Chapter 4

Stephanie's Point of View

The Royal Family was staying for three days, which meant the entire packhouse had to survive three days of Luna Mirella behaving as though a misplaced spoon could bring down the monarchy.

I ate in the kitchen, trying to stay as far away from the Royal Family as possible. I might push my lack of respect for the Alpha family at times, but I really didn't like being whipped. That said, I had been whipped before for minor infractions or because Cassandra had decided I deserved it.

Eating in the kitchen suited me until Beta Marcus entered, and I knew something was wrong before he spoke. He was a solid man in his late forties, with greying brown hair and the heavy build of a wolf who had spent most of his life training beside pack warriors. Beta Marcus had served as Alpha Geoff's Beta for longer than I had been alive. He was usually easy to read because he rarely bothered hiding what he thought. If he was irritated, everyone knew. If he thought one of Geoff's orders was ridiculous, his mouth flattened before he carried it out anyway.

Tonight, his mouth was practically a straight line. His gaze found me at the kitchen table before moving towards the servants around me.

"Stephanie. Cellar."

I lowered my spoon and looked across the kitchen at Beta Marcus. "That sounds ominous."

A few of the maids glanced towards him before returning to their work. Beta Marcus shifted his weight and avoided looking directly at me. "Inventory."

"Tonight?"

His mouth flattened. I had seen that expression enough times to know he disliked whatever came next. "Alpha's orders."

He wouldn't look directly at me when he said it. Beta Marcus had carried out plenty of Alpha Geoff's orders over the years. Some I agreed with, and some I hated. Others had ended with me bent over a punishment bench while Marcus stood nearby looking like he would rather be anywhere else.

He had never stopped Geoff. That didn't make him cruel, but it didn't make him innocent either. Beta Marcus believed a Beta obeyed his Alpha. I had heard him say it enough times to know there was little point arguing with him once Geoff had given an order.

Still, he usually looked me in the eye. Tonight, he seemed particularly interested in the kitchen floor.

I pushed my bowl away and stood. "What exactly am I counting?"

"Everything."

I stared at him. "On my own?" I asked.

There were six other servants who usually handled inventory. It usually took all of them to go through the supplies. I also knew for a fact that the inventory had been done last week. It was done once a month, just before the order for new supplies was sent out.

I looked towards the kitchen door leading to the dining room as music drifted in from the Royal Family's welcome dinner. The timing made the order even stranger, especially when the kitchen needed every available pair of hands for service.

When I looked back at Beta Marcus, his jaw flexed as though he already knew exactly what I was going to ask.

"You don't want to do this," I said.

Beta Marcus finally met my eyes, and for a second, neither of us spoke. "Get the ledger," he said.

That was answer enough. I carried a lantern down the steep stone steps leading beneath the kitchen. The warmth from upstairs disappeared within a few steps, replaced by cold air rising from below. The lantern threw enough light across the stone walls to show the way, leaving the bottom of the staircase in shadow until I reached it.

The lock clicked behind me. I stared at it. I waited until his footsteps faded before setting the lantern and ledger on the nearest crate. Surely he hadn't actually locked me in.

I climbed the few steps back to the door and tried the handle, but it didn't move. I tried again, putting more weight behind it. It was locked. I stared at the door.

"Marcus?" I called.

His footsteps stopped on the other side of the door.

"You actually locked me in."

He gave me nothing in return. I pulled the handle again, in case the first two attempts had somehow failed to communicate my objection. The door stayed firmly in place.

"Very subtle," I called through it.

"Just do the inventory, Stephanie."

I leaned closer to the door. "The inventory we completed last week?"

This time, the pause lasted long enough to make my suspicion grow. Marcus knew exactly when the inventory had been completed. He had signed the ledger himself.

"Perhaps the wine multiplied," I said. "Or maybe the potatoes have been breeding. They do have a lot of time alone down here."

"Stephanie."

I heard him exhale through the door, and when he spoke again, the reluctance had disappeared from his voice. "Three hours. Stay down there until I come back."

My amusement disappeared. "Three hours?"

"Yes."

I stared at the door. Inventory could have explained twenty minutes in the cellar if either of us had been willing to pretend very hard. Three hours made the real purpose impossible to ignore.

"Marcus, what is going on?"

His boots shifted against the floor outside, but he gave me nothing.

"Why does Alpha Geoff suddenly care whether I attend a dinner I've never been invited to?"

For a moment, I thought he might actually tell me something. I could hear him standing there instead of walking away, and Marcus had never been particularly good at hiding when an order bothered him.

"Do what you're told," he said, moving away from the door.

His footsteps retreated, and I remained beside the door until I could no longer hear them. Inventory didn't require a locked door. Whatever Alpha Geoff wanted from me tonight had nothing to do with counting wine bottles.

I picked up the lantern and turned towards the cellar. Even though this wasn't usually part of my job, I knew every part of it. I had been coming down here for years to fetch ingredients for Cook, store deliveries and occasionally to help with the monthly inventory.

The cellar ran beneath most of the kitchen wing, with thick stone walls that kept it cold year-round. Wine racks covered one wall from floor to ceiling. Most belonged to Alpha Geoff's private collection, and I had learned early which bottles I could touch and which ones would cause the end of civilisation if I so much as breathed near them.

Wooden shelves filled the centre of the room. Jars of preserved fruit, vegetables, jams and sauces sat in rows, each labelled with the date they had been prepared. Sacks of flour, rice and dried beans were stacked along the back wall, while potatoes, onions and other root vegetables filled wooden crates closer to the stairs.

