To Belong To A Beast

The bells of Aridonia rang at dawn, and Irene was already on her knees. The stone floor of the east corridor was colder than it had any right to be this early in autumn. She scrubbed in slow, even strokes, the way she'd learned to do everything: quietly, so nobody could say she'd made a sound. Footsteps approached. Irene didn't look up. Looking up was an invitation. "Mind the hem, Ashy," a voice sneered. "Wouldn't want a wolf less thing dirtying a she-wolf's gown now, would you?” Laughter followed, loud and poisonous, the kind that made your stomach turn but you could do nothing. Three of the younger maids swept past, their skirts brushing the wet stones so that Irene had to scrub that patch again. One of them tsked and spat on the floor. The pack had a hundred ways to say the same thing, and Irene knew all of them. Defective. Hollow. She had been born on a winter night twenty-two winters ago, and the midwife had held her up to the pack healer, waiting for the faint stir of a wolf in her chest. There had been nothing. Every child of Aridonia carried a second heartbeat from the cradle, and hers had never come. She was a girl with a silence inside her. She couldn't shift. She couldn't hear the pack link, the low hum the others spoke of when they said we instead of I. She couldn't run the border at moonrise, sit at the long tables, or stand at a mate's side. A she-wolf without a wolf wasn't a she-wolf, and the pack had never let her forget it. Irene wrung out her rag and kept scrubbing. --- By midmorning her knees were raw and her stomach was hollow. In the kitchens she was handed a heel of yesterday's bread and told to eat it standing. She did, in four bites, her back to the wall and her eyes on the door. It was a good bread heel, honestly. She had learned to be grateful for small things, because small things were all anyone had ever offered her. "Irene!" The cook jabbed a thumb toward the servants' stair. "King's asked for you." The bread turned to ash in her mouth. --- King Dorian's study sat at the top of the castle, away from the noise, chaos and grime. Irene had been inside it only a handful of times in all of her life, and each had felt like standing in front of a cold fire. Everything in the room was warm, with dark wood, red leather, and a hearth burning, and none of it had ever been for her. He was at the window with his back to her, broad-shouldered and silver at the temples. Her late father’s brother. The only family she had left, though she had stopped using that word for him years ago. "You wished to see me, Your Majesty." "Uncle," he corrected, not turning. "In private, I permit it." It was a small generosity, delivered like a coin tossed to a beggar. Irene had once been foolish enough to treasure it. "Uncle," she said quietly. When he finally faced her, his gaze moved over her the way a farmer looks over livestock. Her worn gray dress, the cracked skin on her hands, the shadows under her eyes. Something flickered across his face, and she thought for one wild moment it might be concern. Then it was gone, smooth as river stone. "You've grown thin." "The kitchens are generous enough, Uncle." "They are not." He said it absently, as if remarking on the weather. "No matter. You've been useful to this household, Irene. Quiet. Obedient. I've noted it." Her heart did something strange, a small, traitorous lurch of hope. "I took you in when your mother died," Dorian went on, "when any other king would have left a wolf-less child to the wilds. I want you to remember that." "I do. I'm grateful." "Good." He crossed to his desk and picked up a slip of paper. "In three days, the seven pack leaders will gather at Aridonia for the annual council. Every seat in this castle will be filled with power. Mistakes will not be tolerated." He held out the paper. Irene took it. The list was short, but her breath caught as she read it. "Uncle, I'm not permitted in the great hall." She hated how small her voice sounded. "The head maid said that someone like me..." "The head maid is under my authority." His tone was mild, and it silenced her like a hand over her mouth. "Seven kings will sit at that table. I want their cups full and their plates handled with care, and I want no ceremony wasted on explaining why a wolf-less girl is serving them. Do you understand?" She understood nothing. Why her, of all the maids in the castle? But the question died in her throat, because she had learned long ago that questions were a luxury, and the answers were never kind. "Yes, Uncle." "Good." Something in his smile did not reach his eyes. "You may go." The corridor outside the study was empty. Irene walked slowly to the end of it and stopped beside a narrow window, where cold light fell across the paper in her hands. Serve the council table. It should have felt like a grace, or a miracle, or even a punishment. Instead it felt like the first time in her life someone had needed her for something. Her uncle had looked at her and said her name and trusted her with something important. She folded the paper carefully and tucked it into her sleeve. Down in the courtyard, a group of young wolves were shifting in the morning light, their bodies rippling into fur and muscle and raw, glorious grace. They threw back their heads and howled, and the sound rolled across the valley and echoed in the stones beneath her feet. Irene pressed one hand flat against her chest, over the place where a second heartbeat should have been. Silence. As always. One day, she thought, someone will look at me and see a person. She almost believed it. “Until then, I must not fail His Majesty!”