderstand, grave mouse. I am not keeping you.”

At noon, the gate opened.

A tall man entered carrying two baskets. Wind moved through his black hair, bringing his scent to me—cedar smoke, winter air, and a warm wild note that struck my newly awakened wolf like lightning.

Mine, she breathed.

The basket slipped from my numb fingers.