The Human Slave Mated To The Alpha king

Chapter 8

"Is she trying to run away," Wren said, laughing, delighted, like the idea of me having anywhere to run was the funniest thing she'd heard all week.

"Please. Just let me go," I begged, hating how small my own voice sounded, hating that I was reduced to begging twice in one day from two different people who both clearly enjoyed hearing it. Wishing doesn't count for much when you're a slave, though. I already knew that better than most.

"Ugh, my hands stink now." Wren wrinkled her nose, holding her fingers out toward Sable like I'd personally contaminated her. "Clean up her up."

Cold water hit me before I even saw the bucket tip. It hit like a slap, drenching me from the shoulders down, soaking straight through what little fabric I had on, my whole body seizing at the shock of it, breath knocked clean out of me for a second.

"There. Now you're clean," Sable said, and they both dissolved into laughter, doubled over, the kind of laughter that comes easy when you're not the one shivering hard enough to rattle your own teeth.

"Here. Put this on." Wren threw a dress at me, and I caught it more out of reflex than intention, my hands too numb from the cold to feel the fabric properly.

"What, never seen a dress before?" Sable asked, watching me stare down at it, water dripping steadily off my hair onto the ground.

"You should be grateful. That was my favorite, you know," she added, like she'd handed me something precious instead of something torn at the seam and faded at the hem.

I was already shivering hard by then, cold water and colder evening air working together against me, my teeth doing something I didn't have control over anymore. I looked the dress over torn in more than one place, definitely not anyone's favorite anything and put it on anyway, right there, not caring who saw. My own clothes, if you could even call that sack of fabric clothes, were soaked through and clinging to me, and I needed to get warm faster than I needed pride, faster than I needed anything.

"You'd better hurry to the kitchen. Madam Voss doesn't like people being late," Wren said, smiling in a way that had nothing kind in it, arms crossed, watching me struggle with the wet knot of my old dress.

"You've got about a minute left. Best of luck." Sable's smile went sharper still, and she said it the way you'd wish someone luck right before watching them walk into traffic. "See you later, slave."

I didn't need her to spell out what was underneath that. I just knew, in my gut, that I didn't want to find out.

I walked back toward the palace with no real idea where I was actually going, water still dripping off the ends of my hair, leaving a trail behind me on the stone. I'd barely worked here a day before my life fell apart, and nobody had thought to draw me a map on the way to the execution block. Priorities, I suppose.

A guard stood at the entrance to one of the corridors, straight-backed, staring at nothing in particular, and I made my way toward him anyway, some stubborn part of me still hoping.

"Excuse me... can you point me toward the kitchen?"

Nothing. Not a glance, not a flicker, not even the courtesy of annoyance. I might as well have been speaking to the wall behind him. Right. Lowest of the low. I keep forgetting that particular detail, apparently, every single time it would actually help to remember it.

I turned and tried the outside instead, reasoning that a kitchen had to have a back door somewhere, something leading out to deliveries or gardens or anywhere useful, some logic that made sense in a world that mostly didn't anymore. After what felt like an actual eternity of wrong turns and identical stone corridors, I still hadn't found it.

"What exactly are you doing, roaming around the palace? Think you're a princess now, is that it?"

I spun around fast enough to nearly lose my footing. Madam Voss, arms crossed, unimpressed in a way that suggested she'd caught worse than me doing far less and hadn't been particularly moved by any of it.

"Madam Voss, I..." I started, already bracing.

"Enough." She raised a hand, and I shut my mouth immediately, the reflex faster than I wanted it to be. "I had actually intended to ease you into your duties. Show you around properly. You've made that unnecessary."

"I'm sorry, Madam Voss. A lot happened, and I tried asking someone, but they ignored me," I said, trying to explain myself before she'd already decided the explanation didn't matter, water still dripping steadily from the hem of my borrowed dress onto her clean floor.

"And you decided a stroll was the solution." She was already walking, not waiting to see if I followed, her pace brisk enough that I had to half-jog to keep up, again, same as this morning, same as every conversation I seemed to be having today.

I followed her straight to the kitchen which, infuriatingly, humiliatingly, I'd walked past twice already without recognizing it for what it was.

Inside, a handful of other slaves were already working, heads down, moving fast, and something in my chest eased slightly at the sight of them. Not alone, at least. Small comfort, but I was taking whatever I could get today, and today the bar had dropped somewhere around ankle height.

"Hey. You. Slave. Come here," Madam Voss called, not bothering with a name I hadn't given her.

I crossed to her, dripping, exhausted, past the point of caring how I looked doing it.

"You'll assist with dinner preparation, and wash every dish after dinner," she said, already turning to the next thing on whatever list lived permanently in her head.

"Yes, Madam Voss." I understood the assignment for what it was punishment for being late, dressed up as ordinary duty, the kind of thing that would've stung more if I had any dignity left to bruise. If this was what a personal slave to the king actually did with his days, it was better, somehow, than I'd braced for on that platform this morning.

Once she left, I got to work. The other slaves kept their distance, quiet, careful not to look at me too long, like whatever bad luck had been following me all day might be catching, might jump the gap between us if they stood too close. I couldn't blame them for it. I'd have kept my distance from me too, if I had the option.

Dinner went out. The dishes came back in mountains, more than I'd have thought one household could dirty in a single meal, and I scrubbed until my hands went pruned and raw. By the time the last of them was clean, everyone else had gone home or wherever slaves went at the end of a shift, and I was alone with my own thoughts, which was either a mercy or a curse depending on how you looked at it, and I genuinely couldn't decide which that night.

I dreaded going back to the servants' quarters. Sable and Wren were still out there, still had whatever they'd started to finish, and I had no interest in finding out what came after *see you later, slave*, delivered with that particular smile.

I couldn't put it off forever, though. I needed sleep after the day I'd survived execution block, king's chambers, a bucket of well water to the face, all in about twelve hours and I already knew I wasn't going to find any real rest in that room tonight. So instead I made my way to the garden I'd stumbled through earlier, hunting uselessly for the kitchen. It was quiet there. Peaceful, in the specific way places are peaceful when nobody wants anything from you, when nobody's watching to see what you'll do wrong next. The night air had a real bite to it, cutting straight through the damp dress, but even cold and alone beat whatever Sable and Wren had planned for round two.

I found a spot under a tree, tucked my knees up, and let my eyes close for the first time all day without bracing for what came next.

I'd barely gotten there when a voice cut through the dark.

"What are you doing here?"