The Soup

♥ AZALEA'S POV ♥

The bathroom mirror in the hotel lobby is not kind to me tonight, but I make myself stand in front of it anyway, tray balanced on one arm, fixing what I can from the heat of the kitchen.

I smooth my hair back into the low bun Queen Valkyrie prefers — nothing loose, nothing that "draws attention to volume," in her words. I check my dress. Gray, shapeless, hem past my knees. Modest. Forgettable. Exactly the way she likes me dressed whenever I am going to be anywhere near her son.

Younger me wouldn't be caught dead wearing this, but here I am, in said dress and barefaced. No make-up. She'd told me that too, the last time:

"You don't want to look like you're trying too hard, dear. It's unbecoming on a girl your size."

I press my lips together, check my reflection one more time, and tell myself the same thing I tell myself every time.

"You're doing this for the bond," I whisper. "Not for her. Not for him. For the bond granted by the Goddess."

My reflection doesn't look convinced. Neither am I, if I'm being honest. But I pick the tray back up and walk toward the elevator anyway, because eleven years of practice has taught me how to move my feet even when my heart wants to stay behind.

The rooftop bar hits me before I even step off the elevator — bass thudding through the floor, laughter spilling over the railing, the particular electric hum of a hundred people who all know they are somewhere expensive. Alcaraz Tower's rooftop lounge is reserved for pack elite only, glass walls on every side, string lights strung across an open-air ceiling, the city glittering below like it existed just to make this view prettier.

I step through the frosted doors and scan the crowd for him, finding him easily as Elias always is easy to find in a room — something about the way he stands, like the space around him exists to frame him and nothing else.

Tonight, that frame includes a she-wolf I don't recognize, tucked under his arm, giggling at something against his throat. His shirt is open two buttons too many. There is lipstick on his collar that isn't hers, and lipstick on his mouth that probably is.

My feet remain glued to the spot, tray growing heavy in my hands, watching the man the Moon Goddess had decided was my other half laugh into some stranger's hair like I don't exist. Like the mate bond humming faint and thin in my chest — the same bond that used to feel like sunlight and now felt like static — means absolutely nothing to him.

It never has. I am the only one who'd ever pretended otherwise.

"There you are." A hand landed on my shoulder — Talia, one of the kitchen staff, breathless. "The Queen said you were bringing that up personally?"

"I am." I hold up the tray like proof. "Chicken broth. No salt."

"He's in rare form tonight." She winces, glancing toward the crowd. "Good luck."

I don't need luck. I need a spine.

I weave through the crowd, tray steady, chin up. Conversations part around me the way they always do. Not out of respect. Out of curiosity. Everyone here knows exactly who I am — the plus-sized mate the Alpha Prince can't stand to look at, delivering soup like a servant instead of a bonded partner.

I hate how many of them watch me cross that floor like it is entertainment.

Elias's friend, Dario, sees me first. He grins, elbows the man beside him, and I watch the ripple of attention spread outward until it reaches Elias himself.

 His eyes find me — narrowed, glassy, unbothered by the girl still tucked against his side.

"Well, well," Dario says, loud enough to carry. "Room service has arrived."

"Your mother sent this," I say, holding the tray out before Elias can say anything worse. "For your head."

Elias looks at the bowl like I'd handed him a dead animal.

"Did she?" he asks flatly.

"She said you'd want it before the alcohol wore off completely."

"I don't have a headache, Azalea." He says my name like it costs him something. "I'm celebrating."

"Celebrating what?"

"Being alive." He grins, sloppy and wide, gesturing at the girl beside him. "Being free. Being anything other than—" He stops himself, laughs instead, shaking his head like the sentence isn't worth finishing.

"Elias." A warning, low, from somewhere behind him. Elias's own cousin, Tobias, I believe, though I barely register the voice over the roaring in my ears.

"What?" Elias spreads his hands. "I'm just having a good time. Is that a crime now?"

I hold the tray a little firmer. "Your mother asked me to bring this personally. I did. I'll go now."

I move to drop the tray on the mini table when his hands close around my wrist, sending mini sparks flying across my body in response to the mate bond.

"Wait," he says. "Actually — wait."

The whole rooftop seems to lean in a fraction, the way crowds do when they smell a scene about to happen.

"Elias—"

"You know what," his voice climbs, eyes glinting with the particular cruelty that alcohol always dragged out of him, "I don't actually want that."

He knocks the bowl clean out of my hands.

It hit the floor with a crack loud enough to cut through the music — broth splashing across the marble, across my shoes, up the hem of the gray dress his mother had approved that very afternoon. A few people gasp. More people laugh.

"Oops." He doesn't sound sorry at all. "Guess I lost my appetite. Funny how that happens every time I have to look at you."

Heat crawls up my throat. My eyes burn, and I hate myself for it — hate that after everything, my body still reacts like his opinion matters.

"I'm sorry," I say, because it is the only sentence I have left. "I'll get you something else."

"Don't bother." His lip curls. The she-wolf beside him giggles behind her hand, delighted by the show. "Honestly. Look at you." His eyes drags over me, over the dress, the shoes now stained with broth, the body his mother has spent a decade telling me to shrink. "I can't even remember why I tried in the first place."

"I said I'm sorry—"

"I'm done apologizing for existing next to you," his voice rises more, loud enough that conversation around us died completely, loud enough that every single guest on that rooftop turned to watch. "I'm done. Do you hear me? I'm—"

I catch the flash of a camera at the edge of my vision — a familiar shape near the bar, phone raised at hip height, angled just enough to catch everything.

Zinnia.

My sister's face is calm behind the screen, thumb steady on her phone. 

She can't be recording this.. she'll see my face and she'll stop.

But she doesn't lower the phone. She doesn't even blink.

Something in my chest cracks wider than the bond ever had.

"Elias—" I try one more time, though I don't know what I mean to say, whether I mean to beg or warn or simply make it stop before the entire pack watches me shatter in real time.

He doesn't let me finish.

"I reject you, fat ass."