Cursed Blood

Amara was forty minutes late to her own engagement party, and it was already going badly before she'd made it past the coat check.

"Careful," said a woman near the entrance—one of Darius's cousins, tall and polished, wine glass held like a weapon she hadn't decided to use yet. She'd stepped directly into Amara's path, smile not quite reaching her eyes. "Wouldn't want the forbidden bloodline tracking dirt onto good marble."

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing." The smile sharpened at the edges. "Just surprised they let you in the front. Given the history.”

"It's my engagement party!" Amara said, chin lifting despite herself.

"Yet you're forty minutes late to it." The woman's smile didn't waver, wine glass tilting lazily in her hand.

"I had matters to attend to," Amara said, keeping her voice even.

She knew she didn't. She had spent thirty minutes rehearsing how to look so polished that no one in that ballroom would see her First Wolf blood as a hindrance. As if that were ever possible, she thought.

Don't give her the satisfaction.

"I'll use the back door next time," Amara said, "assuming there's a next time you'd want me at."

The woman's mouth thinned, clearly having expected silence instead of an answer, and Amara slipped past her into the crowd before it could turn into something worse.

It got worse anyway. Three of them cornered her near the terrace doors twenty minutes later, loose and cruel with the particular boldness of people who'd started drinking before the party officially began. One caught the hem of her gown — an accident, she said, laughing when the fabric nearly tore. Another leaned close enough that Amara could smell the wine on her breath.

"Cursed blood," the woman murmured, quiet enough that no passing guest would catch it, practiced enough that this clearly wasn't the first time she'd said it to someone. "Should've stayed in the woods where you belong."

"Say that again somewhere Darius can hear you," Amara said, low, "and see how that goes for you."

"Darius isn't here to hear anything, is he?" The third woman's smile could have cut glass. "Funny, that. The groom's supposed to be at his own engagement party.”

She wasn't wrong. Amara had already scanned the ballroom twice, searching the crowd for the one person who could make an evening like this bearable just by standing next to her, and come up empty both times. Her hands had started shaking somewhere in the last ten minutes—not fear, not exactly, First Wolves didn't frighten easily whatever these women believed about her—but a slow, mounting humiliation that felt worse than fear and harder to shake off.

She excused herself before it could go further. She needed Darius. She needed his hand at her back, proof in front of every sneering guest in the room that she belonged here regardless of what her blood was called in old stories nobody bothered to question anymore.

She asked a passing server if he'd seen the groom. He hadn't, but thought he might have gone up to the private suite to change his cufflinks.

Broke one earlier, or something, he had said. Amara thanked him and went looking, grateful to have somewhere to walk that wasn't back into that crowd.

The private stairwell was quiet, carpeted, lit low enough that her footsteps barely made a sound. She climbed it, telling herself a version of the evening that made sense—Darius fixing a cufflink, Darius losing track of time, Darius who would take one look at her face and know immediately that something had gone wrong downstairs.

She reached the door to Darius's suite. Put her hand on it.

Please, she thought, let tonight not be totally ruined.

Then she pushed the door open.