Sold To The Ruthless Werewolf King

2

Emily

I really believed I would heal her.

Josh never stopped trying. He brought potions and remedies, sitting beside me in the dark as I drank them, both of us pretending the next one might be different.

But the wolfsbane had gone deeper. It moved through me like ink in clear water—slow, dark, and impossible to pull back. Some mornings, I woke up and felt nothing at all. No warmth. No connection. Just a hollow silence where Amy used to be.

Those were the mornings I understood that the Emily I used to be was not coming back.

I was on my bed—the only place in this house that still felt like mine, though even that was fading. My body barely obeyed me anymore. My arms were sore from endless scrubbing, and my back was burning from days without rest.

Clara had dismissed every maid weeks ago. They still lived in the house. They just no longer worked.

Only I did.

And they no longer called me Miss Emily either.

They looked through me when I passed in the hallway. Or worse, watched with quiet satisfaction, as if they had been waiting for this.

The door slammed open.

I tried to sit up, but my body was slow and heavy, and it didn't obey me fast enough.

Anna's whip spoke before she did.

The crack tore through the room and struck my back. Pain bloomed instantly—hot, sharp, and immediate.

"Get up," she said calmly. She struck again. "Get up, lazy."

I tried to rise but stayed on my knees, hissing through my teeth, my legs shaking beneath me.

"Anna—"

The whip cut me off.

"How dare you!" Her eyes had turned a deep, dangerous red. "How dare you say my name, slave? You address me as Miss Anna, or you don't speak at all."

She didn't stop.

I knew she was waiting for me to beg. She always waited for it, as if it fed something in her. So, I begged at first.

The words came out broken and small: "Please, Miss Anna, please stop, please." But she kept going anyway. Eventually, I stopped making any sound at all. I curled in on myself, arms over my head, and waited for it to be over.

After she finally stopped, she was breathing a little fast but satisfied.

She crouched in front of me and grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking my head back until I had no choice but to look at her.

"Who would have thought?" She tilted her head. "The once-great Emily, daughter of the Beta, reduced to my entertainment. Weak. Broken. Kneeling before me."

Tears slid down my face.

Anna… She had once held my hand when I was sick, crying and begging me not to die, saying she couldn't live without me.

It had all been a lie.

The moment my mother died, the mask fell completely.

She leaned a little closer. "You will never stand above me again. Not in this life. Not ever."

She let go of my hair, and my head dropped forward. Then she stood, smoothing her clothes as though nothing had happened.

"You want to know a secret?" she asked lightly. "Your mother was a fool."

My body went still.

"My mother didn't just take her place," Anna continued. "She took her husband years ago. Lucas is my real father, Emily."

The room went very quiet.

"Your mother died thinking she had a loyal mate," she added softly, smiling, "but she was living beside a lie."

I couldn't speak. My lungs forgot how to work. All I could do was kneel there under the weight of it.

Her father.

My father.

The same man.

The memories rushed back to me. Mother had allowed Anna to call my father "Dad" because people in the pack called her a fatherless child. She never wanted her to be bullied for not having a father.

But now…

Anna's cruel laughter filled the room. "If your mother had known," she added, "she would have regretted dying so early."

My mother had died not knowing.

Part of me was glad she hadn't.

"Maids!" Anna called, her voice echoing off the walls of my childhood bedroom.

Two of them appeared almost immediately, as if they had been waiting just outside.

Anna pointed at me with a lazy flick of her wrist. "Take this trash out of here. This room belongs to someone who actually has a wolf."

As they grabbed my arms, a cold panic flared in my chest. I could handle the hunger and the chores, but not this.

"No," I said, digging my heels into the rug my mother had chosen for my eighteenth birthday. "Please, Anna. Take the jewelry. Take the clothes. Just let me stay in this room."

Anna paused. She walked over to my vanity and picked up a small porcelain bird—the last gift my mother gave me before she got sick. She turned it over in her hands, her expression unreadable.

"You think this room still smells like her, don't you?" Anna whispered.

I didn't answer because I couldn't.

"Then I suppose," Anna said, her grip tightening on the bird, "I need to erase her completely. Even dead, she takes up too much space in this house."

She dropped the bird. I watched in slow motion as it hit the hardwood and shattered into a thousand white pieces.

"Destroy it all," Anna told the maids. "The bed, the curtains, the photos. Then redesign it. I want this room to look like she never existed."

"No—."

Her hand connected with my face so hard that the world tilted. I tasted blood on my tongue.

She grabbed my jaw and squeezed it hard.

"The maid quarters," she hissed. "That is where you will sleep from tonight."

I was dragged out like a filthy thing down the hallway. I heard the maids whispering as we passed.

When we reached the maid's quarters, they didn't open the door gently. They threw me through it. I hit the floor hard, and the sound that left my mouth was animal and involuntary.

I lay there for a moment, cheek against the cold stone, catching my breath.

Then I pushed myself up and looked around. This was not the maid's quarters I knew.

The maids' quarters I remembered had small beds, windows, and warmth. This place was different.

It was small, sunken, and dark, lacking a window and any furniture. The walls and floor were made of bare stone, and the only scent present was a mix of cold, dampness, and an underlying musty odor.

"This is the slave quarters," one of the maids said. "Miss Anna had it prepared especially for you."

"I hope you find it comfortable," she added.

I glanced at her, and in that brief moment, I saw not cruelty but indifference. My mother had entrusted Mira with access to her garden, believing in her. And Mira had simply decided, at some point, that trust was no longer worth carrying.

The door closed, and darkness settled around me.

I sat on the stone floor of the room that was designed to break me. I took slow, deep breaths to manage the pain, holding back tears for now. I knew I would have my moment of release later, in the silence of the night, when no one could hear.

Time passed. The human part of me—the part that existed without Amy—was slowly healing. Cuts closed, bruises faded, and bones knit back together in their own time.

But Amy was still unreachable.

Every morning, I would reach out for her, only to be met with silence. It wasn't the peaceful silence of a sleeping wolf, but rather a hollow emptiness that seemed to echo in the room.

I woke early, the way I always did now. There was no choice in it anymore. The work started before anyone else opened their eyes, and it ended long after the house went quiet. I cleaned. I cooked. I washed every piece of clothing for every person under this roof and hung them on the line while the sun was still low, and the air was still cool.

I was still working through the last of the laundry, arms deep in the washbasin, when her voice cut through the morning.

"Slave."

Not Emily.

Slave.

I dried my hands fast and ran. By the time I reached her door, my old door, I was out of breath. I knocked twice and pushed it open.

The room was already unrecognizable. Every trace of my mother had been stripped out and replaced with Anna's taste—brighter colors, louder patterns, things chosen for the sole purpose of being different from what was there before.

The shelves where I stored my belongings were empty, except for Anna's jewelry, Anna's books, and a framed photograph of Anna in the spot where my mother's picture used to be.

"Miss Anna," I said, bowing my head. "You called—"

The vase caught me just above the temple.

I didn't even see it coming. One moment, I was standing in the doorway, and the next, I was stumbling sideways. My hand flew up too late, and the sharp edge cut just above my ear.

For a second, there was only numbness. Then the pain crashed in.

"You missed a spot in my bathroom," she hissed, stepping over the broken glass toward me. "And for a slave, forgetting is a death sentence."

I pressed my hand against the cut and looked at the blood on my fingers.

Every drop. Every scar. Every name she called me in the room that used to be mine.

I was going to need it all later.