Chapter 2

Stephanie's Point of View

The Royal convoy arrived before lunch. I knew because every servant in the house suddenly developed the ability to run.

To be honest, it was more of a panic run, afraid that Luna Mirella would find fault, which would lead to being whipped. I wasn't the only one he whipped. No Omega was above that, but I took the lion's share.

Alpha Geoff stood outside with Luna Mirella and Cassandra. Their eldest son, Darius, stood beside them.

I remained upstairs. That instruction had come directly from the Alpha.

"Stay upstairs, out of sight," he had instructed. "Don't, under any circumstances, ruin this!"

I wasn't sure how I could personally ruin the Royal Family's visit, but I would do as I was told. The menace in his voice told me that he would most likely beat me close to death. Medical bills would add to my unknown amount of debt. I knew this was true because he told me last time.

I was changing sheets in an unused bedroom when car doors sounded across the courtyard. Something strange moved through my chest. It was enough to make me stop what I was doing. My hand went to my sternum, and a warmth spread beneath my ribs. For one ridiculous second, I thought my heart had changed rhythm.

I walked toward the window.

"Stephanie!"

I turned to find Darius standing in the doorway. At twenty-four, he had grown into the warrior everyone expected Alpha Geoff's eldest son to become. He had also inherited his father's temper and his mother's talent for making cruelty sound reasonable.

His gaze moved from me to the window before he reminded me that I was supposed to be working and ordered me to stay away from it.

"I am working."

Changing sheets clearly wasn't enough. He wanted me somewhere the Royal Family had no chance of seeing me.

"Are they frightened of housemaids?" I asked.

His jaw shifted, and he repeated Alpha Geoff's order before walking away. The stairwell door slammed behind him, leaving me with another reason to wonder why seeing me through a window had suddenly become such a threat.

The entire house had changed within minutes of the convoy arriving. Usually, I knew every sound in the packhouse. I knew which stair creaked outside the east bedrooms, which serving cart had a bad wheel, and which doors the younger servants slammed when Luna Mirella annoyed them.

Today, unfamiliar boots crossed the floors below me. Those must be the Royal Guards. I had seen enough of them through the window to recognise their black uniforms. Alpha Geoff's warriors usually guarded the entrances and grounds. The Royal guards had taken positions throughout the house as soon as the King entered.

The servants were moving faster too. A bell rang downstairs, and someone ran along the hallway beneath me. Another bell rang.

"For the love of the Goddess," I muttered.

I shoved a clean pillow into its case. I should have been downstairs helping. A Royal visit meant more people to feed, more dishes to wash, and more demands coming into the kitchen. Cook would be handling lunch while Liana and Elsi tried to keep everything else moving. I was the person who usually stepped in when the work started piling up. Instead, I was changing perfectly clean sheets in a bedroom nobody was using.

A maid hurried past the open doorway carrying folded towels. Luna Mirella had ordered fresh ones for the downstairs washroom, despite the servants changing them that morning. I wasn't surprised. She had spent the past week making us polish things I had never realised could be polished, including door handles, stair rails, fireplace tools and the brass bell beside the servants' entrance. Nobody important would even notice that bell, but Royalty could obviously sense unpolished brass through walls.

The problem with keeping me upstairs was that everyone still expected me to know where everything was. One servant called up looking for the extra wine glasses Luna Mirella had moved the day before. I sent her to the dining-room storage cabinet. Less than a minute later, Leilani called for help finding the extra napkins, and I shouted the location down to her.

"Upper linen cupboard! Third shelf!"

Silence followed momentarily.

"Stephanie!"

"Who called for her?" Luna Mirella demanded.

The sharpness of her voice carried all the way upstairs. Below me, the house fell silent until Leilani admitted she had needed help finding the napkins. Luna Mirella told her to ask someone else and ordered everyone to keep their voices down because the Royal Family didn't need servants shouting through the house. That explanation almost worked.

