Chapter 3

Freya

Nobody asked me if I wanted to go.

Two royal warriors walked me to a black car near the end of the convoy and shut me inside alone, and through the tinted glass I watched the whole world I knew standing frozen in the dirt. The Alpha was still half bowed. The pack was still on its knees. And the King was already walking back to his own vehicle at the front like he had done nothing more interesting than sign a paper.

She is my mate.

He had said it in front of everyone. In front of the Alpha, in front of the warriors who dragged me, in front of the whole pack that had watched me be nothing my entire life, the Lycan King had stood in the dirt of Blackmoor and called me his.

No one had ever claimed me before. No one had ever stood up for me, not once, not in twenty years, and he had broken my chains and taken me away in front of all of them, and I couldn't stop my heart from racing with it. Maybe he had walked out of that room and felt the bond pulling at him the way it pulled at me, and regretted every word. Maybe he came for me because he wanted to.

Maybe I was allowed, just this once, to be wanted.

Sable pressed close under my skin, warm and sure. Mate came for us, she said again. Mate wants us.

I let myself believe her. That was my first mistake in the palace, and I hadn't even reached it yet.

Movement near the pack house caught my eye, and my breath came short, because four royal warriors were dragging Garrett across the yard in restraints. He was twisting and shouting, and his father was hurrying after them with his hands out, pleading with words I couldn't hear through the glass, and no one was stopping to listen. For years I had watched Garrett do whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted. Watching him get dragged now, I felt no pity at all, and I didn't hate myself for it.

A fist banged the window and I jumped.

Harper. Her cheek was swollen and split where they had struck her, her eyes were streaming, and she pressed both palms flat against the glass.

I put my hands up against hers, the glass cold between us, and mouthed the only thing I had time for. I'll come back for you.

Then the engine started, and she ran alongside the car until she couldn't, and I twisted in my seat and watched her shrink in the back window with my throat aching and my hands still raised.

The drive to the palace took hours, and I spent every one of them holding my hope in both hands like water, terrified of spilling it. Yesterday morning I was a servant. Last night I was a stranger's shame. This morning I was a breeder with a cuff on my wrist, and now I was riding in a royal car as the claimed mate of the Lycan King. My wrist throbbed where the iron had scraped it, and I pressed my sleeve against the dried blood and watched the country roll past the window, and I let myself imagine, for the first time in my life, that the story had finally turned in my favor.

Sable paced circles inside me, warm and bright and singing to herself. Mate claimed us. Mate took us home.

Home, I repeated, and the word tasted new.

The palace rose out of the evening in walls of pale stone, bigger than our whole pack grounds, and the car swept through three gates before it stopped. A warrior opened my door, and standing at the foot of the steps was the King, and warmth flooded up through my chest and my feet wanted to run to him, and this time I didn't fight it, because maybe I didn't have to anymore.

"Come," he said, and turned, and I followed him through corridors of marble and gold with my dirty shoes and my torn sleeve, past staff who stopped and stared and whispered, but I barely noticed them, because I was watching the back of his shoulders and waiting for him to turn around and look at me. He opened the doors of a study lined with books and gestured me inside.

He did not sit. He did not offer me a seat either.

"What happened at your pack changes nothing about what I told you this morning," he said.

The warmth in my chest died so fast it left me dizzy. "I want to be clear, so listen carefully, because I will say this once. I claimed you because the law recognizes what you are to me, and allowing my mate to be chained as a breeder would humiliate the crown before every pack in the kingdom. That is the only reason you are here."

Sable stopped singing. I felt her go still inside me, and then I felt her start to shake, and I stood there in front of his desk with my hope draining out of me and hating myself for ever letting it in. Of course. Of course it was the crown, not me. It had never once in my life been me.

Each sentence that followed went into me slow and deep, and I kept my eyes on the edge of his desk and my face empty, because I had spent my whole life learning how to be spoken to like this.

"You will have a title, a wing of your own, and staff. You will appear beside me when protocol requires it. Outside of that, you will stay out of my sight. You will not enter my private quarters. You will not call me mate, not to my face, not to anyone. Do you understand?"

I understood. I understood that this palace was just a prettier version of the breeder house, and that the iron cuff had been traded for marble walls, and that this man would keep me the way people keep things they never wanted but cannot throw away.

"I asked if you understand."

"Yes." My voice came out level, and I was proud of it. "Can I ask one question, Your Majesty?"

He waited.

"Why did you say it out loud?" I lifted my eyes to him. "You could have taken me quietly. You could have bought me from them, they'd have sold me for nothing. Instead you told my whole pack I'm your mate. Why?"

He held my gaze for three full seconds, and he didn't answer me. He walked to the doors and opened them, and an older woman in a staff uniform stood waiting outside, gray-streaked hair pinned back, kind lines around her eyes.

"Merris will take you to your wing," he said, and walked away down the corridor without looking back, and I watched him go with my question hanging in the air behind him, I tucked that thought away carefully, because it was the only thing I owned in this entire palace.

Merris bowed to me, which no one had ever done in my life. "This way, my lady."

My lady. I almost laughed.

She led me through halls that got quieter the farther we walked, and she talked as we went, gentle and easy, telling me where the kitchens were, which staircases the staff used, how to ring for her. I only heard half of it. My legs were shaking with everything the day had put into them, and I wanted to lie down in whatever room they gave me and cry until I slept.

Then we turned into a wide gallery, and I stopped walking.

The corridor ahead was full of light and noise. Staff on ladders were hanging garlands of white flowers along the walls, maids hurried past with armloads of silk, and two men carried a rack of gowns wrapped in paper, one after another after another, more gowns than I had ever seen in my life. The whole palace smelled of roses.

"Is this a festival?" I asked. "What are they preparing for?"

Merris hesitated, and her kind face folded into an expression I recognized, because I had worn it myself every time I had to hand someone bad news.

"For Lady Vivienne Cole, my lady," she said quietly. "The King's chosen woman. She arrives tomorrow."