Chosen by the Lycan

Rosalind Farrow has chosen the ugliest gown she owns. The wool is the color of mud, the hem drags on purpose, and the heel of her left boot is loose because she scuffed it against the carriage step that morning. In the throne room of Vanholt, twenty women wait for a Lycan King to decide which of them he will take before noon, and Rosalind has spent all week practicing a slump. *A girl who couldn't hold herself properly was a girl no king would want.* Aldric Vanholt walks the line. He passes the candidate the whole court expects him to take, and stops in front of the girl in mud-colored wool. *I said this one.* By the time the murmuring dies, guards have her brother Tomlin by the arms. He is fifteen. Aldric offers the boy his own room, a tutor, weapons training when he is old enough, and does not pretend the offer comes without a price. *But your brother's life is in your hands. Remember that.* Her mother is dying of consumption, and the king's physician can be at that bedside tonight. Rosalind stays. What Aldric wants is not a wife. The Vanholt line is cursed, and every king in it becomes the thing his people whisper about in the woods. The only anchor is a willing bride. He watched the curse take his sister Elara; he held her hand while the wolf inside her tore its way out through her skin. What he has not told his bride is what the castle chronicles say about the women who came before her. *Every generation, the king's bride dies within a year of the wedding.* Rosalind has her own reason for being inside these walls. She once crouched in the hollow of an oak in the northern woods, hands clamped over her mouth, and watched a man open her father's chest. She has just seen that face again, here, with a name attached to it. Lord Malach Vex, silver hair, one eye clouded white, taloned fingers that never stop moving. He does not only want the throne. *Your throne. Your kingdom. Your bride.* And in the small tower that overlooks the stables, Lady Cecily is watching. Aldric's cousin, at Vanholt since she was twelve, the woman who had been preparing for the Choosing her whole life. She sends up tea. She calls herself the only friend Rosalind has in the castle. *You cannot prove anything, cousin. She is fragile.* A paranormal shifter romance set in the kingdom of Verain: a cursed king, a hostage bride, a village herbalist who knew too much, and an archery contest under a Moonfall moon. Closed-door.