Alpha King's Hidden Queen

SERAPHINA POV Luna Lydia's heel came down on my fingers, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep the sound inside my throat. “Look at you,” Lydia said above me, grinding her boot from side to side until my knuckles split against the flagstone. “Still crawling like an insect. Tell me, girl, what does the pack call you?” I kept my eyes on the floor. The cooks at the hearth had stopped chopping. “Wolf-less, Luna.” “Louder. Let the kitchen hear it.” “Wolf-less.” My voice cracked on the word, and I hated that it did. She lifted her boot and strolled to the end of the scrubbing bench, where the head servant had left my one meal of the day, a heel of bread and a bowl of thin barley broth. Lydia picked up the bowl, sniffed it, and wrinkled her nose in plain disgust. Then she turned her wrist. The broth spilled over the stones I had scrubbed since dawn. It crept into the grout in a brown, steaming stain, and the bread dropped into it with a soft, wet sound. My stomach clenched so hard that white sparks bloomed behind my eyes. “Oops, you missed a spot,” Lydia said, dropping the bowl at my knees. “Clean it before nightfall, or you'll sleep outside in the rain.” No one in the kitchen moved. A cook's gaze slid away from mine as I reached for my rag. “I will have it cleaned, Luna Lydia.” She smiled, clearly satisfied, and left, her skirts whispering down the corridor. I pressed my bleeding hand against my apron and breathed until the shaking eased. I was twenty-one years old, and I weighed less than the girls half my age who scrubbed the laundry. Every wolf in Ashvale had shifted in their teens. I had waited at the edge of the forest every full moon for years, calling and calling, and nothing had ever answered. When the floor was clean, I carried my bucket toward the back passage. Above the hall doors, the pack's name was carved in black wood: DRAKE. Alaric, Lydia, and Darian all carried it, and so did every guard and cook in the packhouse. Only I was Wren. The last time I had asked Alaric why, I had spent three days in the cellar with a swollen jaw. I was wringing out the rag outside the Alpha's study when I heard my aunt's voice through the gap in the door. I stopped with the water dripping down my wrist. “She looks too much like her mother now,” Lydia said. “The guests have started to look twice.” “No one cares about a wolf-less girl.” Alaric's voice was dull with irritation, and beneath it came the crackle of a fire and the sharp smell of burning paper. “Her mother was a fool who ran from enemies far above her, and the child turned out to be a defect. She cannot even shift. She is nothing.” “If the wolves who hunted that woman learn the girl is alive, if they learn she lives under our roof, they will bring war to our doors. We should have buried her years ago.” I felt my heart drop. They were talking about my mother. No one had ever let me speak her name. Every time I asked, Alaric answered with his fists. I had spent my whole life believing my parents were low-ranking wolves who died in an ordinary accident, and now my aunt's voice had cut that story open. My mother had been running. Someone powerful had been hunting her. I leaned toward the door, my breath held tight in my chest. My elbow struck the candle holder on the side table. It hit the stones with a loud clang that rang down the corridor. The study went silent. I had time to take half a step back before the door ripped open, and Alaric filled the doorway, his yellow eyes narrowed to slits. “Listening at doors,” he said softly, and then his hand shot out and wound into my hair. I screamed as he dragged me up onto my toes by my hair, my scalp tearing, my fingers clawing at his wrist. “I was only cleaning, Alpha. I swear I was cleaning.” “Liar.” Lydia stepped up behind his shoulder, cold and pleased. “She heard every word,” she added. Alaric flung me sideways. My back hit the wall, and the air left my lungs in one hard burst. I slid to the floor, my mouth open, unable to draw breath, while the draft from the open door lifted a half-burnt sheet from his desk and sent it skittering across the stones. It came to rest under my cheek. The edge was black and curled, but the ink was still sharp, the handwriting looping and unfamiliar. ...promise me they will never take her. Whatever happens to me, keep her hidden from those who hunt... I knew that no one had ever written to me. And yet my name was there, at the top, in a handwriting I had never seen. “She thinks that because she shares my blood, she can pry into whatever she likes,” Alaric said above me. Darian came down the corridor with a stack of folders under his arm. He saw me on the floor and stopped. For one tiny moment, his eyes widened, and his mouth opened as though he might say my name. Then his gaze flicked to his father, and his face went smooth and cold. “Father? What happened?” “Your cousin was spying on us.” Alaric stepped toward me, and I pulled my knees up and wrapped my arms around my head. “She needs to learn her place.” His boot caught me in the stomach, kicking me hard. I felt pain bursting through my body, and a scream tore out of me. In the dark of my curled arms, I did the only thing I could. My hand closed over the burnt page and shoved it down the front of my dress, flat against my skin. “Take her to the old shack on the northern border,” Alaric told Darian. “Chain her to the beam. I do not want to see her face in this house again.” Darian looked down at me, and his folders crumpled against his chest. “The border shack is freezing, Father. And the King arrives tonight to inspect the disputed land.” “The King will not care about a defective slave. Do it, Darian, or I will lock you in there beside her.” Darian swallowed hard and bent down. His fingers closed around my upper arm, and he hauled me up. My legs shook so badly that he had to take most of my weight, and he did not look at my face as he dragged me through the back door. The night air cut through my dress like needles. He pulled me down the muddy path toward the trees, past the dark kennels, until the shack rose out of the weeds, its roof caved in on one side and the wind whistled through the cracks. He kicked the door open and shoved me inside. I landed on my knees in the dirt, and the paper crackled against my ribs. He dragged a chain from the corner and locked the rusted cuff around my ankle, then looped the other end through an iron ring in the beam. The cold metal bit into my bone. “You should have kept your head down, Seraphina,” he said to the floor, his eyes fixed everywhere but on me. “Darian, please.” My voice came out as a rasp, and tears cut clean tracks through the dirt on my face. “Don't leave me here. It is too cold.” He stood in the doorway longer than he needed to, one hand on the bolt, long enough that I thought he would turn back. Then the door slammed, and the bolt scraped home outside. Darkness took the shack, except for the thin silver light falling through the gaps in the roof. I dragged my knees against my chest and pulled the paper out with shaking fingers. In the moonlight, I could make out only the same torn lines. Keep her hidden from those who hunt. The rest had burned away. I pressed it back against my skin and leaned my head against the rotting wall. My ribs ached with every breath. My stomach was empty, and the cold crept into my bones. I had no wolf, no family, and no strength left, and I thought I would die in this place without anyone knowing. But someone had written to me. I did not know how long I sat there. The wind howled softly outside, and the cold carried me toward a heavy, dreamless drowsiness until a sound dragged me back. It was not the wind. There were many footsteps, and they were coming straight toward the shack.