The Servant's Punishment

I was reassigned before breakfast.

No one called it a punishment. They didn't need to. Marta from household management appeared at the healer's room door at half past six with a folded stack of grey kitchen uniforms and a face wiped clean of anything I could use.

"Your quarters have been reallocated," she said. "You'll bunk with the kitchen staff. Report to Cook by seven."

She left before I could answer.

I dressed in the grey uniform. It fit perfectly. Of course it did.

***

The whispers started before I reached the kitchen corridor.

Whispers are worse than arguments. They stop the moment you pass. All you catch is your own name and silence. I walked through three of them before I reached the kitchen door and stopped counting.

By midmorning I understood the story Tara-Lee had told.

Haydee Raine, the desperate low-rank. Haydee Raine, who had made a scene at the Luna Ceremony trying to seduce the Alpha. Haydee Raine, who had invented a mate bond out of humiliation and grief and thin, pathetic air.

Every version had the same ending.

She'd always been unstable. Hadn't her wolf never even awoken? What did you expect?

I scrubbed dishes and kept my eyes on the water and said nothing. Every version of the story I heard had her name in it. Desperate. Unstable. Delusional. I scrubbed harder and told myself it didn't matter what they believed. I had been telling myself that all morning. It wasn't working.

***

Ginni found me at the laundry sinks before noon.

She came around the corner fast, checked behind her, then wrapped both arms around me before I could speak. I stood rigid for a moment. Then I let her hold on.

"I heard this morning," she said into my shoulder. "All of it. The reassignment, what they're saying." She pulled away, her red-rimmed eyes searching mine. "Haydee. I'm so sorry."

"It's fine."

"It isn't."

"No," I agreed. "But it is what it is."

She gripped my wrist. "Keep your head down. Please. Don't give Tara-Lee anything else to use. If you stay quiet and do the work, eventually it'll — "

"Ginni."

She stopped.

"I know," I said. "I know what you're saying and I know you mean it and I know you're right." I met her eyes. "I'm not going to do anything stupid."

She didn't look convinced. But she nodded, squeezed my wrist once, and checked behind her again before she left.

I watched her go.

She was the only person in this packhouse who had come to find me. The only one. And she'd checked over her shoulder twice in under a minute.

That told me everything I needed to know about where I stood.

Ginni loved me. I knew that. And she was still afraid to be seen with me. I didn't blame her. That was the worst part. I understood exactly why she was afraid, and I could not be angry at her for it, and I had no one else.

***

Cole was in the building all day.

I knew because the bond told me. Even damaged, even reduced to something raw and barely functional, it tracked him through the walls. A low directional pull, like a compass needle that couldn't stop pointing north no matter how many times you tried to smash the thing.

He was in the east wing meetings. Then the council chamber. Then his office.

He knew what was happening to me. An Alpha knows everything in his packhouse.

He stayed in his office.

Wasn’t he suffering from a trampled mate-bond too?

I didn't know if he'd touched her. Really touched her. The healer had said completing the bond could kill me, and I had been trying not to think about what completing meant, and whether it had already happened, and whether the tether in my chest was already counting down to something I couldn't stop.

***

Tara-Lee found me in the linen corridor at three o'clock.

She was alone. The corridor was empty in both directions. She'd arrived without sound and stood close enough that dropping her voice was easy. Her dark hair was loose, her posture relaxed.

"You must be exhausted," she said. "Yesterday was a lot for someone in your position."

I kept folding the sheet in my hands.

"Cole is extraordinary," she continued. "I understand why a person might convince themselves there was something there. When you've been close to someone that powerful, even at a distance, you can mistake the pull for something personal." She tilted her head. "It wasn't personal, Haydee. It was never personal. He simply never saw you."

I set the folded sheet on the stack.

"Is there something you need?" I asked.

Her smile didn't waver. "I need you to serve wine at our engagement feast tonight. Seven o'clock. Grey uniform is fine."

She walked away.

I stood in the corridor after she left and pressed both hands flat against the linen pile.

He simply never saw you.

She'd said it so gently. She didn't even need to be cruel. The truth was cruel enough, and she knew exactly where to aim it. She had found the open wound in me and pressed her thumb into it, smiling, and called it honesty.

The worst part was that she wasn't entirely wrong.

She hadn't threatened me. She hadn't raised her voice. She'd delivered the truth as she saw it, accurate enough to find every open place, and then handed me a serving tray and a time to report.

***

The feast hall was lit gold and packed.

Silver tableware, tall candles, roasted meat and expensive wine. Pack members in dress clothes, faces bright with the pleasure of celebrating someone else's good fortune.

I moved through it with a wine bottle and kept my eyes on the glasses.

Tara-Lee sat at Cole's right hand at the high table. She wore deep green. She was radiant. Settled into her seat like the chair had been built for her, happiness worn loose and unforced. Cole sat beside her. Still. Formal. His eyes moved across the room in regular intervals, automatically surveilling like an experienced Alpha reading his pack.

Twice those eyes found me.

I kept my eyes on the wine bottle each time. If I met his gaze I didn't know what I would do. Cry, maybe. Or say something that would get me banished. Neither felt survivable.

I made it two hours. Two hours of filling glasses and sidestepping shoulders and keeping my chin level while pack members spoke around me like I wasn't there.

Then I reached Tara-Lee's glass.

I leaned to pour.

Her elbow moved.

The wine came across in a slow, dark arc and soaked into the front of my grey uniform, rim to waist, immediate and irreversible.

The table nearest us went quiet. Then the quiet spread.

Tara-Lee studied the tablecloth. Then up at the room. Then at me, with wide, composed eyes.

"This is the third time this week a servant has been careless near the table." She addressed the room calmly, the room already tilting toward her. "I think that deserves to be addressed." She turned to Cole. "Don't you?"

Every face in the hall turned with her.

Cole’s attention rested on Tara-Lee. Then his gaze crossed the table and landed on me.

Wine dripped from the hem of my uniform onto the stone floor.

He opened his mouth.