4

The morning came too fast.

I stood in the front hallway of the Ashford house with a small satchel over my shoulder, wearing the same off white dress from the night before because it was the nicest thing I owned, which really meant it was the nicest thing Scarlet had thrown at me. My hair was still curled but already starting to frizz, and the makeup over my scar had faded enough that the thin line was peeking through again.

Before I had been allowed to pack, the pack witch, an old woman named Brenda with milky eyes and gnarled fingers, had pulled me into a back room and delivered a warning that still sat heavy in my chest.

"You will not speak of your life here. Not a word about being a servant. Not a word about how they treated you." Her voice had been cold and final. "If the King discovers the truth about this household, Marcus's deal is void and he dies in that cell. Do you understand?"

I understood. I was not just being sold. I was being silenced.

My father stood near the front door with his hands in his pockets, staring at a spot on the floor like he was trying to burn a hole through it. Lily was nowhere in sight. Scarlet was nowhere in sight. The house was eerily quiet for a place that usually buzzed with noise and movement.

"Dad." I said the word and it felt foreign on my tongue, like speaking a language I had forgotten. "Are you going to say anything?"

He lifted his eyes to mine and I searched them desperately for something. Guilt. Regret. Love. Anything that would tell me the man who helped create me felt even a fraction of pain about sending me away.

"Be smart, Mia." That was all he gave me. No hug. No tears. No I am sorry. Just two words of cold, practical advice delivered in the same tone he used when reminding the house staff to lock the back gate. "Do not cause trouble for the King. Do not embarrass this family."

"This family." I repeated the words with a bitter smile pulling at my lips. "Right."

I turned toward the door before he could see the tears forming, because I refused to give him that. Twelve years of being invisible had taught me one useful skill, and that was how to cry without anyone noticing.

Tessa was waiting on the front porch.

The second I stepped outside, she grabbed me and pulled me into a hug that was more collision than embrace. Her arms locked around my thick waist and her face pressed into my shoulder and I could feel her entire body trembling with the effort of not falling apart.

"I am going to write to you every single day." Her voice was muffled against my skin. "I do not care if they read the letters. I do not care if they burn them. I will keep writing."

"Tessa." I could barely speak through the tightness in my throat.

"And if anything happens to you, if anyone touches you or hurts you, you find a way to tell me. I will come. I swear on everything I have, Bella, I will come for you."

"You are the best thing that ever happened to me." I pulled back and held her face in my hands, memorizing every detail. Her dark curls. Her brown eyes. The tiny scar on her chin from when we were kids and she fell off the swingset trying to impress a boy. "No matter what happens to me in that palace, knowing you exist in this world is enough. You hear me? That is enough."

She shook her head stubbornly, tears streaming freely now. "It is not enough. It will never be enough. You deserve more than just existing, Bella. You deserve to live."

A sleek black car pulled into the driveway and a uniformed driver stepped out, opening the rear door without a word. The windows were tinted so dark they looked like pools of ink.

"I have to go." I squeezed Tessa's hands one final time and forced myself to release them, which was the hardest thing I had ever done. Harder than accepting my fate. Harder than forgiving my father. Letting go of Tessa's hands felt like letting go of the last piece of myself that was still worth saving.

I climbed into the back seat and the door closed behind me with a soft, final click. Through the tinted window, I watched Tessa standing on the porch getting smaller and smaller as the car pulled away, her hand raised in a wave that she held long after I could no longer see her face.

The drive lasted two hours.

We traveled through roads I did not recognize, winding deeper and deeper into thick forest where the trees grew so tall and so close together that the sunlight could barely push through. Fog clung to the ground like something alive, crawling across the road in pale ribbons that made the car's headlights glow yellow and sickly.

I pressed my forehead against the cold window and watched the world outside grow darker and more unfamiliar with every passing mile. The mark on my neck pulsed with a steady, warm rhythm that matched my heartbeat, like a second heart had been planted beneath my skin. I touched it gently and wondered if he could feel it too. If somewhere in that palace, the King felt a tiny echo of the terrified girl riding toward him in the back seat of his car.

The driver's phone rang.

He answered with a clipped "Yes, Your Majesty" and listened in silence for about thirty seconds. Then he pulled the car onto the shoulder of the road and stopped.

"Miss Ashford." He turned in his seat and he would not look me in the eye, which told me everything I needed to know before he even opened his mouth. "The King has requested that you complete the remainder of the journey on foot."

"On foot?" I looked out the window at the dense, fog choked forest pressing in on both sides of the road. "How far is it?"

"Approximately four miles, miss. If you follow the road north, you will see a grove of cherry blossom trees. They mark the entrance to the palace grounds."

"It is almost dark."

"I am sorry, miss. Those are my orders." His voice was tight with something that sounded like guilt, but guilt from a stranger was worth about as much as love from my father. Nothing at all.

I picked up my satchel, opened the door, and stepped out into the fading light. The air hit me immediately, cold and damp and heavy with the smell of wet earth and pine needles. The car pulled away before I had even finished closing the door, its red taillights disappearing around a curve and leaving me standing alone in the middle of a road that stretched into nothing.

Four miles. Through a forest. At twilight. With no wolf and bad eyesight and a body that was already shaking from exhaustion and fear.

I started walking.

The first mile was not terrible. The road was still visible beneath my feet and the last dregs of daylight gave me just enough visibility to keep moving forward. I clutched the strap of my satchel against my chest and counted my steps to keep my mind from spiraling.

But the sun dropped fast. By the time I reached what I guessed was the halfway point, the forest had swallowed the light completely. Shadows thickened into solid walls of black on either side of me, and the road beneath my feet became invisible. I was walking blind, my borrowed heels catching on every crack and root, my thick legs burning with the effort of navigating terrain I could not see.

Then I heard it.

A twig snapping somewhere to my left. Then another, closer. Then the unmistakable sound of paws on dirt, multiple sets, moving fast and circling.

Howls split the night air, high and hungry and close enough to vibrate in my chest.

I ran.

I did not think. I did not plan. My body simply exploded into motion, adrenaline flooding through me like gasoline on a fire. Branches whipped across my arms and face, tearing at the gown and scratching my skin as I crashed through the undergrowth without any sense of direction. My lungs burned and my legs screamed and the howls grew louder, closer, faster.

My foot caught on something hard, a root or a rock or a fallen branch, and the ground rushed up to meet me with terrifying speed. I hit the dirt face first, my satchel flying from my hands, pain exploding through my knees and palms as I skidded across the forest floor.

I tried to push myself up but my arms gave out beneath me. The howling was everywhere now, surrounding me in a circle of sound that pressed in tighter and tighter. I could hear breathing. I could hear growling. I could feel the vibration of heavy bodies moving through the brush just beyond the reach of my useless, straining eyes.

I pressed my face into the cold dirt and felt the last of my strength drain out of me like water from a cracked glass, as unseen predators closed in from every direction.