Nora

I make it back to the festival grounds just as the morning sun fully breaks over the tree line. My body aches in places I have never felt before and my clothes are still damp from the storm, but I keep my head down and slip through the thick woods like a ghost while the golden light burns away the mist clinging to the dirt paths.

I sneak back into our designated sleeping tent and move silently to my corner, quickly stripping off my ruined clothes and pulling on a clean, dry work tunic. I grab my thin sleeping roll and pick up the small pouch of dried meat left out for my morning rations, and I lie down and close my eyes, trying to slow my breathing so it looks like I have been here all night.

I barely get settled before the tent flap rips open and the other four girls file in.

Sable spots me first. Her eyes sweep over my damp hair and the fresh scrapes on my arms and her mouth twists. "Where the hell have you been?"

Before I can even lift my hands to sign an answer she splashes a cup of cold water right in my face. The shock of it makes me flinch back, but the other girls are already moving. Kira rips my sleeping roll right out from under me and Fen snatches the pouch of dried meat from my hands.

"Dirty little slut." Maren says it flatly, like it is a fact, like it costs her nothing to say it even though I am the one who sneaks her extra food when Alpha Gregor punishes her and forces her to starve. "You left us to finish all the heavy work last night and went off to spread your legs for some wolf."

I hold my empty hands up to sign that nothing happened, that I got lost, but none of them know sign language and none of them care. They divide my only food among themselves and force me to sit shivering on the bare dirt floor with nothing.

The morning preparations explode into loud chaos almost immediately. Wolves run everywhere, heavy wagons roll through the mud, and I throw myself into work to keep my head down and my mind off the hollow ache in my chest from waking up alone in that cave.

I am carrying a massive bucket of clean water toward the cooking fires when a rough hand grabs the back of my tunic and violently yanks me backward. The bucket drops, splashing freezing water all over my bare feet. I stumble and look up.

Ronan is glaring down at me with pure venom in his eyes. He is still limping slightly from where I kneed him between the legs in his tent, and the sheer malice rolling off him makes my blood run cold.

He does not yell. He does not hit me. He just wraps his thick fingers bruisingly tight around my upper arm and drags me through the crowded camp toward a massive red and gold pavilion.

He throws me roughly to my knees in the dirt.

Right in front of me is a visiting Alpha, a heavy and greasy-looking man who is busy tearing a massive piece of roasted meat right off the bone. He barely glances up when I hit the ground.

Ronan immediately starts talking. "I have a female available for trade. She is young, strong body, beautiful face, and she does not speak, which means she cannot cause problems." He gestures down at me like I am a piece of furniture. "I am asking for the stretch of hunting territory near your southern border in exchange for her permanent ownership."

The visiting Alpha chews slowly and looks down at me where I am trembling in the mud. "She does not speak? What do you mean, she does not speak?"

"She is mute. Born that way. She cannot talk, cannot argue, cannot refuse a command." Ronan grins like this is the best selling point he has. "A perfectly obedient servant."

Pure panic grips my chest. I desperately scrape my fingers against the wet dirt and grab a handful of mud. I frantically smear the word NO across the pale skin of my left palm and hold my shaking hand up so the visiting Alpha can see it. I silently plead with my eyes for him to refuse the trade and leave me alone.

Ronan spots what I am doing and lets out a harsh, cruel laugh. He drops down and snatches my wrist, roughly wiping the mud from my palm with his thumb until the word is gone. He looks at the visiting Alpha and speaks smoothly.

"She is just a little bit shy. She will learn to be perfectly obedient once she is broken in properly."

The visiting Alpha stares at me for a long, quiet moment. Then he scoffs and tosses his half-eaten bone into the dirt. "A defective mute is not worth giving up good hunting land. Find something else to offer me."

The deal falls apart right there. The humiliation of being rejected makes Ronan's entire face turn red with boiling rage, and he does not say another word to the visiting Alpha.

He reaches down and grabs a thick fistful of my hair. He uses it to haul me up from the dirt and drags me away from the crowded pavilion, his strides long and furious. The pain in my scalp is blinding. I stumble over my own feet trying to keep up, my hands reaching up to pull desperately at his fingers, trying to relieve the tearing pressure on my roots.

He drags me right past the main supply tents and I see her. Maren. She is standing right there, arms full of folded linens, the same girl I sneak extra scraps of food to when the Alpha punishes her, the same girl who called me a slut this morning.

