Bastard Luna: Tribute Bride For The Nothern Alphas

Chapter 5

Francine's POV

“You are going into the North to become the West’s spy. Your father has commanded it.”

Those had been my mother’s words as she'd dragged me into the small room and dressed me in Stephany’s clothes. To sell the charade that I was the Alpha’s daughter, she packed some of those fineries into a bag and handed it to me.

I'd laughed.

“How ironic, Mother,” I said, wanting to provoke her.

Since I could walk I had been a servant in this pack. Since I could speak I had lived in the shadows — never claimed as a daughter, never loved by a people who only saw me as a stain on their Alpha’s reputation. A w***e turned concubines daughter.

Not even the mate bond with Zane which I had once believed would be my salvation, had spared me. That bond shattered and betrayed me, insulted my honour and then offered me up to the Northern Alpha as an untainted tribute bride, a virgin as the custom of tributes demanded.

Of course I walked away from my mother. Accepting to go north was humiliation enough, I had my own plans and spying for them was not one of them.

On the road the Alpha had tossed my bag into the river, a deliberate stripping of the identity they wanted me to wear, reminding me that I wasn't going to his pack as a princess of anywhere. I found something wickedly funny in it. Perhaps in his pack, princesses looked calloused like I did and were still called princesses for the title’s sake.

“Where is that bastard from the West?” a voice rasped against the dungeon walls where they had locked me. I could already tell who it was.

Yes dungeon. You heard right. I hadn’t expected to be thrown into a cell the night I arrived.

I had thought the mate bond and the Northern Alpha’s odd behavior might buy me some mercy. I had been naive.

“Damn daughter of a murderer!” someone spat.

“An abomination! She should be burned on a pyre for the pack to watch the cursed bloodline die!”

“If I could, I’d shift and rip her apart!” another hissed, servants whispering as they dragged me past, their words like knives.

They were right, in their minds. I was paraded as the blood of the man they hated, I had seen enough of him to know why. But to bind me to his line? Even under threat of death I wouldn’t want that known. Not ever. I would not let them tie me to such a legacy.

So I kept my silence. There were still decent families in the West I had to protect. I would stay here for a few days — gather what I needed — and then… I could finally recognize the familiar figure it was.

“Didn’t you hear me calling your name, you low life?” The vile voice snapped at me as a palm creaked across my cheek from the opened dungeon door I hadn’t even realized had been opened.

She had been coming here for a while now. When I was first thrown in, the servants had been kind enough to give me a piece of stale loaf bread. They must have known I was famished coming from days of having nothing to eat and dealing with one storm of crisis after another.

Even though it had only been a shaky piece of bread, I had been grateful. I had been about to eat it when this same lady arrived and ripped it from my hand, flinging it far away from the dungeon where I was kept.

Of course, I said nothing. Did I expect to have it easy here? I did nothing then, just as I did nothing now.

A servant walked closer and dropped a piece of clothing beside me on the cold floor.

I stared at it. The fabric was the same color as what she wore, if not the very same thing.

“I pleaded with the council to let me tear you apart with my wolf in a duel. If only they had let me, you would have regretted ever being alive, standing here, you shameless western w***e!” the lady hissed, her fists clenched so tightly before my face that I thought she might finally break and strike me again. Yet, for some reason I couldn’t understand, she restrained herself. She hadn’t touched me except for that one slap she had already given me.

“What is this for?” I managed to ask, staring straight at her. If she was older than me, it would only be by a few years. And even if she hated me, I wasn’t my father. If she wanted someone to rip apart, then let her find him. Rip him to pieces and avenge whatever she longed to because I was not the one who wronged her.

“Who do you think you are to ask questions?” she snapped suddenly, hatred blazing in her eyes as though her glare alone could scorch me.

I shuddered, but I wasn’t going to let someone like her break me. Not while I still had a plan to escape. If I gave her the satisfaction of my fear, she would only grow more brazen—just like my stepsister, Stephany.

Before she could speak again, the servant girl beside her fixed a sharp stare at her. The lady fell silent. There was tension between them, that much I could see, though I couldn’t tell what it meant or how it came to be.

Then they stepped out of the dungeon and I finally dressed in the servant’s clothes that had been tossed my way.

Stephany’s dress—the one I had been forced into—was already torn to rags by the angry mob on the day I was brought into their pack. That was before I was dragged into this dungeon, where I was told I would remain until the elders’ council made a decision concerning me.

The servant dress itself didn’t look much different from the one I was used to back in the West. If anything, it might even be considered luxury to me right now. Finally being able to change out of the dirty rags I had been in—a dress already stained with the food items that had been thrown at me by the angered members of the Northern pack—was a relief I could not ignore.

I wasn’t sure when I would be allowed to bathe again, but the simple knowledge that I was now clothed in something clean made me feel, for once, human again.

“Isn’t the rabid dog done?” Jennifer’s voice cracked through the air like a whip.

“Miss Jennifer…” the servant murmured cautiously, as though trying to rein her in.

That alone left me more puzzled than anything else. I was a servant now—yes—but she was a servant as well. Back in the Western Pack, servants dared not speak to the highborns unless they were permitted to. And Jennifer—this venomous woman before me—was clearly highborn from every tilt of her chin and sneer on her lips. So why was a servant daring to caution her? Why did she not lash out at the girl for reminding her of her place? The strangeness of their dynamic left me bewildered.

“You have been assigned to the floor cleaners’ quarters,” the servant said, turning to me again, voice steadier now. “You will serve food to the highborns and the royal family whenever the meals are ready. You are also charged with making sure the floors are neat wherever you are stationed. You are also—”

“Why do you need to spell out everything to her?” Jennifer snapped suddenly, her voice thick with venom.

Grateful. Yes, I was grateful for that interruption. They didn’t know, but I had done this before—back in my father’s pack. There was no need to remind me of duties I had already lived and breathed.

What mattered most was this: I was going to be taken out of this prison, away from its foul stench that had clawed at me for days, threatening to consume me whole.

That was all that mattered. Nothing else. Being a servant meant food—basic food, yes, but food nonetheless. It meant a mat to sleep on, fresh air to breathe. It meant life. And right now, I was ready to take life, however it was given.

“Did you hear what she said, servant?” Jennifer’s voice lashed through the silence and yanked me out of my haze.

My lips parted, ready to reply. I didn’t want to keep her waiting—one wrong pause and a highborn might take offense, might call it disrespect.

But before I could say anything, her voice cut through again, sharper, harsher, reminding me where she thought I belonged.

“You are nothing but a servant now,” she hissed, her tone dripping with the satisfaction of her cruelty.

If only you knew, I muttered in my head, my heart flaring with defiance she could never see.

“If I ask you to kneel and crawl towards me, that is what you shall do. If I ask you to dust my shoes with your tongue, that, Francine, is what you shall also do!”

Her words slashed at me, venom coating every syllable.

I stood there, staring at her, thin-veiled disgust creeping up my face no matter how hard I tried to restrain it. My chest burned with the fight to hold my tongue, but disbelief anchored me still.

Because I could not—would not—let myself believe that such humiliation was the fate she thought I would bow to.