Marriage to the Alpha

The Alpha's party. The palace of Vale had never looked so beautiful, and Elara had never hated it more. Three hundred candles burned in the great hall. Moon flowers hung from the rafters, hauled in at dawn by servants who had not slept. The marble floor was polished until a person could see her own face in it. Elara had seen hers at noon, on her knees, with a brush in her hand. At two that afternoon, a grey healer from the Silver Moon pack, in the palace to tend the cooks' burns, had caught her wrist and pressed a jar of salve into her cracked palm. "Those have worked," Lydia Marsh had said, gruffly, and gone. "Ela. Wine. Now." The head steward thrust a tray at her. She took it without a word. Eleven years had taught her that silence was the only thing a servant could afford. Ela. It was half her real name — the half she had given him at fifteen, filthy and starving in his doorway. The other half of her name hung on a cord beneath her grey uniform, against her ribs. She lifted the tray and walked into the light. "Twenty Alphas," someone whispered behind a column. "Vale has never hosted more than a harvest dance." "And the Nightshade heir is coming. King Aldric's own son." "They say he sends back every gift. Even the hounds." "They say his father's table never speaks his mother's name." Nobody looked at the maid. It was the single mercy of her position. "You." Princess Seraphina stood at the foot of the stairs in silver silk, every pin in her dark hair placed as if by a map. She was beautiful in the way a locked door is beautiful. "Your Highness." Elara lowered her head. "Look at me." Elara looked up. Seraphina studied her, not angry but curious, the way a child is curious about a beetle before pulling off its legs. For a heartbeat her smile was almost sad. "You've done something to your hair." "I only braided it, Your Highness. It was in the way of the tray." "Hm." Seraphina tugged the braid loose with two fingers. The pins scattered across the marble. Pale gold hair fell around Elara's shoulders, and one of the ladies glanced at it, then quickly away. "There. Now you look like what you are. Don't look at the Alphas, Ela. You'll only embarrass yourself. And smile." Elara smiled and held it until her jaw hurt. Seraphina turned to her ladies, her voice light and carrying exactly far enough. "My father's steward wanted to turn her out at the gate years ago. I kept her, you know. Half-starved, with nothing but a cloak. Everything she owns is mine." She laughed softly. "Even her good looks, I suppose. They have to be good for something." The ladies laughed. Elara walked away, her face still, the pins crunching under her shoes. She was refilling goblets when the music stopped. It did not fade. It stopped. The man in the doorway wore black, with no jewels and no ornament but a plain silver pin at his collar. He was taller than the guards who flanked him, with broad shoulders and a hard, clean-cut face. "Alpha Kael Nightshade," the herald called. "Son of King Aldric. Alpha of the Nightshade Pack." King Vale hurried down from his dais, both hands outstretched. "Alpha Kael! You honor my house. Allow me to present my daughter." Seraphina sank into a curtsy so graceful it had been rehearsed a thousand times. Elara had held the mirror for most of them. "Princess." Kael looked at her like a man reading a document he had already signed. "I trust the treaty preparations were not too much trouble." The word treaty hung in the silence. A goblet paused halfway to a lord's mouth. Everyone in the hall knew what it was for — a Nightshade bride, and Seraphina was the only daughter Vale had. Seraphina smiled, and across the room Elara saw her thumbnail dig a crescent into her palm. Hours later, she caught herself humming her mother's old lullaby, the only thing that kept her hands steady on the tray. Then she felt it: a pressure between her shoulder blades, like a hand hovering before it touches. Servants did not turn. But at the next table she lifted her eyes, just once, and found him. Kael stood at the edge of a circle of lords, his goblet untouched. The men were talking. He had stopped listening. He was looking at her like a man who has heard a song from a house he can no longer enter. She made herself step forward. Her foot struck something light and precise. She looked down in time to see a silver slipper slide back beneath a silver hem — Seraphina's slipper, the toe sharp as a beak, drawn back with the small, tidy motion of a woman retrieving a thought. Deliberate. Placed. Elara pitched forward. The tray tilted. A crystal goblet slid free and began to fall. It never hit the floor. A large, scarred hand caught it in midair and set it back on the tray without spilling a drop. Kael stood so close she could see the thin white scar through his left eyebrow. "You carry that tray," he said quietly, "like a soldier carries a shield." She opened her mouth and found nothing in it. The locket felt suddenly hot against her ribs, and her free hand rose to her collar before she could stop it. His gaze followed, then returned to her eyes. "What is your name?" "Ela. Only Ela, my lord." "Ela." His brows drew together. His attention drifted to the tray, then back. "That tune you were humming." Her hand stilled on the tray. She had not realized she had been humming. "My mother used to hum something like it," he said, almost to himself. "She used to say a name is the one thing nobody can take." His face closed as if he had said too much. "It suits you." It stung worse than any insult she had ever swallowed. It was not her name, and in all that time no one had looked at her and wanted to know it. "Excuse me," she managed, and fled. In the servants' passage she pressed her back to the cold stone and counted her breaths. He could not know. A Nightshade, of all people. If he ever learned whose sister she was, whose name she carried beneath her collar, hot against her skin… Behind her, the door opened. She knew the whisper of silk and the sweet scent of jasmine oil. "Ela," said Seraphina softly. Elara composed her face into a servant's blank mask. "Your Highness." The princess stood in the doorway with the light behind her, wearing the soft, sleepy smile of someone deciding something. "He looked at you." "I said nothing to him, Your Highness—" "I saw exactly what he did. And exactly how he looked." She stepped close and straightened Elara's collar, her fingertips brushing the cord beneath it, lingering one heartbeat too long. The worst of it was that her hands were gentle; the winter Elara had the fever, those same hands had fed her broth, and Seraphina had never let her forget it. "I only meant him to watch you kneel in the wine, Ela. Instead he caught your cup." Her voice dropped. "That is your fault, and you will pay for it. You're mine. Everything you have, I gave you." She stepped back into the light. "Tonight you will serve the Alpha's table. Personally. All night." "As you wish, Your Highness." Elara's voice did not shake. Behind her back, her fingers closed around the locket. The door swung shut. Beyond it, the music began again. At the head table, an Alpha was waiting for his wine.