WHERE THE HELP BELONGS

The servants' wing of Alpha Academy was exactly what Lira expected, which somehow made it worse than if it had surprised her.

Narrow halls. Low ceilings. Stone walls that never quite lost their chill, no matter how many fires burned in the halls beyond them. It was the kind of place built to be forgotten — tucked behind the grand towers and gilded courtyards like something the Academy would rather visiting nobility never had to think about.

A woman named Matron Hale ran the wing with the brisk efficiency of someone who'd long since stopped caring whether anyone liked her for it. She lined up the new arrivals in the narrow common room — Lira, the nervous laundry girl whose name turned out to be Wren, Bricks, and a handful of others from various pack households and read off duty assignments from a ledger without once looking up.

"Kitchen staff report to the lower hall by five each morning," she said. "Laundry reports to the east courtyard. Groundskeeping...." she nodded at Bricks, "...you know where to go."

She reached the bottom of the list and paused, just slightly, before reading Lira's name.

"You. Personal attendant assignment. You'll be serving House Voss during term,specifically the Crown Prince's private wing."

Something in the room shifted. A few of the other servants exchanged glances, and Wren's eyes went wide beside her.

"House Voss," Wren whispered, once Matron Hale had moved on. "That's — Lira, that's the First Crown House. Prince Kael Voss. Everyone says he's..." she stopped herself, chewing her lip.

"Everyone says he's what?" Lira asked quietly.

"Cold," Wren said finally. "Like, actually cold. Not cruel exactly, not like some of the others. Just... distant. Like nothing touches him. My cousin served in his wing last term and said he barely spoke a full sentence to anyone the entire year."

Lira filed that away carefully, the same way she filed away everything useful. Cold, distant, untouchable. Fine. She'd served worse. She'd survived Sable's particular brand of cruelty for eleven years; a prince who simply didn't speak sounded almost restful by comparison.

She didn't yet know that the dark-haired figure who'd glanced toward the east wing doorway on arrival day — that stray second of attention that had made something flutter strangely in her chest belonged to exactly that name.

Her room, when she finally saw it, was smaller than a closet back at the estate, but at least it was hers alone,no shared cot, no Sable's voice drifting down a corridor to remind her of her place. A narrow bed. A single shelf. A window no bigger than a dinner plate, looking out over a service courtyard instead of the grand grounds beyond it.

She set her bag down, pulled out her spare uniform, and pressed her palm flat against the cold stone wall for a moment, the way she sometimes did when she needed to remind herself she was actually standing somewhere, actually real, actually still breathing after everything the day had thrown at her.

New place. Same rules, she told herself. Keep your head down. Do the work. Survive it.

She'd survived worse. She could survive this.

Her first assignment came before she'd even finished unpacking. A junior attendant named Petra —brisk, efficient, clearly desperate to offload the newest servant's education onto someone else as quickly as possible — walked her through the wing assigned to House Voss, rattling off instructions almost too fast to follow.

"Prince Kael takes his meals at precise times, don't be late setting them out. He doesn't like his study touched, ever, not even to dust it — just leave it be. He trains in the east yard most mornings before dawn, so his quarters need to be in order before he returns. He doesn't speak much, so don't expect conversation, and for the love of every founding wolf, don't stare."

"Stare at what?" Lira asked.

Petra gave her a look like the answer should've been obvious. "At him. Trust me. Everyone does, the first time. Just... don't."

They reached the door to the Prince's private study, and Petra knocked twice before pushing it open without waiting for an answer — apparently a habit worn smooth by routine.

The room was empty, thankfully, which meant Lira's first look at Kael Voss's world came without him standing in it to witness her reaction. And despite Petra's warning, she understood immediately why people stared.

It wasn't grand the way she'd expected a Crown Prince's study to be. No gilded excess, no trophies of privilege stacked for show. Just shelves of old books, worn smooth from actual use rather than decoration. A single window overlooking training grounds far below, frost already creeping along its edges. A desk covered in maps and reports, organized with a precision that felt almost lonely somehow, like someone who'd learned a long time ago that order was the only thing in his life he could fully control.

And beneath it all, a scent that made Lira's steps falter without warning, something like pine and cold stone and distant storms, unfamiliar and yet, impossibly, not unfamiliar at all. Something in her chest tightened, sharp and sudden, the same strange flutter she'd felt in the courtyard on arrival day.

"You alright?" Petra asked, glancing back.

"Fine," Lira said quickly, forcing her feet forward. "Just tired from the journey."

Petra didn't push it, already moving on to explain the linen schedule, the exact placement of the morning tea tray, the dozen small rules that governed a life Lira was meant to move through unseen.

But as she followed Petra out of the study, Lira glanced back once at the empty room, at the maps and the books and the cold, careful order of it all, and felt that strange hum beneath her skin again,quieter this time, but unmistakably there.

She didn't understand it yet. She told herself, firmly, that she didn't need to. She was here to serve, to disappear into walls the way she'd always done, to survive one more unfamiliar place the same way she'd survived every place before it.

She had no idea that the prince whose study she'd just quietly slipped through — cold, distant, untouchable Kael Voss was about to become the first person in this entire world whose attention she would never again be able to fully escape.