HER STOLEN CROWN

"You're not even listening to me," Lora said, waving her hand in front of my face. I blinked and looked at her. "Sorry. What were you saying?" "I said Daemon likes you." She grinned. "He's been asking about you all week." Tessa laughed beside her, nudging my shoulder. "Don't act surprised. Everyone's noticed except you." We were sitting outside near the training grounds, the three of us, like we did every afternoon. The sun was warm. The grass smelled fresh. It was an ordinary day. I didn't know yet that it would be the last ordinary day I'd have for a long time. "I don't have time for boys," I said, picking at the grass. "You know that." "You don't have time for anything," Tessa said. "You're always with your mom or working." I shrugged. It was true. Being wolfless in a pack full of shifters meant I had to try twice as hard just to be seen as useful. My mother always told me not to let it bother me, that I was still pack, still worth something. I believed her because she was the only one who ever made me feel that way. We kept talking, laughing about small things, nothing important. Then I heard shouting in the distance. At first I thought it was nothing. Pack members shout all the time. But this was different. This was screams of panic. People were running. Footsteps heavy against the field in the direction of the pack house. Lora stood up first. "What's going on?" I could feel something wasn't right, so I sprinted towards the park house. I was pushing through the crowd gathering near the front doors of the pack house. "Move," I said, shoving past shoulders and arms. "Let me through." Someone grabbed my arm to stop me. I yanked it away. Then I saw her, her face pale and her eyes closed. My mother was on the floor. The cold stone tile beneath her was no longer just stone, it was stained red, spreading slowly, quietly. Her hand was still curled like she'd been reaching for something. I don't remember screaming. I don't remember falling to my knees beside her. I just remember being there, suddenly, my hands on her face, shaking her. "Mom." My voice didn't sound like mine anymore, I could hear the muffled voices in the background. "Mom, wake up." She didn't move. "Mom, please." I shook her harder. "Wake up. Please wake up." Still nothing. No breath. I could smell the fowl stench of death, it's ugly face looking down on me but I refused to believe she was dead. I pressed my forehead to hers and begged her, over and over, like if I said it enough times the world would listen and give her back to me. "Please," I whispered. "Please, please wake up." The crowd around me was a blur of legs and voices and pity I didn't want. I looked up at all of them, all these people who had known my mother for years, who had eaten meals she cooked, who had smiled at her in the halls. "Who did this?" My voice cracked. "Who did this to her?" Nobody answered. "Someone tell me!" I stood up, turning in a circle, searching every face for a flicker of guilt, of knowledge, of anything. "Somebody knows something! Tell me who did this!" A few people looked away. Some shook their heads slowly. An older warrior finally stepped forward, his voice low. "She was assassinated," he said, like that explained everything and nothing at all. "We don't know who." "You don't know who?" I repeated. "She's lying right there and none of you know who did it?" No one said anything. I sank back down beside her, and this time I didn't try to be strong. I cried until my throat hurt, until my chest ached, until the healers came and gently peeled me away so they could take her. I watched them carry her out wrapped in a cloth, and something in me went numb. The walk home was the longest walk of my life. Our house was small, tucked near the edge of the pack territory, the kind of house given to omega families who weren't expected to need much. My mother had kept it warm anyway. Flowers in a chipped vase. A blanket she'd knitted years ago on the back of the couch. I stepped inside and the silence hit me harder than anything else had that day. No humming from the kitchen. No her voice calling out to ask how my day was. I wiped my face, though it didn't help, the tears kept coming. The front door burst open. I jumped, spinning around. A group of wolves in armours, hard-eyed, filed into my home like they owned it. I didn't recognize all of them, but I recognized the crest stitched onto their jackets, the pack's mark, the alpha's men. "What are you doing?" I asked, my voice shaking. None of them answered me. They spread through the house, pulling open cabinets, lifting furniture, taking anything of value. "Stop," I said, stepping toward one of them. "Please, that's ours. That's my mother's." He didn't even look at me. He just kept moving, shoving things into a sack like I wasn't standing right there. "Please," I said again, louder, moving toward another one, grabbing at his arm. "Please don't take that. It's all we have left." He shook me off, not unkindly, but not gently either. "Orders from the alpha," he said, like it was the only explanation anyone owed me. "The debts have to be settled." "Debts?" I repeated. "What debts? She just died. She's not even—" My voice broke. "Please. Just leave us something. Please." No one listened. No one looked at me the way you look at a person who matters. They moved around me like I was furniture too. I begged one more of them, tugging on his sleeve as he passed with an armful of my mother's things. "Please, I have nothing else. Please don't do this." He pulled his arm free without a word. I stopped trying after that. I sat there on the cold floor, and I cried. I cried for my mother. I cried for the house being stripped bare around me. I cried because no one in that room saw me as anything worth stopping for.