Sold To The Ruthless Werewolf King

4

Emily

My stomach made a sound as I walked down the hallway. The last time I had eaten was yesterday morning. A small, stale thing that barely counted as a meal.

I heard voices from the dining room and slowed my steps.

Clara and my father were seated at the table, eating. The smell of warm food reached me from the hallway, and my body responded to it before my mind could tell it to stop.

“Where are you coming from?” Clara asked as soon as she saw me.

“I was cleaning Miss Anna’s room,” I said, keeping my eyes down.

“Why are you so slow?” Clara said without looking up. “Always taking forever.”

“I’m not—”

“Shut your mouth.” Her voice snapped like a whip. “Don’t talk back to me. If I say you’re slow, you’re slow.”

She was still speaking when Anna walked in and took her seat beside my father.

My father’s entire face changed when he saw her.

He smiled.

That wide, warm, unguarded smile that I had grown up believing was kept only for me. He reached out and touched her hair gently—the same gesture he used to use with me.

“My princess,” he said softly. “Did you sleep well?”

“I did, Father,” Anna said.

Something cold moved through my chest.

He had called me that once, his princess. I had believed it completely, built a part of my identity around it, around being loved and chosen by him. And it had never been real. Not one moment of it.

“Why are you still standing there?” Anna turned to me, her expression curdling. “Have you finished your duties?”

“No, miss.”

“Then get out. You smell.”

The hunger moved from discomfort to pain, a tight, twisting ache just below my ribs.

“I’m hungry,” I said.

The table went quiet.

I hadn’t planned to say it. The words came out because my body had simply run out of patience and taken over.

My father looked at me slowly. His eyes moved across my face, down my body, taking in all of it—the thinness, the wounds, the state of me, and what I saw in his expression was not horror or guilt or love.

It was disgust.

“There is no food for you.” He didn’t raise his voice. “Get out.”

“Please—”

“Leave this room,” he said with a warning, “or I will make sure you leave in pieces.”

I fled.

I sat outside by the washing line and worked through the remaining laundry with my wounded hands, and I did not let myself think about the smell of their food or the sound of their easy conversation drifting through the window.

After they finished, I went back inside and cleared the table. I washed every dish, dried them, and stacked them exactly in their places, just the way my mother had always insisted things be kept.

Then I sat down alone in the cold back corridor and let myself be tired for a moment.

That was when I heard his footsteps.

I knew them before I saw him. Josh.

Josh might have been the Alpha’s third son, but in the eyes of the pack, he was nothing more than a mistake—the result of a drunken night the Alpha refused to acknowledge in the morning.

His mother had been a maid. He had no status, no shield, no name that carried any weight. The pack reminded him of that constantly, in small ways and large ones, and he had learned early to move through the world carefully, taking up as little space as possible.

He was also the only person who had never once made me feel like a burden.

“Why are you here?” I asked quickly, scanning the corridor behind him.

“I came to see you.”

I grabbed his sleeve and pulled him to the far end of the corridor.

“You can’t keep coming here, Josh.”

“I know.” He looked at me. “I missed you.”

He opened his arms, and I stepped into them. He held me the way he always had, like I was someone worth holding. His chin rested on top of my head.

I closed my eyes.

For exactly this long, I let myself forget where I was.

He pulled back after a moment and reached for my hands. When his fingers found mine, I hissed. He looked down at the cuts, and his eyes went dark.

“She did this. I’ll kill her—”

“Josh.” I put both hands flat against his chest. “Stop. Please. She’ll tell her father, and he’ll tell the Alpha. You know what your father will do to you.”

His eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry I can’t protect you. I’m useless. I’m—”

“Stop.” I put my hand against his cheek. “You are the only reason I haven’t completely lost my mind. Stop apologizing for things that aren’t your fault.”

He leaned into my hand. Then my stomach betrayed me with a loud, humiliating growl. We both froze. Josh let out a surprised laugh, and I couldn’t help but almost smile.

He reached into his bag and held out a small loaf of bread.

“Eat this.”

“That’s yours.”

“I’m not hungry.”

His own stomach immediately made the same sound mine had.

I looked at him. He looked at the bread.

I took it from him, tore it in half, and we sat together in the dirt and shared it. He pulled me into his arms, and for a moment I felt like the old Emily again—the one who had a name, a wolf, a place in the world.

We were still sitting like that when the shadows at the end of the corridor moved.

Neither of us heard her until she was already there.

Anna.

She stood with her arms crossed, her silk dress catching the light. She didn’t look angry. She looked satisfied. And her eyes didn’t go to me first.

They went straight to Josh.

“How touching.”

I expected him to stand up, to hold me tighter, to be the person who had just been crying over my cut hands.

Instead, he dropped the bread into the dirt.

He scrambled away from me so fast it was as though my skin had burned him. He didn’t look at me. His eyes were fixed on Anna’s face, wide and pleading.

“It’s not what it looks like, Anna,” Josh whispered. His voice didn’t sound like the boy who had held me a minute ago. It sounded like someone who had already decided which side he was on. “I was just telling her to get back to work.”

The air left my lungs.

Anna stepped forward slowly, her heels clicking against the stone. She reached out and ran a single finger down Josh’s arm, over the muscle, stopping at his wrist.

Josh didn’t pull away. He shivered, but he stayed perfectly still beneath her touch.

“Is that right, Josh?” Anna asked. Her voice was soft, almost sweet. “Because it looked like you were holding a slave. And we both know what happens to people who touch things that belong to me.”

“I’m sorry,” Josh choked out. He looked at the floor, his face pale. “It won’t happen again. I promise.”

Anna looked at me then. The hatred was gone from her face, replaced by something worse—a calm, triumphant satisfaction. She had known. She had been holding this leash for longer than today, and she had simply been waiting for the right moment to show me.

“Get to your cell, Emily,” she said calmly. “And Josh... follow me. We have things to discuss. Privately.”

Without glancing back at me or the bread we had shared, he followed her, walking a step behind her like a servant.

I stood there alone in the dirt and listened to their footsteps fade.

The bread was still there, face down in the dust where he had dropped it.

The wolfsbane didn’t just take my wolf. It took my sight too. I had looked at Josh every day for months, seeing his tears, his potions, his careful hands, and I had seen love.

I had not seen this.