The Princess They Turned On

Chapter 2 The Shield Turned Blade

I followed the perfume back to the Alpha's house. Someone had carried that smell through my home and into rooms that belonged to my family.

I shoved open the oak door to the main wing. The sweetness clung to the tapestries and thickened near my mother's old rooms. No one had touched them since she died.

I pushed the door open.

I stopped on the threshold.

The moon-silver furs and carved wooden furniture were gone. So was the smell of dried lavender and old parchment that had remained in the room since my mother's death.

Crimson velvet covered the bed and chairs. Cheap incense smoked in a brass bowl, leaving a dark stain on the ceiling. The room looked like a courtesan's bedchamber.

A young pack servant was dusting a gilded mirror. When she saw me, the cloth fell from her hand. She looked toward the corridor as if she expected Caleb to appear and answer for her.

"What is this?"

She twisted her fingers together. "The Alpha ordered it. For Sera." She glanced at the door. "He said it would teach you what it means to be generous."

*Generosity.*

Caleb had emptied my mother's room and called it a lesson for me.

I walked out without touching anything. Frost crackled across each floorboard after my boots lifted.

Dante would be in the training yard. Rain had turned the packed earth to mud, yet he stood in his usual place near the weapon racks. He had sworn his life to my protection.

Sera huddled beneath Dante's heavy bearskin cloak, dry while rain ran from his hair and shoulders. She caught sight of me and pressed closer to him.

Dante stepped between us.

Rain ran into my eyes. "What did you do to her room?"

"You don't question Caleb's orders."

"My *mother's* room, Dante. He gave it to *her*."

Sera whimpered behind him. Dante looked back at her before answering me. "Sera has nothing. You have everything. Learn to share the pack's blessings. This jealousy is becoming a sickness, Aria."

There it was again. Another lesson.

My hands clenched into fists. "The only sickness here is the one that lets you forget your oath."

Leather scraped. Dante drew his sword an inch and left the steel showing between us.

Once, he had spent a whole night in a storm rethatching my roof because he heard a draft. Now his hand rested on a sword meant for me.

I looked from the blade to his face. He never lowered it.

The mud hardened around my boots. Frost spread through the rain in a widening circle, and Dante finally glanced down.

Then a shriek cut through the downpour.

It came from the main hall. It was Sera’s voice.

A warrior burst through the doors. "Dante! It's the Moonstone! The Luna's heirloom! It's on the floor, and Sera!"