The Disposable One
REIGN POV
I learned early that pretty was a curse.
Not the kind people write poems about. Not the soft, glowing kind that opens doors and makes men bow. Mine was the dangerous kind. The kind that made men forget themselves and remember only their lower part.
I was sixteen the first time Beta Cain cornered me in the storage corridor behind the packhouse kitchen. I remember the smell of that hallway — damp wood and old meat. I remember the way his shadow swallowed mine against the wall like mine didn't deserve to exist separately.
"You know you want it," he'd said, fingers already curling around my wrist. "A bastard girl like you should be grateful for the attention."
I'd bitten him.
Drew blood right from the meat of his palm and ran before he could recover.
He told everyone I seduced him. My father believed him. My stepmother, Mara, smiled like Christmas had come early. And I spent three days locked in the cellar with nothing but cold stone and the rats that had grown used to my company.
That was four years ago.
I still ran when I heard heavy footsteps behind me.
Today the sun was barely up when Mara's voice cut through my sleep like a blade.
"Get up. There's work."
There was always work.
I rolled off the thin mattress they'd shoved into the corner of the laundry room — because that's where I slept. Not in a bedroom. Not with the rest of the family in the main house. In the laundry room, where the pipes groaned all night and the air always smelled like detergent and mildew. A cot, a cracked mirror nailed crooked to the wall, and a single hook for my clothes.
That was my life in the Sinclair estate.
I splashed cold water on my face at the utility sink and looked up at my reflection.
The bruise along my jaw from two days ago had deepened to a ugly purple-green. Celia — my stepsister, seventeen years old and already as vicious as her mother — had thrown a ceramic mug at my face for bringing her the wrong shade of tea. The cut above my eyebrow from last week had scabbed over but it pulled tight when I frowned.
I looked like a girl who had lost every fight she'd ever been in.
I felt like one too. Most days.
I pulled my dark hair back, covered the bruise with the collar of my shirt as best I could, and went to work.
Breakfast service for the Alpha household meant three hours on my feet. Cooking, serving, cleaning while Mara sat at the head of the table in my father's absence and picked apart everything I did with her eyes.
"You call this coffee?" She pushed the cup toward the edge of the table without looking at me. "Make it again."
I made it again.
Celia kicked my ankle as I passed her chair and laughed when I stumbled. "Careful, trash. Don't spill on me."
I said nothing. I'd learned that silence was armor. The moment you react, they have you. The moment they see the pain land — they aim for the same spot every time.
Pack members filtered in and out of the kitchen. Warriors, omegas, staff. Most ignored me. A few gave me that look — the sliding, assessing kind that started at my face and moved slow and deliberate downward. I learned to make myself small under that gaze. Shoulders in, eyes down, move fast, disappear.
But some days disappearing wasn't enough.
Elder Silas caught my arm as I was clearing plates from the side table. His grip was iron and his breath was warm against the side of my neck before I even registered he was close.
"You've grown up," he murmured.
My stomach turned to stone.
He was sixty years old. A respected elder of the Sinclair pack. A man my father called a friend.
"Let go of me." My voice came out quieter than I wanted. It always did when I was scared.
"Or what?" His thumb pressed into the inside of my wrist, right over my pulse. "You going to bite me like you bit Cain? Look how well that worked out for you."
He chuckled. Actually chuckled. Like I was a small amusing thing. Like my discomfort was entertainment before his morning got started.
I yanked my arm back hard and the plates in my other hand rattled dangerously. He let go — not because he wanted to. Because Mara walked back in from the hallway and even men like Silas knew not to be obvious.
He straightened his collar and left without another word.
I stood there for a moment gripping the plates so hard my knuckles went white, breathing through my nose, telling myself what I always told myself.
Survive today. Just today.
My father summoned me after lunch.
That was rare enough that my stomach dropped the moment the omega messenger delivered the note. My father — Alpha Dorian Sinclair, Hybrid Monarch, feared by enemies and worshipped by his pack — acknowledged my existence maybe four times a year. Birthdays didn't count. He'd never remembered a single one.
I knocked on his study door and waited.
"Enter."
He was standing at the window when I came in, hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the grounds like he was watching something far more interesting than whatever he was about to say to me. He didn't turn around.
Mara was seated in the chair by the fireplace. Celia stood behind her, arms folded, wearing a smile I didn't trust.
That smile meant she already knew something I didn't.
"There's been a development," my father said to the window.
I waited.
"The Lycan High Council has formally requested a marriage alliance between our bloodline and the Blackwood throne." He paused. "Prince Ares Blackwood."
The name hit the air like a stone hitting still water.
Even I knew that name. Everyone knew that name. The Lycan Prince. Cold. Ruthless. A man who had gone to war at eighteen and came back with enemy blood on his hands and ice where his heart used to be. The lycans' crown prince who had made it very clear on every public occasion that hybrids were the lowest form of life walking the earth.
"celia was nominated," my father continued. Still not turning around. "As my eldest legitimate daughter she was the natural choice."
I looked at Celia.
She looked right back at me and her smile widened.
Oh no.
"I told Father I couldn't possibly," Celia said, her voice dripping with rehearsed sweetness. "The lycans hate us. Everyone knows what they do to hybrids behind closed doors. I'd be walking into a death sentence." She tilted her head. "But then I thought — the council didn't specifically request me by name. They just said a daughter of the Sinclair bloodline."
The room went very quiet.
My father finally turned from the window.
He looked at me the way he always looked at me. Like an inconvenient piece of furniture he didn't remember purchasing.
"You leave in three days," he said.
Those five words.
That was it. No apology. No softening. No moment where he looked at the bruise on my daughter's jaw and felt a single thing about what he was sentencing her to.
"I —" My voice cracked before I could stop it. "Father —"
"You have no wolf," he said, cutting me off clean. "No rank. No value here. At least this way you serve a purpose."
Mara smiled into her teacup.
Celia examined her nails.
And my father turned back to his window like I had already left the room.
I didn't cry until I was back in the laundry room with the door shut and the pipes groaning their familiar misery around me.
I sat on the edge of my cot and pressed both hands flat against my thighs and I breathed. In and out. In and out.
They're sending me to the lycans.
To a prince who hated my blood.
To a court that would see me as the enemy.
Alone. No wolf. No rank. No one is coming with me.
I looked up at my cracked reflection in that crooked mirror.
The bruised jaw. The healing cut. The girl who had survived this house for twenty years on nothing but stubborn breath and quiet fury.
Survive today, I told her.
She stared back at me like she wasn't sure today was survivable.
But she got up anyway.
She always got up.