Servants had been running through the packhouse since dawn, bells had rung every few minutes, and Luna Mirella herself had spent most of the morning calling orders loudly enough for people in the courtyard to hear. Apparently, my name was where she drew the line. I stepped into the hallway and looked towards the stairs.

"Who called for her?" Luna Mirella demanded.

The sharpness of her voice carried all the way up the stairs, causing me to freeze with another pillowcase in my hands. Below me, the house went silent. Nobody answered.

"I asked who called her name."

A hesitant voice came from downstairs. "I did, Luna."

That was Leilani. She had only been working here for a few months and was barely sixteen, working to pay off her parents' debt.

"Don't call for her again!" commanded Luna Mirella.

"But I couldn't find the extra napkins," she said, fear obviously layering her voice.

"Ask someone else," demanded the Luna.

"But no one–"

"I said. Ask. Someone. Else."

There was a pause.

"Yes, Luna."

"And keep your voices down. The Royal family doesn't need to hear servants shouting through the house."

That explanation almost worked. Almost.

Servants had been running through the packhouse since dawn, with bells ringing every few minutes. Luna Mirella herself had spent most of the morning calling orders loudly enough for people in the courtyard to hear her.  She could tolerate plenty from me, but my name was where she drew the line.

I stepped into the hallway and looked towards the stairs.

"Stephanie!"

I leaned back as Luna Mirella appeared at the bottom of the staircase, but she'd already seen me. Her face changed as her gaze met mine, and for a second, she looked scared.

I had seen Luna Mirella angry plenty of times. I knew the pinched expression she wore when something displeased her, and the particular curl of her mouth that usually meant someone was about to suffer for it. This was different.

Her eyes darted towards the hallway behind her before returning to me. "Get back in that room."

"I'm changing the sheets," I replied.

"Do it with the door shut."

I frowned. "How am I supposed to answer anyone if they need something?"

"They won't."

I sighed. "The kitchen already does."

"I don't care about the kitchen!" Her voice rose before she caught herself.

Luna Mirella glanced behind her again, catching my attention.

She lowered her voice. "You will stay upstairs. You will keep the doors shut, and you will stop shouting through this house. Do you understand me?"

"Perfectly."

Her eyes narrowed. "I mean it, Stephanie."

I watched her descend the stairs.

"Was there anything else?" I called after her.

She spun around, and I smiled, not letting the smile reach my eyes. Perhaps that had been unnecessary, but worth it, though. I was sure to pay for my insolence once the Royal Family had left.

"Inside," she hissed.

I stepped back into the bedroom and shut the door. For several seconds, I stood with my hand resting on the handle, my mind working overtime.

Neither Alpha Geoff nor Luna Mirella wanted the Royal Family to see me. Like, they really didn't want them to see me. Darius had told me not to stand near a window. Luna Mirella had decided the Royal Family shouldn't even hear my name. I had spent most of my life being treated as though I barely existed. Yet, today, the Raths were putting an extraordinary amount of effort into making sure I actually didn't.

I smiled to myself and returned to the bed. Alpha Geoff could hide me upstairs, but he couldn't stop everyone downstairs from needing me. This made it interesting. Very.

Why didn't they want the Royal Family to see me? I was just a wolfless servant. Maybe they didn't want the King and Queen to know they had a human living in the pack.

When I thought about it, I felt it was strange that he explicitly didn't want the Royal Family seeing me. Other Alphas had visited before. 

I had served them dinner. I had carried wine into Alpha Geoff's office while they discussed pack business. Once, I had spent an entire evening refilling glasses for six visiting Alphas while they spoke around me as though servants became deaf the moment they tied on an apron. Nobody had hidden me.

The Darkmeres were different. Alpha Geoff had given the order himself. Darius had climbed two flights of stairs during a Royal arrival just to make sure I obeyed it. That was a lot of effort for someone they usually considered beneath notice.

