The Maid Who Stole My Alpha

Chapter Eight

(Daciana POV)

“Someone wants you blind, Bardolph, and they are using your pride because they know it is easier to wound than your heart.”

A dangerous murmur passed through the pack because nobody spoke to an Alpha that way unless love or death had stolen fear.

Bardolph’s jaw tightened, but his eyes did not leave mine, and the bond between us trembled like a dying flame.

Ashina rose suddenly, swaying as if my words had hurt her wounded body more than the cut on her wrist.

“She is twisting you again, my Alpha,” Ashina cried, and the crowd shifted toward her pain like grass bending toward rain.

I looked at her, and my wolf finally understood something that made the whole room feel colder than winter.

Ashina was not only lying because she wanted Bardolph; she was performing for people who had already agreed to hate me.

I turned to the crowd, searching their faces, and saw Hrolf nod once to Boris before Boris unrolled another paper.

“We have one more witness,” Boris announced, and my stomach dropped because traps always had one final door.

A woman stepped from the back of the hall wearing a servant’s brown dress, her face hidden beneath a plain hood.

When she lowered the hood, my breath stopped because I knew her as Louve, the kitchen maid I had once saved from exile.

Louve’s eyes were swollen from crying, but she would not look at me, and that told me fear had already bought her tongue.

“She gave me the pouch,” Louve whispered, pointing at me while tears rolled down her cheeks.

A sound of shock moved through the hall, and Bardolph’s face hardened like stone around the pain he refused to show.

I stared at Louve, remembering how she had held my hands after I begged Bardolph to forgive her brother’s theft.

“Look at me and say that again,” I said, because some lies died when forced to face the person they killed.

Louve lifted her eyes for one second, and what I saw there was not guilt, hatred, or belief in my crimes.

It was terror.

Then her gaze flicked toward Hrolf, so quickly most people missed it, but I did not miss the way he touched his dagger.

The truth opened beneath me like a dark hole because Ashina had help from someone stronger than a maid should have.

Before I could speak, Louve’s knees buckled, and foam spilled from her mouth as she collapsed onto the stone floor.

Screams exploded through the hall, and the healer rushed forward while Ashina covered her mouth with perfectly timed horror.

I tried to run to Louve, but guards blocked me, and Bardolph’s eyes turned deadly as poison filled the air.

“She killed the witness,” Boris shouted, though Louve had fallen too far from me for my hands to have reached her.

The pack roared with fury, and for the first time that night, I saw Bardolph truly believe I was lost to him.

My mate walked toward me slowly, and every step tore the bond wider until I felt blood in my soul.

“Daciana of Blackfang,” he said, his voice shaking with anger, grief, and something close to madness.

I knew what was coming before he said it, and my wolf howled so loudly inside me that I almost fell.

“No,” I whispered, but the word disappeared beneath the storm of the pack’s rage and the cruel light in Ashina’s eyes.

Bardolph raised his hand, and the hall became silent enough for my own broken breathing to shame me.

“Before this pack and under the red moon, I reject you as my mate and remove you forever as my Luna,” he said.

The bond snapped like fire through my bones.

I screamed before I knew the sound was mine, and Bardolph staggered as if the same invisible blade had cut him too.

For one heartbeat, his face changed, and I saw the man who had once loved me trapped behind the Alpha who destroyed me.

Then Ashina cried out and fell into his arms, stealing even the moment of my pain as if it belonged to her.

The guards dragged me backward while the pack shouted for chains, exile, or death beneath the burning red moon.

I could barely breathe, but I saw Farkas watching me with fierce, hidden warning as he slipped something beneath his sleeve.

He moved through the crowd like an old shadow, then dropped a small iron key near my foot without looking down.

Hope came to me in the shape of cold metal and one old man’s silent betrayal of the Alpha’s order.

I curled my toes over the key before the guard could see it, hiding the only chance I had left.

Ashina lifted her face from Bardolph’s chest and looked at me across the hall with a smile meant only for my ruin.

Then the healer screamed from beside Louve’s body, and every person in the hall turned toward the fallen witness.

“She is still alive,” the healer shouted, his voice cracking with fear as Louve’s eyes opened wide.

Louve pointed one shaking finger toward the Alpha chair, but her gaze was not on me, Bardolph, or Ashina.

Her finger pointed straight at Hrolf.

Then blood spilled from her mouth as she whispered one name that froze the entire pack into deadly silence.

“Conri.”