Escape

The door to my chamber was standing open. A figure stood there, framed in the doorway, blocking the morning sunlight that fought to enter the bowels of the palace. The shadow it cast was long and thin, cutting across the filth of my floor like a blade. I could tell from the hue of the shadow, the slenderness of the frame, and the lack of that suffocating, heavy pressure that it wasn't Kai.

I squinted, my head throbbing in time with the pulse in my wounded shoulder. As the blurry image finally snapped into focus, my breath hitched. It was Mali, the Royal Physician. The man who had patched my scraped knees when I was a pup and who had treated the entire royal lineage for decades.

A flicker of foolish, desperate hope ignited in my chest. Had they realized the horror of last night? Had Kai’s conscience if he had one finally bitten him? Maybe the pack’s elders?

"Mali?" I rasped, my voice a ghost of itself. I tried to sit up, but the silver chains rattled, the metal hissing against my skin.

 "Did they send you to... to help?"

Mali didn't answer immediately. He stepped into the room, his footsteps heavy and hesitant. He didn't look like a man on a mission of mercy. He looked like a man walking toward a gallows. He knelt beside me, his eyes averted, and slowly opened his black medical toolbox. The hinges gave a mournful creak.

My eyes darted to the contents of the kit. There, nestled in velvet, was a long, shimmering needle filled with a liquid the color of bruised violets.

Wolfsbane.

The hope died so fast it left me dizzy. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. "No," I whispered, scrambling backward until my spine hit the cold stone wall.

 "Mali, please. Not that. Anything but that."

"Mali, please look at me," I begged, my voice cracking. 

"Don't take my wolf. Don't leave me alone in my own head."

Mali finally looked up, and his face was a map of sorrow. His hands, usually so steady, were trembling as he prepared the syringe.

"I have a family, June," he whispered, his voice so low I could barely hear it over the sound of my own frantic breathing.

 "the Alpha... he made it clear. If I do not perform this procedure, my sons will find themselves in the same chains you are wearing by nightfall. He is a king who will burn anything that doesn't bend."

The hatred flared in my chest then,a dark, hot coal. Kai wasn't just breaking me, he was poisoning everyone I had ever cared about, turning a healer into a torturer.

"I’m sorry, child," Mali choked out.

Before I could scream, he grabbed my arm with a grip born of desperation. The needle pierced my skin, and the violet liquid surged into my veins. It felt like liquid fire at first, and then, a terrifying, absolute silence. My wolf, who had been pacing and snarling in the back of my mind since the rejection, let out a final, whimpering howl before she was smothered by the fog. The colors in the room bled into shades of grey. The sounds of the palace above became muffled. I felt small. I felt empty.

Mali packed his kit in silence and left without looking back.

I didn't have long to mourn the silence. Moments later, the heavy thud of boots echoed in the hall. Two guards, entered the room. They didn't speak. They grabbed the silver chains at my wrists and yanked me upward, dragging my limp, wolf-less body out of the cell and through the winding corridors of the servant quarters.

We emerged into the Royal Court. The transition from the dark cellar to the gilded grandeur of the throne room was staggering. The entire clan was gathered, a sea of faces that used to look at me with respect, now twisted into masks of suspicion and disgust.

Kai sat on the high throne, his face a mask of iron. Beside him, in the seat that should have been mine, sat Lia. She looked radiant in a gown of shimmering silk, her fingers playing with a heavy gold necklace that looked suspiciously familiar.

"June," Lia said, her voice echoing through the silent court. She stood up, her eyes bright with a cold, calculated fire. 

"I wanted to show you mercy. I wanted to give you a place in this palace where you could find redemption. But it seems a thief cannot be changed by kindness."

She held up a small, ornate velvet pouch. From it, she pulled a signet ring, the crest of the Alpha’s private treasury.

"This was found hidden beneath the straw in your cell this morning," Lia declared, her voice rising so every member of the clan could hear. 

"You tried to steal from the very man who spared your life. You tried to rob the pack that fed you."

"That’s a lie!" I screamed, the words raw and jagged in my throat. I looked toward the elders, toward the warriors I had bled beside. 

But no one moved. No one spoke. The wolfsbane made my voice sound thin, lacking the Alpha-given authority I once carried as a Beta. To them, I was just a frantic, lying Omega.

Lia looked at Kai, her eyes brimming with fake tears.

 "It hurts, Kai. To be betrayed by someone I called a sister."

Kai’s gaze fixed on me, colder than the silver around my wrists. He stood up, the power radiating off him enough to make the air hum. He didn't look like he believed her, but he looked like he didn't care. He wanted me broken, and Lia was providing the hammer.

"The evidence is clear," Kai said, his voice a death knell.

 "But I am a just Alpha. June, if you fall to your knees now, if you kiss the feet of your Luna and apologize for your crimes against this clan, I will allow you to stay in the servant's quarters. I will spare you the public lash."

I looked at Lia’s smug face, and then at Kai’s expectant, cruel eyes. My wolf was gone, suppressed by the violet poison, but my pride was still roaring.

"I will never apologize for a lie," I spat, my vision blurring with a fierce, defiant heat. 

"And I will never kiss the feet of a traitor. You can take my rank, you can take my wolf, and you can take my blood, Kai. But you will never, ever get an apology from me."

Kai’s jaw tightened. He turned to the guards, his voice devoid of anything but steel.

"Take her to the courtyard."