The air always smelled the same–cold stone, earth, dried herbs and the faint sweetness of wine. Usually, I liked coming down here, especially in the summer, because it offered relief from the kitchen's heat. During a busy service, it gave me five minutes away from Cook shouting instructions and servants running into each other.

Being able to leave whenever I wanted probably had something to do with that. I looked back at the locked door. Tonight, the cellar felt very different. I picked up the ledger, because if Alpha Geoff wanted me to count bottles we had already counted, I would count his stupid bottles.

I started with the first wine rack, and for the first twenty minutes, I concentrated on the numbers–bottle, label, ledger. It was boring work, but boredom was preferable to giving Alpha Geoff another excuse to use his whip.

The welcome dinner continued above me. Music travelled through the ceiling, muffled by stone and timber. I could hear the lower notes more easily than the higher ones, although every so often the melody would become clear before fading again.

Footsteps crossed the floor overhead. A scrape followed as several chairs moved at once, and a burst of laughter reached me a few seconds later. I stopped writing. The sound had come from almost directly above me.

My chest warmed again. It was uncomfortable, and I pressed my palm against it. That same strange sensation I had felt when the Royal convoy arrived. It started beneath my ribs and spread through my chest before settling into a pull that made me want to turn towards the stairs.

I stared at the locked cellar door.

"Absolutely not," I told myself, but my body clearly disagreed.

The pull beneath my ribs strengthened anyway, drawing my attention back towards the stairs. Another burst of laughter came from upstairs, followed by several voices I couldn't make out. The warmth just kept getting stronger. I rubbed my chest. Perhaps I was getting sick. That would be convenient. Alpha Geoff could add medicine to my debt while he was adding the privilege of being locked in his cellar.

I forced my attention back to the ledger. Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Footsteps crossed overhead again, and I lost count.

"Damn it!" I growled, returning to the beginning of the row.

Something about having nothing to do except count bottles gave my mind far too much time to revisit the past several hours, when Alpha Geoff had ordered me upstairs before the Royal family arrived.

I was to stay upstairs and out of sight. Darius had climbed two flights of stairs during their arrival to make sure I stayed away from the windows. Luna Mirella had stopped the servants from calling for me when they needed help downstairs. Finally, tonight, when the Royal Family gathered for dinner, Alpha Geoff had sent his Beta to put me in a cellar and lock the door for three hours.

I lowered the ledger. Once could have been a coincidence. Twice could have been Alpha Geoff being his usual unpleasant self, but this had gone well beyond either. They were hiding me. I had already suspected it upstairs, but sitting behind a locked cellar door removed my last doubts. The Raths were hiding me from the Darkmeres–specifically from them.

I leaned against the wine rack and stared at the stone wall opposite me. "Why?" I asked aloud. "Why them?"

I was a wolfless servant with no family, no rank, and no money. King Evander had probably met hundreds of people more interesting than me before breakfast. What could happen if he saw me? Or Queen Helena?

The thought of her brought another ache beneath my ribs. I grimaced and pressed my hand against it again. That woman had been on Rath territory for less than a day, and somehow my body had developed an obsession with reminding me whenever she was nearby.

I thought about the way Queen Helena had looked towards the window where I had stood. That and three other thoughts kept revolving in my head. Darius ordered me away from the window, Luna Mirella watched the stairs to keep me upstairs out of the way, and Beta Marcus refused to meet my eyes.

They knew something, and that was the part I couldn't get around. Whatever this was, the Raths understood it well enough to fear the Royal Family seeing me, and I had no idea why.

Another ripple of laughter came through the ceiling. I looked up. Somewhere above me, the people I had been ordered to avoid were eating dinner while four members of the Rath Pack worked hard to ensure our paths never crossed. My curiosity had officially become a problem, and it was mostly for Alpha Geoff.

My mind wandered again, towards my impending birthday. It suddenly seemed far more important than it had yesterday. In two days, I would be eighteen. I had spent years assuming very little would change. I would wake before sunrise, work in the kitchen, answer to the Raths and continue paying a debt that somehow grew faster than I could work it off. Yet, eighteen made me an adult under pack law. I looked at the locked cellar door again. Could Alpha Geoff still do this once I was eighteen? I genuinely didn't know.

He had been responsible for me since I was an abandoned baby. He had fed me, housed me and raised me within his pack, although most of the actual raising had been done by servants who taught me everything from tying my shoes to chopping an onion. For most of my life, Geoff's authority over me had seemed absolute, but at eighteen, that should change. Shouldn't it? I frowned.

That was the problem. I knew kitchen accounts better than I knew the laws governing my own life. Nobody had ever thought a wolfless servant needed lessons about pack law. I should have paid more attention when Alphas discussed pack business over dinner rather than focusing on keeping their glasses full.

I knew adults could leave their packs. Wolves transferred between territories. Some left to find work; others found mates in different packs and moved to join them. I had never considered what those laws meant for me.

I didn't have a wolf tying me to the Rath Pack. I had never sworn loyalty to Alpha Geoff, and I received no wages from him. As far as I knew, the only thing keeping me here was the debt he claimed I owed. Alpha Geoff was the only person who ever calculated it. I stared at the ledger in my hands. Perhaps that was something else I needed to understand.

My eighteenth birthday was two days away, the Alpha family was behaving as though letting the Darkmeres see me would cause a disaster, and I was sitting behind a locked door because Alpha Geoff had ordered his Beta to keep me there. For the first time, leaving the Rath Pack felt like something I needed to investigate rather than something I occasionally imagined while scrubbing floors.

First, I needed to find out what happened when I turned eighteen. After that, I could find out whether Alpha Geoff had any right to stop me from walking away. I tucked those thoughts away as I spent the next three hours counting wine bottles, ticking them off in the ledger.