Chapter 3

LYRA

I did not sleep.

I sat in the doorway of the nursery all night, that was as close as they would let me, and I watched my son breathe. The nurses changed his swaddle twice. His color stayed good. By the time gray light came through the window, his fists were curling in sleep the way healthy babies do, and something in my chest that had been locked tight for two days finally loosened one notch.

By morning, his symptoms were gone. I found Darius at his breakfast table.

"The physicians have no explanation for the recovery," I said. "I do. And so do you."

He didn't look up from his plate. "Get out."

"Breast milk has documented healing properties." My hands were behind my back, clenched so hard the nails bit into my palms. My voice came out level. I didn't know how. "You've had three senior physicians in that room in twenty-four hours. None of them could stabilize him. I did it in one night."

He set down his cup.

"Let me stay." My jaw ached from holding it still. "As a servant. Omega status, whatever terms you want. I'll tend the child, I'll work the household, I won't cause problems. You get a stable heir and a useful set of hands. This costs you nothing."

My voice didn't break. I would not let it break in front of him. Not again.

"It costs me the appearance of weakness," he said, "keeping my ex-wife around."

"Then tell the pack she's the wet nurse. No one has to know who I am."

The silence stretched.

He hated that it was a good idea. I could see it — the slight tightening around his eyes, the way his jaw moved once and then stopped.

"Omega status," he said finally. "You serve the household. You serve Serena. One problem — one — and you're at the border by nightfall."

"Agreed."

That was how I became a servant in the house I had managed as Luna.

Serena had her own instructions ready. She assigned me the room at the end of the servants' corridor — the one with the broken shutter and the mattress that smelled of mildew. She ordered that my milk be expressed into storage bottles and delivered to the nursery on a schedule. No direct feeding. No unsupervised contact. Whatever thread of closeness existed between me and my son, she intended to cut it one rule at a time.

I memorized every rule she gave me.

And I started counting days until the naming ceremony.

I had spent three years as this pack's Luna. I had approved the security rotations myself — the east wall gap during the ceremony shift change, the unmanned gate when the senior guards rotated to the main hall. I had designed those systems to protect this pack. Now I was going to use them to leave it. The plan was simple and dangerous and my only option, and for my son I would take worse odds than this.

Three more days.

---

The Alphas began arriving on the second day before the ceremony. I was crossing the south courtyard with a laundry basket when the gates opened and the energy of the entire compound changed.

It happened before I saw him. A drop in temperature that had nothing to do with the weather. The guards at the gate stood differently — stiffer, shoulders pulled back, like men who had just remembered how to be afraid. The security detail in the courtyard went still.

Even Darius, who had come down the front steps with his welcome smile already in place, went slightly wrong around the edges.

Then the convoy came through the gates.

Kael Ashvorn.

I had heard his name my whole life the way you heard the names of storms — abstractly, as things that happened to other people. The man who had killed his father. His brothers. Who had taken a throne over a field of bodies and reportedly enjoyed the process. Twenty-nine years old and he moved through the courtyard as if the ground owed him the space.

He was the tallest man present, and the most dangerous. He didn't need to try. There was something in the presence of him that made everyone around him seem diminished, uneasy.

I should have looked away. I knew that. But I couldn't. Something I couldn't name, a pull held me in place, my gaze fixed on him.

Even from this distance, I could feel the cold, hard aura around him. Broad shoulders beneath a dark coat, the fabric stretched taut over his chest. The light traced the contours of his face—sharp, handsome.

Godness, how could I use such words to describe The Reaper?

Darius spread his arms wide. "Alpha Kael. Welcome. My pack is honored beyond—"

"Your Majesty." One of Darius's men stepped forward — his captain, a thick-necked man with a voice built for flattery. He dropped to one knee and bowed so low his forehead nearly touched the cobblestones. "The Holt Pack has long admired your strength. We consider this visit the greatest—"

The captain's head hit the ground before his sentence did. It rolled twice, mouth still open around the shape of his next word. The body stayed upright for one horrible second, then folded.

Blood sprayed across the courtyard in a wide, arterial fan. It caught Darius across the collar, the jaw, the edge of his welcome smile. He flinched — a full-body jerk he couldn't hide — and went absolutely still.

Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. The only sound was the wet drip of blood pooling around the captain's boots.

Kael looked down at the body the way a man checks something off a list. Then he looked at Darius. He tilted his head — slow, considering, the way you study a stain on your sleeve.

"I didn't ask him to speak," he said.

Darius's throat worked. He nodded — quickly, and more than once. His hands were shaking at his sides and he couldn't make them stop.

I was already walking in the other direction. I made myself move at a normal pace, basket against my hip, eyes down.

But I had looked back once — just once, before I could stop myself. And for a fraction of a second, across forty feet of frozen courtyard, I had the sensation that something on the other side of that distance was aware of me.

I didn't look again.

---

The next morning, a servant knocked on my door before the light came up.

"You've been assigned to the Lycan King's quarters," she said. She was working hard not to look at me with pity and not quite managing it. "Three others were sent before you. None of them came back."

Down the corridor, I heard Serena say something to her attendant. A sound like suppressed laughter followed.

I put on the clean gray tunic. I tucked my hair back. I told myself: two more days. My son is in that nursery and I am going to reach him. Nothing in this hallway can change that.

The door to the guest wing was heavy, heavy wood. I pushed it open.

The room had been destroyed.

A decanter in pieces across the far wall. The side table in two halves. The whole space smelled of aged whiskey and blood and something colder underneath — animal, territorial, a scent that had no name in my vocabulary.

He was sitting in a chair by the window. Back half-turned toward me, one arm on the rest, legs stretched out. He could have been simply resting.

The air around him had the same quality as the courtyard yesterday. That particular kind of pressure.

I did not look at his face. I looked at the nearest shard of glass.

I cleaned the room inch by inch. I swept the crystal, righted what could be righted. My palms were wet. I kept my breathing even. I focused on surfaces.

Forty minutes. He didn't move once.

I gathered the last pieces into the dustbin. Just as I breathed a sigh of relief, grateful that I had survived this torturous ordeal—

"Pour me a drink."

Low. Unhurried. The voice of a man who had never once needed to ask for anything twice.

My blood ran cold.