How about a slap.

SERAPHINA'S POV

'I know for sure it would be harder to survive in a new pack. But being the mate of the Lycan King?

...What??’

_________________________________________

"Every chamber. One after the other."

His voice was still in my head when my knees hit the first floor.

The cobblestones made my bones rattle, ignoring it, I pushed the bucket of water that smelled worse than the head maid dress.

Argh.…I almost died of the smell.

At that moment my stomach churned.

Nauseous?

Arghh….. definitely not, I was hungry as hell.

I hadn't processed any of it yet. Not really.

Not the mate bond.

The way he had said the word with gritted teeth and hatred in his eyes. “You can't be my fucking mate”

I had waited for those words my whole life.

Six years ago, six years ago was the last moment I thought of bonding…thought about choose mate by the moon goddess.

Definitely not like this, not like from the very handsome looking man with a knife directed at my throat, blood on his hands and piercing grey eyes that felt it could dig out my soul in a split second.

I had turned eighteen in the middle of a pack war…the little me had heavily seeked for a flicker of mate bond ... .to find my mate at least.

But that exact moment was the last moment my parents saw the moon at night.

The screaming started before sunrise, my mother's hands pushing us toward the back of the house, my father's voice somewhere behind her telling her to run and not look back.

I had been waiting all week for the mate bond to stir, for my wolf to recognize someone, for something good to finally arrive.

What arrived instead was fire.

And then just me and Elowen, standing in the wreckage of everything, with nobody left to tell us what to do next.

I had raised her from that moment with my life.

Fed her. Protected her. I loved her before I thought to love myself.

And she had taken the one other person I had chosen to love and smiled at me while doing it.

I scrubbed harder… squeezed the brush so hard that I felt it sting into my palm and tears dropped onto the stone before I could stop them, mixing with the dirty water.

I let them. Nobody was watching. The corridor was empty and my knees were already bleeding through the thin cloth they had thrown over me and I was hungrier than I had been since those first weeks after my parents died when food was something we found rather than something we had.

"Still crying?"

The head maid appeared in the doorway with the energy of someone who had been waiting for an opportunity.

"You've barely touched that corner." She stepped closer, arms folded, satisfaction sitting comfortably on her face. "Pathetic. I've seen wolf pups scrub faster than this."

I said nothing.

I needed food. I needed to keep my mouth closed long enough for someone in this territory to decide I was worth feeding. That was the plan. That was the only plan I had.

"Nothing to say?" She tilted her head. "Where's that sharp tongue now, stray?"

I scrubbed.

Another maid appeared behind her, younger, nervous, twisting her hands together.

"Head Maid." She dipped her head quickly. "Lady Cyrene requests that her library be cleaned. She says it hasn't been touched in weeks and she needs it done before evening."

The head maid didn't even pause.

"Send her." She nodded at me. "She hasn't earned rest anyway. And warn her Lady Cyrene doesn't tolerate the attitude. Hot headed girls don't last long in her presence."

I stood slowly.

My bones are rattling.

The library was at the end of a long corridor that got colder the further I walked. When the door opened I understood immediately why no one had volunteered for this assignment.

The Lycan s king childhood friend.

Books covered the floor. Shelves emptied onto surfaces. Dust thick enough to write in. The kind of room that hadn't been touched in months and had opinions about it.

I stood in the doorway.

"I'm not doing that."

The words came out before the plan to stay quiet could stop them.

"Excuse me?"

I turned.

She was sitting at a vanity near the window, pressing something into her face with practiced strokes. Foundation. Concealer. Layer after layer, the kind of application that took time and intention and was already beginning to settle into the lines around her mouth in a way that suggested the shade wasn't quite right.

She was beautiful. Deliberately, architecturally, aggressively beautiful.

She looked at me through the mirror.

"Is this the new slave?"

“I'm not a slave…just a moment of punishment I'm serving, for some reason….”

“What?”

Her voice was silk over something sharp.

I looked at her. At the vanity covered in bottles and brushes. At the concealer she was currently pressing into her jaw.

"The concealer is breaking," I said. "Wrong undertone. You can see it separating already right there, along the jaw." I tilted my head. "Low quality."

The brush stopped moving.

She turned around slowly.

I had approximately one second to register that this had been a terrible decision before her hand connected with my face.

The slap cracked through the library like a door slamming.

My head snapped sideways.

I stood there for one breath.

Two.

Then I turned back.

And slapped her so hard the sound echoed twice.