Worthless Mate Chosen

Chapter 4

Darkness Before the Feast

Freya's POV

The corridor behind her was empty now, and Freya kept walking.

She did not look back. She did not slow down. She moved through the hallway the same way she had moved through every hard thing in her life, one step at a time, head forward, eyes steady.

"Well," Ivy said quietly inside her head, "at least he had the sense to do it himself. That is one problem that walked out the door on its own."

Freya exhaled slowly through her nose.

"I agree. I really do. The idea of being bound to someone like that for the rest of my life was not something I was prepared to carry."

"So then why do you look like you just lost something?"

Freya reached the bottom of the staircase and pressed one hand briefly against the cold stone wall to steady herself. Her throat still ached faintly from where his hand had been. She swallowed once and kept moving.

"I do not look like anything. I am fine."

"Freya."

"I said I am fine, Ivy."

A short pause passed between them the way pauses sometimes do when the person on the other end knows better than to push.

"Okay," Ivy said gently. "But for what it is worth, the Moon Goddess does not make mistakes. If Oliver Hayes was not the right one, then whoever comes next will be worth the wait."

"You really believe that."

"With everything I have."

Freya dragged her feet down the last step and turned into the lower corridor. She wanted to believe what Ivy was saying. She really did. But standing here in this cold hallway, still in the same worn coat she had pulled on before sunrise, with her throat sore and her hands raw from a full night and morning of work, belief felt like a luxury she could not quite afford.

What kind of love story starts in a place like this?

She pushed the thought down and moved on.

She had not made it far when she heard footsteps coming fast from around the corner. Heavy, purposeful footsteps. The kind that meant someone was already angry before they even arrived.

A she-wolf came around the corner with her face twisted into something sharp and unpleasant. She spotted Freya immediately, and her expression darkened further.

"There you are. I have been looking everywhere for you. Have you been hiding this whole time? Sitting somewhere doing absolutely nothing while the rest of us work?"

She grabbed a broom that was leaning against the nearby wall and swung it toward Freya with full intention behind the movement.

Freya stepped quickly to the side. The broom cut through empty air.

"Oliver is asking for you," Freya said, keeping her voice level. "Something is wrong with the ceremonial suit. I think you should go now before it becomes a bigger problem."

The she-wolf stopped mid-swing.

Her eyes narrowed. She studied Freya's face for a moment, looking for a lie. Freya held her gaze without flinching and without blinking any faster than usual.

The she-wolf lowered the broom slowly.

"Why did you not lead with that? If anything goes wrong today because of your uselessness, I will make sure you pay for every second of it." She pointed one finger close to Freya's face. "And another thing. Prince Lucian is attending the ceremony today. So you had better move yourself and help with the preparations. If I find you standing around doing nothing again, I will not just swing the broom next time. I will make sure it connects."

She turned and walked away quickly, already focused on wherever she was going.

Freya watched her go.

Prince Lucian.

The name dropped into her mind and sat there. She turned it over slowly.

She had heard that name whispered around the pack before but never with anything good attached to it. Still, a prince was a prince. A prince had reach. A prince had the kind of power that could, if she was careful and if he was willing, open doors that were bolted shut to someone like her.

Maybe, just maybe, he would listen.

It was a thin hope. She knew that. But thin was better than nothing.

She made her way toward the banquet hall, moving quickly enough to look purposeful, slowly enough to think.

When she reached the entrance, two guards were already posted at the doors with their arms crossed and their expressions made up of stone.

"Slaves are not permitted inside."

She had known they would say that. She stepped back without arguing and found a narrow corner near the side of the building where she could wait without being immediately visible. She pulled her coat around herself and settled in.

It did not take long before voices drifted toward her from a small group of she-wolves gathered nearby. They were dressed for the ceremony and speaking in the low, excited tones of people sharing gossip they considered valuable.

"Did you hear about Prince Lucian? Apparently, he is not the kind of man you ever want to be alone with."

"I heard the same thing. Someone gave him a female slave as a gift once. She did not make it to the next morning."

Freya went very still.

"Powerful, though. Terrifyingly so. Not even the lycan king challenges him directly when he goes too far."

"You know what I also heard? The lycan king was actually meant to attend today. But Prince Lucian was already traveling through this region on his way back from somewhere else, so he ended up coming in the king's place."

A small sound of disappointment from one of the others.

"What a waste. I wanted to see the lycan king in person. Prince Edward is the one worth seeing. He is reasonable, from everything I have heard. Approachable, even. Why did it have to be the dangerous one who shows up instead?"

"Lower your voice. What if Prince Lucian is already somewhere close and hears you talking like this? Do you have any idea what he would do?"

The group went quiet for a brief moment. Then they seemed to notice Freya standing nearby. Their expressions shifted instantly from nervous to hostile.

"What are you staring at?"

"Why are you even standing here? This area is not for you. Move along."

Freya looked at them for exactly one second, then turned away without a word. She had long since stopped wasting energy on that kind of exchange.

But the conversation stayed with her.

She turned everything she had just heard over in her mind slowly and carefully. A man who had taken a slave to bed and left her dead by morning. A man so far outside the reach of normal consequences that even the lycan king apparently looked away from his actions. A man traveling through this region by chance, attending a ceremony he had not originally been invited to.

That was not a man who would sit quietly and listen to the story of a dead Beta and her orphaned daughter.

That was not a man she could appeal to.

Freya leaned back against the cold wall and closed her eyes for a moment.

She had been so ready to grab at the small possibility of hope that she had not stopped to think it through clearly first. That was not like her. She usually thought things through. She usually considered every side of a situation before moving toward it.

The desperation was starting to get into her decisions, and that was dangerous.

She straightened up and turned to leave.

She would find another way. She always found another way. Today was not the day, and Prince Lucian was not the door. She accepted that and began walking.

She had barely taken four steps when she became aware of the wolves around her.

They had not been there a moment ago. Or if they had, they had positioned themselves carefully enough that she had not registered them until now. Three of them. Maybe four. They were spread out in a loose shape around her, blocking the most obvious directions without making it look deliberate from a distance.

Her body tensed immediately.

"What do you want?"

She kept her voice even. She took one slow step back and looked at each face quickly, trying to read which direction the threat was coming from. None of them answered her. They just looked at her with expressions that had already decided what was going to happen.

She stepped back again, watching the ones in front of her, trying to track the ones at her sides.

She did not think to look behind her.

She felt the rush of moving air a fraction of a second before the impact. Something hard and fast connected with the back of her head with a force that sent white light flooding through her vision. Her legs stopped working. The floor came up toward her in a way she could not stop.

The last thing she was aware of before everything went dark was the cold of the stone against her cheek and the distant sound of footsteps walking away from her without any hurry at all.

Then there was nothing.

No sound. No light. No Ivy. No pain.

Just silence and darkness pressing in from every direction at once.

And somewhere in the back of her fading mind, one question drifted up like smoke before it too went quiet.

Whose hands had just reached into her life, and where were they planning to take her when she woke up?