Slave to Royal: The Omega Moon goddess

CHAPTER ONE POV: Nyla "I, Tarek Voss, heir to the Voss seat, reject you, Nyla Croft, as my fated mate." He paused. “ You are a thief and a servant who reached for something that was never yours. You deserve everything that is coming to you." Those words. Those words came from the same mouth that had been in my ear just last night, low and warm and full of promises that I had been foolish enough to hold onto like they were real. The same voice that told me after tonight everything changes, Nyla. I will take you away from all of this. I promise you that. I had believed him. I had believed him so completely that I gave him the one thing I had never given anyone. And I gave it freely because I thought that a man who could hold someone the way he held me was not capable of standing in front of five hundred wolves the very next night and calling her worthless. I was wrong. But let me tell you what happened before he opened his mouth. Let me tell you what this night looked like sixty seconds before it became the worst moment of my life. I am Nyla Croft. I am an omega. I was born in the lowest quarters of Pack Ironmere and I have spent every year of my life since I was old enough to carry a tray working inside the Alpha's palace as a servant. I sweep floors. I carry things. I lower my eyes when important people walk past me because that is what omegas do, and I have never once in twenty years believed I was anything more than exactly that. Tonight was supposed to be my shift ceremony. Nothing remarkable. I would walk onto that platform, shift into whatever small wolf the Moon Goddess decided I deserved, find my rank, and go back to my life. That was all I expected. That was all I had ever expected. What happened instead was that I stepped onto that platform beside Princess Celene and the moment the shift took me, the ground beneath my feet shook. I did not understand what was happening at first. I only felt it from the inside, this enormous thing rising through me like it had been waiting my whole life for permission to move. Like something that had been locked away for a very long time was finally, finally allowed to breathe. Then I heard the first elder hit his knees. Then the second. Then the third. And then the sound of five hundred wolves going completely silent washed over the ceremony ground all at once and someone at the very back of the crowd whispered a word that moved through the clearing like it was alive. The Moon Goddess. I stood in my shifted form and I looked out at a kingdom on its knees and I did not know what I was or what any of it meant. I only knew that I was golden. And that Celene beside me had shifted black. The prophecy every wolf in Ironmere had grown up reciting said that two wolves would be born in the same hour on the same day. One would rise golden and carry the blessing of the Moon Goddess. Every pack she touched would know peace and power and abundance. The other would rise back and carry the curse of the beast. Every pack she entered would know disease and ruin and death. For twenty years this kingdom had been certain which of us was which. They were certain it was Celene. The Alpha's daughter. The beautiful, adored, worshipped girl who had suitors arriving from every corner of the Seven Packs before she was even old enough to shift. Nobody looked at me. Nobody had ever looked at me. But I was golden. And she was black. And then I watched Alpha Aldric move. He did it quickly, and he used his body to shield it from the crowd and if I had not been standing at exactly the right angle I would have missed it entirely. His hand went into his robe. He pressed something small into Celene's palm. She took it without hesitation and tipped it to her lips and swallowed it in one motion and within seconds her black wolf began to shift, began to lighten, began to look like something the crowd was willing to accept. Like something golden. And then Aldric turned around and pointed at me. The guards reached me before his voice finished carrying across the clearing. The first blow landed across my face so hard that my shift broke, and I collapsed back into my human body and hit the ground in my servant uniform, the same ground that had just been on its knees for me, and the pain was so sudden and so complete that I heard myself cry out before I could stop it. They pulled me up and hit me again. I remember thinking, in the middle of it, that maybe they were right. Maybe I had done something I did not understand. Maybe the charm my mother pressed into my palm every single morning of my life, both wrists, do not forget, never leave without it, maybe that charm had broken somehow and released something dark into me instead of protecting me from something dark outside. But then I remembered what my mother always told me when I asked why. She never explained the charm fully. She only ever said the same thing. It is protection, Nyla. It keeps what you carry hidden from people who would use it against you. That is all you need to know. Not that I was dark. Not that I was the curse. That I was being protected. From exactly the kind of people who are hitting me right now. Tarek stepped forward. I looked at him through the blood on my face and the tears I could not stop and the fated bond that had cracked open in my chest the moment I shifted, pointing at him with a certainty that made no sense given what was happening around me. My wolf knew him. My wolf had chosen him. And some part of me that was still foolish enough to hope looked at him walking toward me and thought maybe he was coming to stop this. He stopped in front of me and looked me in the eyes. And said I deserved to die. I stopped feeling the blows after that. I stopped feeling anything except that. The man who had held my face in both hands the night before and made me promises in the dark was standing in front of five hundred witnesses calling for my death and not one part of his face was uncertain about it. Alpha Aldric raised his hand and the clearing went still. "She is sentenced to death." His voice was completely calm. "She tried to take my daughter's destiny and she will pay for it with her life. Tonight. No trial. No mercy. Take her away."