I looked towards the doorway Darius had disappeared through. Something about this visit had Alpha Geoff worried. I just had no idea what it was. Still, I waited until his footsteps disappeared before returning to the window. Four black vehicles filled the courtyard.

The courtyard barely looked like the same place. Twelve Royal Guards in black uniforms had spread across it, with two stationed near the packhouse entrance and others positioned beside the vehicles and along the drive. They weren't standing around waiting for instructions. Each had already taken a position that gave them a clear view of the house, grounds or road leading into the territory.

Our own warriors had been pushed towards the edges of the courtyard. I spotted two near the training grounds and another beside the gate, watching the Royal Guards with expressions that suggested they weren't entirely happy about becoming spectators on their own territory.

The vehicles were just as imposing–black, polished and large enough to make Alpha Geoff's expensive car parked beside the packhouse look strangely ordinary. A small silver Royal crest marked each front door. I had seen that crest on newspapers, official letters and the occasional piece of crockery, but I had never seen it outside my bedroom window.

The Alpha King stepped from the first car. King Evander Darkmere was larger than Alpha Geoff, although size barely explained the difference between them. Geoff made people move because they feared what would happen if they stayed. King Evander stepped forward, and people moved out of his way before he reached them.

A beautiful woman emerged beside him. Queen Helena. I had seen photographs of her before. Everyone had. Her face appeared in newspapers often enough that I should have recognised every feature. Seeing her in person felt different.

I stared before I could stop myself. There was something familiar about the shape of her face. Her dark hair was pinned back, exposing high cheekbones and a straight nose. When she turned to answer King Evander, I caught her profile. I knew that profile.

For some reason, my chest hurt, and I gripped the windowsill, which was ridiculous. I had never met Queen Helena, nor had I ever been to the capital. The closest I had ever come to Royalty was washing a plate with the Royal crest after Alpha Geoff returned from some important dinner and brought half the tableware home with him.

Still, I kept looking at her. Something inside me wanted to get closer, and that frightened me more than the pain in my chest.

Queen Helena stopped in the courtyard, her head lifting. For one impossible second, she looked straight toward my window. Instinctively, I moved behind the curtain, but I could still peek out.

My heart hammered, and voices rose below. More doors opened. Three men climbed from the second vehicle. Everyone knew the names of the Darkmere Princes.

They were adopted rather than born into the Royal bloodline, although few people cared about the distinction. King Evander and Queen Helena had adopted each boy after losing their infant daughter. All of the boys had been children, not babies, when adopted so that they would be older than their own biological daughter.

Prince Lucian was the eldest at twenty-three. He was dark-haired, broad-shouldered and usually described in newspapers as the diplomatic one. Following him was Prince Ronan. He was twenty-two, and commanded part of the Royal Guard. Finally, Prince Kieran. He was twenty and had a reputation for saying whatever Lucian and Ronan had decided diplomacy required him to keep inside his mouth. These three men had spent most of their lives helping their parents search for a missing Princess.

The missing Princess had been part of the news for as long as I could remember. Every few years, another supposed sighting made the papers. A girl in the south, or a child taken across the border. Sometimes it was someone who remembered seeing a strange carriage on a mountain road almost eighteen years ago. Nothing ever came from any of it.

The reward King Evander offered could have bought half the Rath Pack's territory, yet the amount had kept increasing. I used to read those articles whenever I found an old newspaper in the kitchen, but I never knew why. Perhaps I liked knowing that somewhere in the world, parents could lose a daughter and spend the rest of their lives trying to find her.

Mine had left me beneath a cedar tree. At least, that was what Luna Mirella had always told me.

I looked through the narrow gap in the curtain again. Queen Helena was smiling at something one of her sons had said, but the smile disappeared when she looked towards the house. Eighteen years was a long time, and she was still searching. I hoped she found her daughter one day.

I had always thought that story was sad. Watching Queen Helena stare toward the house made my chest ache again. I stepped farther from the window, hoping the distance would ease whatever was happening to me. The ache followed me across the room.