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Melany's POV

Crack!

The heel came down on my palm, and pain shot up my arm so fast that my breath caught in my throat. My knees hit the kitchen floor a second later. The tiles were cold and greasy under my skin, and for a moment all I could do was curl my fingers against them and try not to make a sound. 

I knew from experience that screaming only made them laugh harder.

“Bitch.”

“Slut.”

They had called me worse things before, so the insults should not have hurt anymore, but every time they said them, I remembered what I was in this house. Not a girl. Not even a servant.

Victoria grabbed my hair and pulled my head back. My scalp burned as she forced me to look up at her. She looked beautiful, as always. Golden hair, clean dress, soft pink lips, and a face everyone in Black Moon admired. If a stranger walked in, he would probably think she was kind.

“You know very well why you are getting beaten,” she said, looking down at me as if I had dirtied her shoes by bleeding near them.

Her friends stood behind her, eager to join in now that Victoria had given them permission.

“Of course she knows. She is the daughter of traitors.”

“She should be grateful Alpha Andre let her live.”

A slap landed across my face before I could lower my head. My cheek burned, and the force made my teeth cut the inside of my mouth. I tasted blood almost immediately. 

Victoria let go of my hair, but before I could crawl away, her heel pressed into my back and pinned me down again.

I tried to breathe through the pain. I tried to think about the stove, the flour sacks, the basket of eggs on the counter, anything that was not the sharp point of her shoe digging between my shoulders. That was how I survived most days. I made my mind leave my body until they got bored.

Then one of the girls laughed and said, “Maybe her parents begged before Alpha executed them too.”

My fingers stopped moving against the floor.

“No,” I said.

The kitchen went quiet enough for me to hear the oil popping in a pan somewhere behind me.

Victoria shifted her weight. “What did you say?”

I swallowed, but my throat hurt, so the words came out rough. “I said no. My parents were not traitors.”

For a second, no one moved. I knew I should have kept my mouth shut. I knew exactly what happened when I defended them. But I also knew my mother’s hands had once braided my hair before bed, and my father had once lifted me onto his shoulders so I could reach peaches from the highest branch. They had loved me. They had protected me. They had called me their little princess when I still believed princesses were allowed to grow up happy.

I could not spit on their memory just because Victoria wanted to hear it.

Her heel pressed harder into my back, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from crying out.

“Say it,” she ordered. “Say your parents were traitors.”

I stared at the crack between two tiles and forced my voice out again. “They were not.”

Someone kicked my ribs. My body jerked forward, and my injured hand scraped against the floor. The pain made my eyes water, but I blinked fast, because tears were another thing they liked to collect from me.

Victoria bent down, close enough that I could smell the sweet perfume on her skin. “You really think loyalty from a dirty slave means anything?”

Before I could answer, hurried footsteps crossed the hall outside the kitchen. One of the older maids rushed in, stopped at the sight of me on the floor, and immediately looked away as if she had seen nothing unusual.

“Miss Victoria,” she said, lowering her head. “Young Master Dominic is coming down for breakfast.”

The pressure on my back disappeared at once.

Victoria stepped away from me and smoothed the front of her dress. Her friends did the same, fixing their hair and wiping their hands as if they had only been helping prepare the morning meal. I stayed on the floor for a few seconds longer, trying to pull air into my lungs without showing how badly my ribs hurt.

Victoria looked down at me again. “You heard her. Get up and make breakfast. If Dominic has to wait because of you, I will break your other hand too.”

One of her friends laughed as they moved toward the door. “And clean the blood off your mouth. No one wants to lose their appetite looking at you.”

They left together, their shoes clicking lightly over the floor. I waited until the sound faded before I pushed myself up. My right hand throbbed so badly that I could not use it, and when I looked down, two of my fingers had already begun to swell. I did not have time to check if anything was broken. 

Dominic was coming, and in this house, the Alpha’s son being hungry mattered more than a slave bleeding on the floor.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my left hand and limped to the counter. The kitchen was still warm from the morning fire, but my body felt cold under my thin dress. I cracked eggs one-handed, spilling some of the whites onto the table because my fingers would not stop trembling. Then I took bacon from the storage tray and laid it in the pan. 

The smell filled the room quickly, rich and salty, and my empty stomach cramped so painfully that I almost bent over.

I had not eaten since yesterday afternoon. Maybe earlier. Sometimes the days became difficult to count when every meal depended on what scraps were left behind and whether the maids were in a generous mood. I kept my eyes on the pan and turned the bacon before it burned. Dominic liked it crisp but not black. I knew that because I had been punished once for making it too soft and once for making it too dry.

The kitchen door opened just as I slid the eggs onto the plate.

I lowered my head immediately.

Dominic walked in with the lazy confidence of someone who had never been afraid of entering any room. He looked as if he had just woken up, his chestnut hair slightly messy, his shirt half-buttoned at the throat, and his golden-brown eyes still heavy with sleep. Even like that, he looked like someone girls would whisper about in corners. 

“Breakfast,” he said.

“I made it, Young Master,” I answered, keeping my voice low.

I carried the plate to the table with my left hand. It shook more than I wanted it to. The eggs slid slightly to one side, and grease from the bacon touched my thumb, but I managed not to drop it. For one foolish second, I felt relieved.

Then Dominic looked at the plate, looked at me, and his face twisted with disgust.

Before I could step back, his arm swept across the table. The plate hit the floor and shattered. Eggs, bacon, and broken porcelain scattered across the tiles near my feet.

I stared at the mess, too tired to react.

“You look too dirty,” he said. “How am I supposed to eat something you made?”