The Alpha King's Secret Maid

Prologue Lanthe would remember for the rest of her life that the last sound she heard as a princess was laughter. Her mother's, low and warm, at some small joke her father had made over the last of the wine. The three of them had lingered at the table long after the dishes should have been cleared, simply enjoying each other’s company. It was a night like any other so Lanthe had no reason to think things would ever change. That was the cruelty of it. How ordinary that night had been, how little warning the world had given before everything changed for good. The first scream had come from the west wing. Her father had been on his feet before the second one, sword poised in hand before Lanthe even understood what she'd heard. "Take her," he’d said to her mother, voice calm in a way that chilled Lanthe’s blood more than any yell could have. "Now." Her mother seized her wrist without a word, nails digging into Lanthe’s skin as she pulled her toward the secret passage behind the tapestry. The one Lanthe had used a hundred times as a child while playing hide and seek with Wren. Never once did she imagine she’d use it to escape her own murder. Through the gap in the stone, Lanthe watched Theron's men spill into the hall. Wolves in half-shift, teeth bared as they surrounded her father. She watched her father meet the first of them with steel, watched him hold his own for three, four, five heartbeats longer than anyone should have been able to. Long enough that for one wild, foolish second, Lanthe let herself believe he might actually win. Until Theron himself emerged and her father's five heartbeats ran out. She didn't see the blow that killed him, her mother's hand had already clamped over her eyes, hiding what she knew was a gruesome sight. But she heard it. The unmistakable silence that fell after, worse than any sound could have been. Her mother made a noise Lanthe had never heard a human throat produce before, a gutteral cry that could only belong to wounded animal, and then she went very still. So still that for a second Lanthe had feared she’d met the same fate as her father. "Look at me," her mother whispered, pulling Lanthe's face up by the chin. Her eyes were wet and yet terrifyingly calm. "Lanthe. Look at me. Whatever happens now, you run. You don't stop, you don't look back, you don't wait for me. Do you understand?" "Mama…" "Do you understand?" The grip on her chin tightned and there was a sterness in her mother’s voice that Lanthe wasn’t used to so she had no choice but to nod. The passage door at the far end scraped open. Wren was there, white-faced, one hand already extended towards Lanthe. Her mother shoved Lanthe toward it with a strength that would later leave bruises Lanthe would have no recollection of gettng. "Go. I'll hold them as long as I can." "You can't fight them-" "I don't have to fight them. I only have to be loud enough that they follow the wrong scent." Her mother's smile in that moment was the most terrible and the most beautiful thing Lanthe had ever seen. And her eyes swirled with emotions Lanthe couldn’t fully name. Grief. Love. Resignation. Determination. "I love you more than this crown, more than this kingdom, more than my own life. Now run, and don't you dare let it be for nothing." Wren's hand closed around Lanthe's wrist, dragging her into the dark of the passage. The last image Lanthe carried of her mother was her turning back toward the hall, spine straight, chin high, walking toward the sound of her husband's killers like a woman with nothing left to lose. The passage led them into the kitchen gardens, the cold night air hitting Lanthe's face like a slap. Lanthe willed her legs into moving on their own, desperately fighting the urge to crumble to the ground as she felt the link with her mother sever. Behind them, the palace was beginning to glow. Torches, or something worse, throwing long orange light across the walls Lanthe had grown up within. Somewhere in that light, she knew without being told, her mother's voice had already gone silent. They ran. Lanthe would never afterward be able to say for how long. Through the gardens, over the low wall at the eastern edge of the grounds, into the tree line beyond. Wren's grip on her wrist was the only thing anchoring Lanthe to a body that felt like it belonged to someone else. Branches tore at her gown. Roots caught at her slippers until she kicked them off entirely and ran barefoot. The pain was a distant, unimportant thing compared to the roaring emptiness spreading through her chest. They didn't stop until the palace was nothing but a smear of firelight on the horizon behind them. And even then only because Lanthe's legs finally gave out beneath her, dropping her to her knees in the wet grass of some unnamed field, gasping for air that tasted like smoke even this far away. "We have to keep moving," Wren said, hauling her back up by the arm, voice shaking as badly as her hands. "Lanthe, I know, I know, but we have to keep moving, they'll have trackers coming after u-" "They're dead." The words came out flat, disbelieving, like she was testing whether saying them aloud actually made them true. "Both of them. They're dead." "I know." Wren's own voice broke on it. "I know. I'm so sorry. But if we stop now, you will be too, and I am not losing you as well. Do you hear me? Get up." Lanthe got up. They ran until dawn bled into the skyline, and kept moving even after. They ran off the roads and through terrain no search party would expect a princess to know how to survive in, though survive it she did. Some numb and stubborn animal part of her took over where grief had hollowed the rest of her out. She didn't cry, not that first day, not the second. The tears came later when it all became too much to bear. What kept her moving in those first raw days was her mother’s words. ‘Don’t you dare let it be for nothing’. Theron was after her, but not to kill her. No, if he ever wanted to fully claim the Silvermist crown, he would need her alive. Only one of the Fenris Bloodline could sit on the throne, or one mated to a Fenris. Theron would never truly be king unless he mated Lanthe. Theron needed her alive. That was the only mercy in any of it, and it was no mercy at all. Suddenly it made sense why he’d tried courting her so aggressively. Lanthe hadn’t believed Theron was a bad person back then, but she’d turned him down because she’d had faith in finding her fated mate just as her parents had found each other. Now she didn’t know whether to be grateful or rueful that she’d turned him down. Would things have been different if she’d simply accepted his advances? "Oakhaven," Wren said on the third day, when Lanthe could finally speak in more than fragments. "He won't follow us into Oakhaven. Not without starting a war he isn't ready for." "And if he decides he's ready?" Wren didn't answer that. She didn't have to. They reached Oakhaven's border three days after that, half-starved, heart still raw from the events of the last few days. Lanthe stood for a long moment, staring at the cold grey walls of a kingdom that had never been anything to her but a name on a map. A rival territory, ruled by an Alpha King known more for his silence than his mercy. It was the last place anyone would think to look for a Silvermist princess. Which was exactly why it was the only place left to go. "What do we tell them?" Wren asked, as they approached the gate. Lanthe thought of the girl who had laughed with her parents over wine, a lifetime and a handful of days ago. She thought of her mother's voice in the dark, ‘don't you dare let it be for nothing’. That girl was gone now, buried somewhere in the ash of a burning hall, and there was no bringing her back. "Tell them my name is Lira," she said. "Tell them I need work." She didn't look back at the horizon again after that.