Our eyes lock for a split second and I silently plead with her to do something, to get help, to tell anyone.

But she just presses her lips together and looks away.

And the ground drops out from under me because I have seen this before. I have lived this exact moment before, down to the way the woman's eyes slide sideways and her chin tucks down and her body turns just slightly away, like she is already erasing me from her line of sight. I have seen a woman choose cowardice over helping the only person who ever showed her kindness, and the last time I saw it, my mother died.

I was seven years old. My mother's best friend was a woman named Lena, a small, quiet omega who trembled whenever the Alpha raised his voice. My mother loved her. She fed her, braided her hair, spoke up for her in pack meetings when no one else would. When the Alpha's enforcers dragged Lena out by her arms one night and threw her to the ground in front of the whole pack for some small infraction I was too young to understand, my mother was the only one who stood up.

"She did nothing wrong," my mother said, loud and clear, in front of the Alpha and every wolf in the pack. "You cannot keep punishing her for existing."

The Alpha went very quiet. He looked at Lena on the ground and he asked her a simple question. He asked her if my mother had been speaking against him behind his back, and if she had been encouraging the other omegas to disobey his orders.

Lena looked up at my mother. My mother who had fed her. My mother who had held her while she cried. My mother who was standing in front of an entire pack defending her at the risk of her own life.

And Lena said yes.

She lied. She told them my mother had been plotting against the Alpha for months, spreading dissent and trying to turn the omegas against the pack leadership, and every word out of her mouth was a lie that my mother's own best friend invented on the spot to save herself from the punishment she was already receiving.

The Alpha did not hesitate. He grabbed my mother by the hair and forced her to her knees right there in the dirt, and he killed her while I watched from behind the legs of the crowd. I was small enough that nobody noticed me standing there. I saw the whole thing. I saw Lena crawl away on her hands and knees while my mother's body hit the ground, and I saw Lena not look back.

I did not scream. I opened my mouth to scream and nothing came out, and nothing has come out since. Speaking up is what killed my mother, so I stopped speaking. A seven-year-old's logic, simple and brutal and absolute. If you stay silent, you survive. If you use your voice, you die.

They sold me to Alpha Gregor's pack not long after. A mute orphan girl with no family and no value, traded for a small piece of border territory that nobody else wanted. I have not spoken a word in over a decade, and the wall I built around my voice grew taller with every year that passed.

Now I watch Maren look away from me and the memory of Lena is so sharp and so sudden that it takes the air right out of my lungs. But the pain barely has time to register before Ronan drags me behind the heavy canvas of the supply tents where no one can see us. He shoves me hard to the ground. I hit the dirt with a heavy thud and the breath rushes out of my lungs just a second before his boot kicks me brutally in the ribs.

I curl into a tight ball and wrap my arms over my head as he starts beating me. His fists rain down on my shoulders and back while he curses me between hits.

"You embarrassed me." A fist to my spine. "In front of every Alpha at this festival." A kick to my hip. "Do you know what that costs me? Do you have any idea?"

He drops down and pins my struggling body to the ground with his knees. His hands wrap painfully tight around my throat and his face is close enough that I can smell the stale liquor on his breath.

"I am going to finish what I started yesterday." His voice is low and thick and his eyes are completely dead. "And when I am done with you, you will not even be able to crawl."

My vision is already starting to blur with dark spots.

Then he is ripped off me.

The force of it is so massive that Ronan actually flies through the air and crashes hard into a stack of wooden supply crates, shattering them into heavy splinters. The sound is deafening, like a tree falling, and the shock of it sends nearby workers scrambling backward.

I roll onto my side and gasp frantically for air, coughing and clutching my bruised throat as I look up.

Standing there is the man from the woods. The man from the cave. His broad shoulders are heaving with heavy breaths and his dark eyes burn with a fury so lethal and so absolute that the air around him seems to vibrate.

Ronan scrambles to his feet, wiping blood from his mouth. He does not recognize who just threw him. He does not care. He just snarls and launches himself forward to attack.

The man does not flinch. He steps into the attack, catches Ronan's arm mid-swing, and twists it with brutal, deliberate force. The snap of bone is loud enough to echo off the tents. Ronan screams in pure agony and drops to his knees in the dirt, clutching his broken arm while the man simply towers over him.

"You like beating women who cannot fight back?" The man's voice is deep and flat and terrifyingly calm. "Try that with me."

