HER STOLEN CROWN

Chapter 7 Missandei's POV

Nobody moved for what felt like a long time after Asher spoke.

Then the crowd began to shift and murmur again, and I realized the guards on either side of me hadn't let go, as if they weren't sure whose orders to follow now that the alpha had contradicted the council in front of the entire pack.

"Release her," Asher said, still crouched in front of me, his eyes never leaving my face. "Now."

The rope around my wrists loosened, and I nearly fell forward without it holding me up. My arms had gone numb somewhere between the platform and the block, and my legs weren't much better, shaking too hard to hold my weight when I tried to push myself upright.

Asher caught my elbow before I hit the ground, his grip careful in a way I wasn't used to from anyone in this pack. "Easy," he said, quiet enough that it felt like it belonged only to the two of us, even with half the pack still watching. "You're all right."

I wasn't sure that was true, but I didn't have the strength to argue with him.

Behind us, I heard Kade's voice rise over the noise of the crowd, sharp with something I couldn't name, not quite anger, not quite relief. "Asher."

"Not here." Asher didn't look back at his father. He kept his hand under my arm, steadying me, and for one strange moment I understood that he meant those two words for both of us, that whatever came next wasn't going to happen in front of an audience.

Malcolm reached us before anyone else could. His face was still pale, his chest heaving like he'd run the whole distance from wherever he'd been standing when he screamed. "Missandei." He said my name like he needed to hear himself say it to believe I was still there to answer.

"I'm okay," I said, though my voice came out thinner than I meant it to.

He looked at Asher's hand on my arm, and something passed over his face I didn't have time to read before Asher spoke again.

"She's coming with me," Asher said, to Malcolm, to the guards still hovering nearby, to anyone who might have thought otherwise. "She'll be placed under my household staff. Watched. Punished for the accusation, if that's what the council needs to hear tonight. But there will be no execution."

"Punished," Halden repeated, arriving with two other council members close behind him, his voice thin with disapproval. "Alpha, this is hardly—"

"It's decided," Asher said. He still hadn't let go of my arm. "She stole nothing. I intend to prove that. Until I do, she stays where I can watch her myself."

I didn't understand, not fully, why that mattered so much to him, why a man who'd been crowned only hours ago was willing to spend whatever authority he had left defending a maid nobody in that crowd believed. But I was too exhausted and too frightened to ask, and some small, wary part of me wondered if this was simply a different kind of cage. A prettier one. Still a cage.

Halden's mouth pressed into a thin line, but he said nothing more, and the crowd began to disperse around us in uneasy clusters, whispers trailing behind them like smoke.

Asher walked me away from the training grounds himself, his hand still light against my elbow, not gripping, just present, like he thought I might collapse if he let go entirely. Malcolm followed a few steps behind, close enough that I could feel him there without looking.

"Why," I finally asked, my voice hoarse, as we crossed the yard toward the mansion. "Why would you do that. You don't know me. You have no reason to believe I didn't take it."

Asher was quiet for a moment, long enough that I thought he might not answer at all.

"I have my reasons," he said finally. "I'll explain them when I can. Not tonight."

It wasn't an answer. It was barely even the shape of one. But something about the way he said it, careful and certain at once, made me decide not to push. I had spent five years learning not to ask questions that people in power didn't want to answer. Old habits held, even now, even with my whole body still trembling from how close I had come to dying an hour ago.

We reached the edge of the mansion's kitchen garden, lanterns already lit along the path, moths circling lazily beneath the glass. I slowed without meaning to, my eyes catching on movement near the garden wall, a shape too still to be one of the guards patrolling the grounds, too deliberate to be nothing at all.

A man stood just beyond the reach of the lantern light, watching. Not the crowd. Not Asher. Me.

I blinked, and in the space between one breath and the next, he was gone, the shadows where he'd stood empty and undisturbed, as though nothing had been there at all.

"Missandei?" Asher's voice pulled me back. "What is it?"

I opened my mouth to tell him, and then closed it again, because I wasn't entirely sure what I would even be telling him. A man who wasn't there anymore. A feeling, cold and certain, that whoever he was, he had been watching me for a lot longer than tonight. It wasn't the first time I'd felt eyes on me that didn't belong to anyone I could name, only the first time I'd actually seen a shape to match the feeling.

"Nothing," I said. "I thought I saw something."

Asher studied me for a moment, something careful moving behind his eyes, and then he nodded and kept walking, though I noticed his hand didn't leave my arm again for the rest of the way inside.