Chapter Ninety Nine

NOLA REYNOLDS

The Lycan King leaving had opened a wound in my heart that stayed sore until the weight of his crown in my hands distracted me.

“Come on, this way! Into the lower levels!” A red-faced guard who had opened the tin cage of his helmet was yelling so loudly beside me that I jolted.

I turned to see that he was herding the crowd of sobbing residents in a neat line through the underground gates I hadn't noticed before, a different procession of somber-faced men with tightened jaws and the nettled garb of newly appointed infantry shining against their pale and coffee-colored skins.

What the hell was going on? Were they recruiting new soldiers? Just how many of those lowlanders were crawling outside the reinforced gates of the castle?

“Saints!” I gasped, jolting and slamming head-first into a woman’s ample bosom as I turned in the direction of the ear-splitting war cries in the distance that wrenched my heart from the cage of my ribs.

The line of newly appointed soldiers scattere