Ronan just whimpers and curls over his shattered arm.

I try to push myself backward into the canvas tent, terrified by the violence, but then I start to notice the sudden absolute silence falling over the area. I look past the broken crates and see people dropping to their knees, one by one, all around us.

The heavily armed festival guards. The exhausted workers carrying supplies. Even the visiting wolves and Alphas who came running to investigate the noise are all bowing their heads completely to the dirt.

They do not look at him with just fear. They look at him with total reverence.

Then a chorus of low voices ripples through the crowd, one after another, spreading outward like a wave.

"My King."

"King Declan."

My heart stops completely. My eyes snap back to the man and my gaze drops from his sharp jaw down to his right hand, where a heavy gold and black ring sits on his finger, bearing the unmistakable royal crest of the wolf territories.

He is the Alpha King.

Nora

The supreme ruler of all the packs, the most powerful and dangerous wolf in existence, and the very same man I gave myself to in a dirty cave just hours ago.

He turns his head and looks down at me huddled in the dirt. A spark of recognition flashes hot and bright in his dark eyes.

He knows exactly who I am.

He does not say a single word of comfort to me. He stares at me for one long, burning moment, and then he turns his cold gaze back to Ronan, who is still weeping on the ground and cradling his broken arm.

"Whose son is this?" His deep voice carries across the silent crowd with an authority that makes even the older Alphas flinch.

One of the festival organizers steps forward on shaking legs, bowing so low his nose nearly touches the dirt. "He is the son of Alpha Gregor, my King. Of the Ashwood Pack."

"And the girl?"

"She, she is from the same pack, my King. Listed as a basic laborer for the festival."

The King is quiet for a moment and then he motions sharply with his hand to a group of heavily armed guards standing at the edge of the crowd. "Take the boy to the holding cells. Detain Alpha Gregor and the rest of his pack immediately. I want a full accounting of every female he brought to this festival."

"Yes, my King." The guards move fast, hauling a screaming Ronan to his feet and dragging him away while two more peel off toward the main encampment.

The King looks back at me. I am still on the ground, bleeding from my nose and holding my ribs, and every muscle in my body is locked tight with pain and fear and the overwhelming pull of the bond that is still dragging at the center of my chest like a fishhook.

"Bring her as well." He does not address me directly. He just turns his back and walks toward the center of the festival where a line of massive royal carriages is waiting, and two of his remaining guards step forward to gently help me to my feet.

They put me in the back of a heavily guarded ceremonial wagon. The ride is long and bumpy and my ribs ache with every jolt, but I barely notice the pain because my mind is spinning so fast I feel dizzy. The King. He is the King. I gave my virginity to the Alpha King in a cave during a rainstorm and I did not even know his name.

The royal palace is a sprawling estate made of stone and glass, more beautiful than anything I have ever seen in my life. The carriages roll through a massive iron gate, past manicured grounds with ancient trees and stone fountains, and up a long path to the front of the main building.

For the first time in my entire miserable life, a tiny spark of genuine hope flares up in my chest. He saved me from the beating. He punished my abuser. He brought me to his own home. It makes me believe, foolishly and desperately, that my life is finally about to change, that the deep pull between us meant something real to him too.

They escort me into the grand hall of the palace, a cavernous room with high ceilings and polished stone floors. The rest of his royal court is gathered along the sides, dozens of well-dressed wolves watching with sharp, curious eyes as a bleeding, dirty girl in a torn servant's tunic is brought before their King.

He sits on an elevated throne at the far end of the hall, and when I look up at him I search his face for any trace of the man who held me in the cave, any flicker of warmth or recognition, but his expression is completely blank.

"What pack are you from?" His deep voice echoes loudly through the silent hall.

I stare up at him and swallow hard, my hands trembling at my sides, because I have no way to answer him. My mouth opens out of pure reflex and nothing comes out.

The guard standing next to me quickly bows his head and speaks. "She is a mute, my King. She was listed as a basic laborer at the festival."

The King does not blink. He does not show a single ounce of surprise or recognition. He just leans back against his heavy throne and waves his hand dismissively in my direction.

"A basic laborer." He repeats it flatly, his tone casual and completely detached. "Then take her down to the servants' quarters and put her to work in the kitchen with the rest of them."

The hope in my chest goes out like a candle flame between two fingers.

Three weeks pass.

