HER STOLEN CROWN

CHAPTER 2 Missandei's POV

A heavy slap landed on my face before I even registered I'd made a mistake.

My cheek burned, my head snapping to the side, the tray in my hands rattling as coffee spilled over the rim and splattered across the polished floor.

"You clumsy, useless girl." Greta's voice cracked through the dining hall like a whip. "Do you know who that was for?"

I pressed my hand to my cheek, willing myself not to cry in front of everyone. Five years of this, and I still hadn't learned how to stop the sting from reaching my eyes.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly, already kneeling to gather the shattered pieces of the cup.

"I'll clean it up."

"You'll clean it up," she mocked, crouching down beside me, her voice low and vicious so only I could hear. "You're lucky that was meant for the Beta's guest and not the alpha himself, or you'd be doing far worse than cleaning."

I said nothing. Five years of silence had taught me that responding only made things worse.

This was my life now. Five years since the day my mother's body lay cold on the pack house floor, five years since strangers stripped our home bare and left me with nothing but a folded note that still lived somewhere in the bottom of an old bag I left in my room, sorry my little closet, because that was definitely not a room.

I had been fifteen then. I was twenty now. Wolf less, motherless, and property of the Alpha's quarters, though no one called it that out loud.

I finished cleaning the spill, my knees aching against the hard floor, and carried the broken cup pieces to the kitchen. My hands were shaking, not from fear exactly, but from the exhaustion that had settled so deep into my bones I couldn't remember what it felt like to not be tired.

"You're late for the linens," Cook said without looking up from the stove, her voice flat. "And after that, the west hallway needs sweeping again. Someone tracked mud through."

"Yes, ma'am."

I didn't ask when I'd eat. I'd learned not to ask. Sometimes there were scraps left after the household staff had their fill. Sometimes there weren't. Tonight, judging by the way Cook's shoulders were set, there probably wouldn't be.

My room was little more than a closet at the back of the servants' quarters, barely big enough for the cot I slept on and a small chest that held everything I owned in the world. No window. No lock on the door, not that it mattered, nothing in there was worth stealing. I used to lie awake in that room during my first year here, staring at the ceiling, waiting to wake up from what felt like a nightmare. I stopped waiting a long time ago.

I worked from before sunrise to well after the household had gone to sleep. Scrubbing floors, hauling water, serving meals I was never allowed to sit down and eat myself, mending torn uniforms with fingers that had long since grown calloused and cracked.

That night, after the linens and the hallway and a bowl of cold broth I ate standing in the corner of the kitchen so no one would complain about me sitting, I was told to bring a tray up to the Alpha's private study. It wasn't unusual. He often worked late, and someone had to bring him tea, papers, whatever he demanded.

I knocked twice, as I'd been trained to, and stepped inside when a voice told me to enter.

The Alpha, Kade Thornwood, though I rarely allowed myself to think his name sat behind a heavy oak desk, papers scattered in front of him, his sharp eyes lifting briefly to acknowledge me before returning to his work.

"Set it down," he said. "Then get out."

I left without another word.

It was past midnight when I was woken by rough hands shaking my shoulder.

"Get up." One of the guards, a broad-shouldered man named Ferris, stood over my sleeping bag, his expression unreadable in the dark. "Now."

"What's happening?" My voice was thick with sleep and confusion.

"Don't ask questions. Just move."

I scrambled up, pulling my thin robe around myself, my heart already hammering. Being woken in the middle of the night by a guard was never good. I'd seen it happen to others before, servants dragged out for punishments, for accusations, sometimes never seen again.

"Please, what did I do?" I asked as he gripped my arm and pulled me down the hallway. "I haven't done anything, I swear."

"Something's gone missing from the Alpha's study," he said. "Something important. And you were the last one seen in there."

My stomach dropped. "I only brought his tray. I didn't touch anything else, I swear it, I"

"Save it," he snapped. "It's not my decision."

He pulled me down a set of stairs I'd never been taken down before, deep into the lower levels of the quarters where the air turned cold and damp.

We stopped in front of a heavy iron door. He unlocked it, shoved it open, and before I could say another word, he pushed me inside.

"No, please," I said, spinning around as the door groaned shut. "Please, I didn't take anything, I swear on my mother's life, I didn't"

The lock clicked into place.

"Please!" I slammed my palms against the cold metal, my voice cracking with panic. "You have to believe me! I didn't take anything!"

I got no replies. Just the heavy stillness of stone walls closing in around me, the faint drip of water somewhere in the dark, and the terrifying realization that no one was coming to let me out.

I sank down onto the freezing floor, wrapping my arms around my knees, my whole body trembling from cold.

“Please let me out of here, please…please!!”I screamed, tears rolling down my face.