The Alliance Banquet Taboo

The grand staircase has twenty-six steps. In my last life, I counted every one on my knees.

     Tonight I take them standing. My knees remember every step, and they ache anyway.

       Two hundred guests fill the ballroom below, wolves in tuxedos and wolves in diamonds, their laughter rising toward the chandeliers. A string quartet saws away in the corner. Every Alpha in the northern territories is here to drink Brandon Cross's champagne and congratulate him on swallowing Redwater Valley.

Nobody looks up. Not yet. Silver trays glide between the guests, loaded with oysters and rare steak that cost more than my entire childhood, and the air tastes of perfume and roasted meat.

       I wear the same clothes I scrubbed their floors in this morning: a gray servant's tunic, black trousers, boots with cracked soles. The white dress they laid on my bed hangs in a closet upstairs, and the cup they wanted filled with my blood sits empty in the training hall. Garrick will find it in about four minutes. By then I plan to be somewhere he cannot drag me out of.

Halfway down, a woman in emerald silk spots me and chokes on her wine.

       "Is that the blood-bag?" she whispers, loud enough to carry. "Cross is mating that? She looks like she crawled out of a drain."

"Reeks of bleach," her husband says. "Let him have the filth. Give her a leash and a collar, and she is worth more than the property."

       Laughter ripples around them. A younger Alpha raises his glass at me and mouths a word that begins with "w." My feet keep moving. Each insult goes into the ledger. When their money turns to paper, I will remember every name in this room.

At the bottom step, the crowd parts for a man in a black tuxedo.

      Brandon Cross cuts through the guests like he owns the air. Golden hair, amber eyes, a jaw built for magazine covers. Under the silk he favors his left shoulder, the wound I was ordered to heal an hour ago with my own blood.

Chloe clings to his arm in a red gown that shows too much skin, my mother's ruby sparkling between her breasts.

        His smile disappears when he sees my clothes.

"What the fuck are you wearing?" He lowers his voice, but the venom carries anyway. "I gave you one order. Dress, hair, smile. Instead you drag that rag into my banquet in front of the Coalition? Are you trying to humiliate me, you stupid bitch?"

       "She is," Chloe says brightly. "I told you she was getting mouthy."

Lifting my chin, I answer him. "I am not wearing that dress."

        The nearest conversations die. Heads turn, one after another. Somewhere to my left, a glass cracks.

Brandon steps closer, until I can smell the cedar cologne he wears over the stink of his arrogance. Behind him, Garrick shoves through the crowd, scar-faced, already breathing hard from his sprint. The cup. He found it.

      "You do not get a say," Brandon murmurs. His fingers close around my left wrist, directly over the faded pack mark, and he squeezes until the bones grind. Once I would have thanked him for noticing me. "You are a tool, Vespera. A very expensive one. Nobody asked what a tool wants for dinner, and nobody will start tonight."

Pain runs up my arm, and the old reflex kicks in, the one that drops my gaze and shrinks my voice to a whisper.

     Then something answers it.

A chime rings inside my skull, flat and metallic, nothing like a wolf's mind-link.

[System Initializing.]

[Ancient Royal Bloodline Detected. Sovereign Interface Unlocking.]

        A blue panel unfolds in the air in front of my left eye, invisible to everyone else. Text scrolls across it faster than I can read.

[Host: Vespera Vane. Class: Untethered Outcast, Rank 1.]

[Quest 1: Sever the Shackle. Publicly reject the Alpha's bond within three hours. Reward: 100 Genesis Points and full access to the Moon Goddess Realm. Penalty for failure: soul dissolution.]

      The panel vanishes. His grip remains.

My pulse slows. In my last life, I died begging this man for mercy. That memory has sat in my chest like a stone ever since, and now the stone is hot.

      "Vespera." Brandon's voice drops, meant only for me. His claws slide out and prick my skin. "Look at me. You will bow your head, apologize to our guests, and carry the trays. Then you will smile while I announce our bond. If you dare embarrass me again tonight, I will put you in the cellar until the Coalition leaves. Do you understand me?"

Chloe giggles into her glass. "Don't forget the part where you thank him, bitch. On your knees. Brandon likes the view."

      My eyes skip past her and land on him.

I study him: the lines at the corners of his eyes, the sweat on his upper lip, the vein jumping in his neck. Nobody has ever refused this man. Not a servant, not a mate, not the omega whose blood kept him alive through four border wars.

       Garrick arrives at his shoulder. "Alpha, the cup in the training hall was empty."

"I heard," Brandon says. He does not look away from me. "Garrick, take her downstairs. Shackles. We'll announce the bond with her in a collar if we have to."

Behind them, the quartet stumbles to a stop.

      Two hundred faces turn. Every pair of eyes finds the servant at the base of the stairs, the Alpha's fist around her wrist, the beta's hand reaching for her neck. They wait for the sobbing and the begging, for the little omega to do what she was bred to do.

I peel Brandon's fingers off my wrist one by one.

      He is too surprised to stop me.

"Vespera, know your place," he snarls. "Submit and serve the guests."

      The ballroom is so silent I can hear the champagne bubbles pop.

I raise my left hand and show the room the faded red mark, the brand of ownership that has burned under my skin for six years. Then I step back from him, one clean step, and the Alpha of Crescent Ridge stands there with his empty fist in the air.

    "No."

Six years of swallowing that word. It tastes like iron, and like air.

     The word carries to the back of the hall.

     "Before the ancestors and every witness in this hall, I invoke the ancient right of blood refusal. I, Vespera Vane, reject you as my Alpha, and as my mate."