Three long, miserable, confusing weeks in the servants' quarters of the royal palace. I am assigned to the hot, crowded kitchens where I spend my days scrubbing heavy iron pots and chopping endless piles of vegetables. I keep my head down and I work, and I survive by making myself completely invisible, which is actually something I am very good at after a lifetime of practice.

It is, despite everything, a significant upgrade from the endless abuse in my old pack. The head cook is rough but not cruel. The other kitchen servants ignore me for the most part. Nobody beats me, nobody drags me around by my hair, and the food, even the servants' rations, is better than anything I have ever eaten.

I learn through whispered conversations I overhear in the kitchens that my old pack was completely disbanded. Alpha Gregor and his son Ronan were stripped of all their positions and thrown into the royal lockups to face punishment from the King and his council. The rest of the pack members were scattered to different packs across the territories.

The news warms my heart, because at least he cared enough to get me justice, even if he did not care enough to acknowledge me.

Then one evening, the head cook shoves a heavy silver tray into my hands.

"The King's evening meal," she says without looking up from the pot she is stirring. "Take it up to his private chambers. Through the main corridor, up the grand staircase, last door at the end of the hall. Do not knock, just go in, set it down, and leave. He does not like being disturbed."

My heart hammers against my ribs so hard I am sure the other servants can hear it as I carry the tray up the grand staircase. The corridors up here are wide and silent and lined with oil paintings and heavy tapestries. My bare feet make no sound on the thick carpet.

I push open the heavy oak doors and step inside.

He is completely alone.

He is standing near the large stone fireplace with one hand resting on the mantel, staring into the flames, and the second the heavy doors click shut behind me his dark eyes snap to mine. He just stares at me. The silence in the massive room is suffocating, charged with the memory of the storm and the cave and his hands on my skin.

I keep my eyes glued to the floor. I quickly set the heavy tray down on the table and turn to leave.

"Wait."

His deep voice echoes through the room and I freeze instantly, my bare feet rooted to the thick carpet.

I hear his footsteps crossing the floor, heavy and deliberate, and he walks right up to me and stops so close that I can feel the heat radiating off his body through the thin fabric of my uniform. He reaches out and grabs my chin firmly, tilting my face up so I have no choice but to look directly into his dark eyes.

The physical contact sends a wild electric shock straight down my spine.

He leans in close and his voice is low and rough. "You used that scent-masking potion to hide your true rank and bewitch me into touching you."

My eyes go wide and I try to shake my head, but his grip on my chin holds me still.

"Cheap tactics like that will never work on me again." He stares down at my lips and his expression hardens. "And I only stepped in at the festival because I cannot stand seeing women being abused and exploited, not because you mean anything to me."

The words feel like a fist to my chest. I quickly pull my face back and he lets go, his hand dropping to his side.

He takes a step back and looks down at me with cold indifference. "Whatever happened between us in the woods stays in the woods. Remember your place and stay out of my way."

My eyes are burning. I know he can see the tears building because his jaw flexes once and then he looks away from me, turning back toward the fireplace. I swallow the painful lump in my throat, give him a single jerky nod, and practically run out of the room.

I hurry down the dimly lit corridor, desperate to get back to the kitchens, but a woman suddenly steps right out of the shadows and blocks my path.

She is beautiful in the way a knife is beautiful, all sharp lines and cold glitter. She wears expensive silk that shimmers when she moves and looks down at me like I am something stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

"Why is a filthy servant coming out of the King's private wing at this hour?" Her voice is low and dangerous and her eyes rake over my plain uniform with open disgust.

I open my mouth but nothing comes out. I just stand there trembling because I cannot answer her.

"Did you not hear me?" She steps closer and her perfectly manicured hand shoots out, grabbing my jaw with brutal force, her sharp nails digging painfully into my skin. "Basic servants are only allowed to use the back service doors. You are never to walk these corridors, and you are never to enter the King's wing again. Am I making myself clear?"

She does not wait for an answer that she knows I cannot give. She just shoves me backward so hard that I stumble and fall against the stone wall, and then she turns and walks away, her silk skirts swishing behind her.

I slide down the wall and sit on the cold floor, pressing my palm against my bruised jaw. A kitchen boy rounds the corner carrying a stack of clean linens and nearly trips over my legs. He looks down at me, then glances back in the direction Selene disappeared.

"You should not have been up here," he whispers, shifting the linens nervously in his arms. "That is Selene. She is the King's chosen mate.