The Nanny

The morning sun did not bring warmth. It only illuminated the cruelty of the courtyard.

The guards bound me tightly to a massive wooden execution post. They pulled my arms taut above my head.

The heavy ropes bit into my wrists, but that pain was nothing compared to the uneven thudding in my chest.

My failing heart was giving out from terror alone.

Before me stood the entire Lycan court. Their faces looked carved from stone. At the center, elevated on a high platform, sat King Valen.

His golden eyes looked hollow, filled with deep, painful rage.

"For the murder of the Queen," the high executioner’s voice boomed across the silent courtyard, "the human outsider is sentenced to death by a thousand horse whips."

The crowd caught its breath.

Mine seized entirely.

A thousand whips?

I couldn't possibly survive something so slow and agonizing.

For a human, it was a death sentence. My fragile body would tear apart long before the final strike.

But none of that mattered to anyone.

The executioner stepped forward and uncoiled a thick leather whip that dragged heavily against the stone.

"Please," I whispered, my voice cracking as I looked up at the King. "I didn't hurt her..."

King Valen did not look away. His expression remained ruthless as he raised his hand, curling his fingers into a fist.

It was the signal to begin my death.

The executioner seemed eager as he raised his arm. The leather whistled sharply through the air.

What would happen once he brought it down?

What would happen once it touched my skin?

As I braced myself and squeezed my eyes shut, I waited for the strike that would end my broken life.

But it never came.

"Stop! Don't touch her!"

A high-pitched, desperate scream shattered the silence.

The whip stopped midair, barely an inch from my skin.

A small figure burst through the heavy iron doors of the castle.

She ran past the elite guards, ignoring the ceremony completely, and I recognized her instantly.

The little girl from the dungeon.

She was still pale, but she moved frantically.

"Princess Anastasia!" a guard gasped, reaching out to stop her.

I barely had time to register the title before she ducked beneath his arm and sprinted straight toward the execution post.

Before anyone could react, the little princess threw her small arms around my waist.

She buried her face in my stained clothes, then turned and glared at the executioner and the crowd with a fierce authority that defied her young age.

"Anastasia, get away from her."

I needed no further confirmation that she was the princess. King Valen himself had spoken.

His voice boomed like thunder as he rose from his throne. His golden eyes flashed with sudden panic.

"She is a monster. She took your mother! Get away from her!"

His tone carried grief, panic, and fury all at once.

The dark circles beneath his eyes, the vein throbbing in his forehead, and the tightness in his jaw revealed the depth of his pain.

To lose someone you loved like that...

But I didn't kill his wife.

"She saved my life, Daddy!" Anastasia yelled back, her lower lip trembling.

Yet her grip on me only tightened.

"She's not one of us. She smells funny. But when I couldn't breathe, and my head hurt, and I was shaking in the dark, she stopped and fixed me! No one's ever done that! Not even those healers with their nasty medicine!"

The courtyard fell into a dead, suffocating silence.

The Lycan wolves stared at one another in utter shock.

Was it because an escaping prisoner had used her final moments of freedom to save the princess?

Or because this was the first time the princess had actually gotten better?

I couldn't tell.

And my uncertainty only grew as King Valen descended the steps.

He stopped a few feet away, his towering frame casting a massive shadow over us.

His eyes scanned Anastasia's fully recovered form.

"Anastasia, step aside," the King said, his voice dropping from thunder to a low, conflicted rumble.

"The law must be upheld."

"No!" the little girl cried, fat tears finally spilling down her cheeks. "If you whip her, you have to whip me too! I won't let you touch her!"

A collective gasp rippled through the court.

To go against the King was treason. But no one—not even the King himself—would dare harm the sole remaining piece of the deceased Queen.

The little princess was untouchable.

King Valen stared at his daughter. His chest rose and fell heavily as a brutal war waged in his eyes.

Then his gaze shifted to me.

I could feel him searching my face for the malice of a killer.

All he found was a terrified, dying pediatrician who had chosen a child's survival over her own escape.

Slowly, the King lowered his head.

"Lower your weapon," King Valen ordered the executioner. His voice sounded hollow but absolute.

"My King?" the executioner hesitated. "The sentence—"

"I said, lower it!" the King roared.

The sheer force of his voice caused the guards to drop to one knee.

Then he turned his cold, calculating gaze back to me.

"The execution is called off."

Relief washed over me so intensely that my knees nearly buckled.

But the ropes around my wrists weren't the only things keeping me upright.

Anastasia held onto me tighter, anchoring me to the earth.

"But do not think you are free, human," King Valen growled.

He stepped closer until I could smell the faint scent of ash clinging to his cloak.

"You will remain here, in this castle. Since you claim to be a healer of children and care so much for my daughter's well-being, you will serve here. To.. treat her."

The words sounded more like a sentence to himself than to me.

Still, he continued.

"You will spend every day earning the breath I have just granted you."

I looked into the eyes of the terrifying Lycan King, then down at the little girl who had just saved my life.

For the first time in eight years, my humanity wasn't an embarrassment.

I wasn't being thrown away.

My knowledge, my hands, and my care were actually needed.

"I accept."