Maid For The Cursed Alpha Daddies

The Arrival

Nora POV

I told myself I would not cry on the way there.

I lied.

By the time the black car pulled through the iron gates of the Varkas estate, my eyes were swollen, my throat was raw, and I had run out of tissues somewhere on the motorway. I pressed my forehead against the cold window and stared at the building rising out of the dark and thought - this is what my family traded me for.

Stone walls. Dark windows. A gate that locked from the outside.

The driver stopped the car, opened my door, and walked back to his seat without looking at me. Like delivering girls to cursed Alphas was just a normal Tuesday.

I grabbed my bag and got out.

The estate rose in front of me - three floors, dark stone, the kind of place that had seen things and did not let them leave.

I climbed the front steps.

The doors opened before I could knock.

Mrs. Aldric ran the house. She made that clear in the first thirty seconds.

She walked fast and talked faster - five a.m. start, east wing in the morning, common rooms in the afternoon, do not enter the west wing, do not knock on closed doors, do not ask questions about the brothers.

"What kind of questions?" I asked.

She stopped and turned. "Any kind. Their business. Their past." A pause. "Their curse."

She held my gaze just long enough to make sure I understood she was serious. Then she kept walking.

She showed me my room - small bed, one window, uniform folded on the mattress - and left me with ten minutes to change and get to the kitchen.

I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall.

It all made sense now. That was what kept running through my head like a broken record. All of it. The signs had been there for months - my mother taking calls in private, my father's face tight and guilty at dinner, the way they both went quiet the moment I walked into a room.

There were signs. So many signs.

I just chose to believe that my own family would never do this to me.

I wiped my face. Put on the uniform. Walked to the kitchen.

* * *

Two maids looked up when I came in.

The younger one - Petra - looked me over top to bottom, already decided.

"New one," she said.

"Nora," I said.

"How long do you think you'll last?"

"Longer than you want me to."

She blinked. The older one, Wren, pressed her lips together like she was fighting a smile.

Before anyone could say another word the kitchen door swung open and the air in the room shifted.

He walked in the way Alphas always did in the stories - like the room reorganised itself around him without being asked. Dark hair. Dark eyes. A jaw like carved stone. He went straight for the coffee without acknowledging any of us.

Petra went completely still. Wren stopped breathing.

He poured his coffee. Turned around.

His eyes landed on me and moved over me once - cold, quick, assessing - the way you look at something you are not sure belongs in your space.

"You're the new maid," he said.

"Nora," I said.

"I didn't ask."

The silence was suffocating. I could feel Petra willing me to look away. To bow my head. To do what every girl before me had probably done in this exact moment standing in front of Caspian Varkas.

I kept my eyes on his.

"You're welcome anyway," I said.

Something moved behind his gaze - dark and slow.

He picked up his coffee and walked out without another word.

The door swung shut.

Petra spun to face me with genuine horror. "Do you have a death wish?"

"Is he always like that?" I asked.

"That," she whispered, "was him in a good mood."

I kept my head down for the rest of the morning.

I cleaned. I scrubbed. I stayed out of the west wing. I asked no questions. I did exactly what Mrs. Aldric had told me.

And then, just before noon, the estate hit me for the second time.

I was scrubbing the floor of the east corridor when I heard my name. Not from behind a door - from the entrance hall. A voice I recognised immediately even though I had not heard it in three years.

I stood up slowly.

My cousin Lara was standing in the entrance hall. She looked the same - sharp eyes, perfectly styled hair, a smile that never quite reached anything real. She was holding a small envelope and speaking to Mrs. Aldric like she belonged here.

She saw me and stopped talking mid-sentence.

For a moment neither of us moved.

Then she smiled. That slow, deliberate smile that meant she had already won something and wanted me to know it.

"Nora," she said. "I thought that was you."

I gripped the scrubbing brush hard enough that my knuckles went white. "What are you doing here?"

"Delivering something for your mother." She held up the envelope. "She wanted to make sure the Varkas brothers received the final terms of the arrangement."

Final terms.

"What final terms?" My voice came out flat.

Lara tilted her head. "You didn't think a debt settlement was just you, did you?" Her smile widened. "You're the collateral, Nora. The terms say you stay until they decide the debt is cleared. Not one year. Not a fixed term." She paused to let that land. "However long they want you."

The scrubbing brush hit the floor.

"You're lying," I said.

"I'm really not." She handed the envelope to Mrs. Aldric, smoothed her jacket, and looked at me one last time with that same expression she had worn when everything fell apart. Not guilt. Not even satisfaction. Just done. Like I was already behind her.

"Take care of yourself," she said.

And she walked out.

Mrs. Aldric tucked the envelope under her arm and looked at me on the floor where I had dropped the brush.

"Pick that up," she said quietly. "And get back to work."

I did not cry.

I wanted to. Everything inside me was screaming to collapse right there on those cold stone floors. However long they want you. Not a year. Not a fixed term. However long.

But I pressed my lips together, picked up the brush, and kept scrubbing.

I was not going to give this house the satisfaction. Not today.

I found Wren in the laundry room at the end of the day. She closed the door behind her and checked the corridor twice before she spoke.

"I'm going to tell you something," she said. "Because no one told me when I first arrived and I wish they had."

I set down the sheet I was folding. "Tell me."

"The curse is real." Her voice dropped to almost nothing. "It is not gossip. The Moon Goddess placed it on the Varkas bloodline three generations back. The three brothers - if they do not complete the Blood Rite before the next blood moon - their wolves take over. Completely. Last time it happened, before their father managed to complete the Rite in time, he destroyed half the eastern territory." She swallowed. "Four pack members did not survive."

My chest went cold. "When is the blood moon?"

She looked at me.

"Wren. When?"

"Six weeks," she whispered.

Six weeks.

"What does the Blood Rite require?" I asked.

Wren opened her mouth -

The door opened.

We both spun around.

He stood in the doorway - the third brother. Leaner than the other two, quieter in the way he held himself, but the energy coming off him was the most unsettling thing I had felt since I walked through those front doors. His eyes moved to Wren.

Just looked at her. That was all.

Wren grabbed her basket and fled.

Then he looked at me.

He stepped inside - each step slow and deliberate - and stopped close enough that I had to tilt my chin up to hold his gaze.

"You've been asking about the Rite," he said. Quiet. Certain.

"What does it require?" I asked. My voice did not shake. I made sure of that.

He was silent for a long moment. Then he leaned down - just slightly, just enough - and spoke low against my ear.

"It requires a female. Willing or otherwise. Shared between all three of us. Marked. Bound." A pause. "Kept."

He straightened.

"So think carefully," Rhys said, his dark eyes holding mine, "about how long you plan to stay."

He walked out. The door closed softly.

I stood alone in that laundry room and the full weight of everything landed at once - Lara's smile, the envelope, however long they want you, and now this.

My family had not just sold me to settle a debt.

They had delivered me directly to the Blood Rite.

And the blood moon was in six weeks.