Little me

chapter three

He pressed the freezing flat of the blade directly against my forehead.

"By the law of our packs, I name you Luna."

The crowd erupted, but Kieran leaned back down, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper meant only for me.

"Luna in name only. You will have no place in my bed, no seat at my table, and you will never bear my mark. I will be the one to end your life personally."

He shoved me backward into the dirt.

"Rourke, take her to the West Wing. And make sure she is chained securely to the wall."

Rourke jerked the chain, I tripped over my swollen feet, but I forced my muscles to lock.

Not here, I told myself, staring back at the mocking crowd. Not in front of them.

As Kieran walked away, the pack members threw scraps of meat and rotten fruit at me. I kept my head high as Rourke dragged me toward the dark corridors of the palace.

Suddenly, a lone wolf's howl echoed through the night.

It was long, defiant, and intimately known. Caleb , I can recognise that howl from anywhere. It was him

The West Wing storage room smelled like something had died inside it. Not fresh death, but old rot.

Rats skittered across the shadows. They froze midway when my body hit the floor, their heads tilted and whiskers twitching.

He had tossed me in like garbage. My knees cracked hard against the stone, and a flash of blinding white pain obscured my vision for a second.

Behind me, the heavy wooden door slammed shut. Metal shrieked violently against metal as the lock clicked into place. That tiny sound felt louder than the explosions that had leveled my home.

"Welcome home, Princess," Rourke sneered from the other side of the gate. He spat, the glob landing barely an inch from my trembling fingers. I stared at it until it blurred, just another stain on the filthy floor. "Alpha said you get water only. No food until you learn some goddamn respect."

His heavy footsteps gradually retreated down the corridor, leaving me in total darkness.

I stayed on the floor for hours. The deep chill of the stone bit through the torn fabric of my gown, settling deep into my bones. Every time I moved, the iron cuffs clamped around my wrists dragged against the wall, scraping my skin raw.

Caleb. That howl from the woods had definitely been him. It was young, choked, and desperate—sounding as though someone had clamped a rough hand over his mouth halfway through.

The hours bled together into a miserable haze.

I tried to close my eyes, but the nightmares were waiting for me in the dark. I saw Eliora my personal maid blood pooling on the bedroom floor. I saw Papa’s head rolling down the stone stairs, his eyes still seemingly tracking me. I heard Mama’s raw, agonizing scream echoing in a loop.

The laughing sound of the little boy whose sister gifted me bracelet that afternoon breaking halfway.

I jolted awake, gasping for air. I pressed my forehead against the freezing stone, my fingers squeezing the bracelet tightly in my palm until the wood cut a sharp crescent into my skin.

That was when another memory came in uninvited.

I was nine years old, and Papa had taken me hunting for the very first time. Just the two of us.

"Stay behind me, little wolf," he had said, his heavy iron axe resting on his shoulder as if it weighed nothing at all.

We had been tracking a deer near Silver Creek when I carelessly wandered off to pick a cluster of wildflowers. A low, vibrating growl had cut through the trees. A mountain cat—massive enough to swallow me whole—prowled out from behind a boulder, barely ten steps away. I had frozen, my heart trapped in my chest like a panicked bird.

But Papa hadn't hesitated. He was between the beast and me in a single heartbeat. His axe was raised high, and his voice boomed through the forest.

"Don't move, baby. Look at me, not at it," he had commanded calmly.

He didn't even have to kill it. He simply let out a roar so fierce, so loud, that the mountain cat turned and bolted into the bush. When it was gone, Papa dropped to his knees in front of me, his large hands framing my face.

"Hey, you're okay. I'm here, and I'll always be here to keep you safe, okay? Even if I have to stand between you and the whole world."

I had cried then. Not from fear, but because of how monumentally safe that promise made me feel.

"Promise?" my small voice had whispered.

"Promise," he had murmured, wiping my tears away with his thumb.

Now, I was forced to watch that same head roll down the stone stairs. He had been the most caring man I had ever known—the alpha who made our entire pack feel invincible.

And now... there was nobody left to yell at me. Nobody left to look for me when I went missing.

A hot tear hit the stone floor before I could bite it back.

The next morning, the sound of a clay pot scraping against the floor woke me.