Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

RHYANNE

"I hate grand balls," I said to Fenna, who wasn't even listening to me. "Fenna!"

"What is it, dear?" She turned to look at me, wiping her hands on her apron.

"You weren't listening. I said I hate grand balls."

"Oh my. Why?" She tilted her head, her ear twitching. "Isn't this what you always say, my dear? You'd love it, I'm sure. If you're lucky, some handsome high-ranked wolf might find you interesting."

She said it like it was a good thing.

"Is that supposed to be a good thing?" I muttered. Tch.

The only thing I hated more than grand balls was pretending I didn't hate them. Every year the great hall filled with the same glittering procession— nobles trading compliments they probably didn't mean, high-ranked wolves circling each other like they were deciding whose territory to swallow next, and servants like me weaving between them with trays held just high enough not to get spilled on by someone too drunk to notice we existed.

They called it an honor to serve at the grand ball. I called it eight hours of being invisible until the moment someone decided you weren't.

"You say this every year," Fenna chuckled, smoothing down the front of my uniform with more affection than the fabric deserved. "And every year you survive it."

"Barely."

"You do."

I didn't reply anymore, because she wasn't entirely wrong, and because across the kitchen a tray of empty crystal glasses had just been set down hard enough to make every servant in earshot flinch. Rennick— a broad-shouldered, thick-necked, kind of wolf who took volume for authority— was already looking my way with a smirk that looked like it was saved just for me.

"Careful tonight, young omega," he said, not bothering to lower his voice. "Wouldn't want you fainting under all that weight." He nodded at the tray in my hands like it might crush me. "Buckle up, weak wolf."

A few of the others laughed. Not unkindly, exactly, just easily, the way people laugh at something they've heard so many times it's stopped being cruel and started being furniture.

"I'll manage," I said flatly, and didn't give him the satisfaction of anything else.

It wasn't new. It had never been new. My wolf had been quiet my whole life— no shift came easily, no strength that matched even my rank, nothing that marked me as anything other than exactly what everyone assumed: an omega born weak, serving under people who'd never once had to wonder if their bodies would fail them. I'd stopped explaining it years ago, explaining implied there was something to defend.

"Ignore him," Fenna murmured, steering me toward the hall doors with a hand at my back. "Stand up straight, keep your chin level, you slouch when you're annoyed and it makes you look smaller than you are."

"I am small."

"You are not." She said, with the particular firmness of someone who'd been saying it since we were children. "You're just tired of people acting like you should be."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I let her push me through the doors instead.

The great hall was already lit gold with too many candles and too much noise— strings of musicians tuning in one corner, nobles arranging themselves into little constellations of status, the scent of wine and warm bodies thick enough to taste. I kept my tray steady and my eyes lower than usual, because there was exactly one person in this hall I had no interest in being noticed by, and the fastest way to summon trouble was to look for it.

I saw him anyway. I mean, you could hardly not see him

Cassian Thorne, the alpha prince, he stood near the center of the room, drawing attention to himself as usual— the space had rearranged itself around him rather than the other way around. Golden hair combed back, dressed in colors that cost more than my father made in a year, laughing at something one of the noble daughters had said with just enough charm to make her flush. He had a way of making everyone around him feel like they'd been chosen for something.

I turned my shoulder and angled toward the far side of the hall, where the trays needed refilling and the nobles were thinner on the ground. If I was fast enough, if I was careful enough, I could get through tonight unseen, unbothered, by him.

"Rhyanne."

Of course.

His voice cut clean through the noise, pitched exactly loud enough to make sure people turn. I stopped walking before I decided to, some old instinct in me responding to rank before I could stop it, and hated myself a little for it.

Cassian crooked two fingers at me, lazy, the same way he would call a hound. The women around him tittered— at what, I couldn't tell. Me, probably. My uniform, my existence in a room built for people like them.

"Bring me a drink," he said, commanding, not a reques. "Something decent this time. Last week you brought me something that tasted like it had been sitting out since summer."

Very funny Cassian.

"Of course, my lord." I said and gave a little bow, the honorific tasted like ash.

I turned before he could see my face and made my way to the wine table, I kept my hands steadier than I felt. I could have refused. I could easily just set the tray down and walk straight back to the kitchens and let someone else deal with him tonight. But refusing a direct order from the crown prince in front of half the noble houses of Ashenfall wasn't just defiance— it was a death sentence dressed up as pride, and I'd learned a long time ago which battles were worth losing everything over. This wasn't one of them.

I poured the wine with more focus than required, I watched the dark liquid go down the glass like it might steady something in my chest. When I turned back, Cassian was still surrounded by women, and looking at me like I was a mildly interesting inconvenience.

"Well?" he said, holding out his hand without looking at me directly, already halfway back into conversation with the noble girl at his side.

I stepped forward and placed the glass in his palm, then our fingers touched.

It wasn't much, just a brush of skin, barely a second. But this time something surged through me like lightning finding the fastest path to ground— it felt hot, immediate and utterly wrong, a strong pull in my chest.

The glass slipped from his hand and it shattered on the floor, the wine spreading fast across the marble, and for one suspended second neither of us moved. Cassian's eyes had gone wide, his jaws were tight, every trace of practiced charm wiped clean off his face like it had never been there.

A growl involuntarily tore out of him. And the hall went silent so fast I could hear the last note die in the musicians' strings.

Every eye in the room turned toward us. Toward the prince of Ashenfall, snarling over a broken glass and towards me, just standing frozen in a puddle of spilled wine, my heart slamming against my ribs with a truth I didn't want and couldn't take back.

Mates. We were mates.

And judging by the look on Cassian's face, I wasn't the only one who wished that we weren't.