All Chapters of ACCEPT ME OH KINGDOM : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Chapter 1"Traitor's daughter."The words hit Elara before the sun did.She looked up from the flagstones, soap water dripping off her raw knuckles, and found a boy no older than eight staring down at her with the particular cruelty only children and nobles ever managed to perfect and he was both."Excuse me?" she said, keeping her voice flat."My mother says your father sold soldiers to the enemy wolves," he said, like it was a fact he'd memorized for a test. "She says you should've been thrown out with the trash."Elara's grip tightened around the scrub brush. Fifteen years of this, and it still found new ways to land."Well," she said, forcing something like calm into her voice, "if I were trash, I doubt anyone would trust me to clean the floor you're standing on."The boy blinked, clearly unprepared for a servant who talked back. Before he could recover, a woman's voice cracked across the corridor like a whip."Elara Veyne."She didn't need to turn around to know it was Steward Be

Chapter: 3"Duty before desire. Kingdom before self. This I vow, as my father vowed before me."Kael's knee pressed against cold stone, eyes fixed on the portrait above the altar his father's painted face stern even in oil and canvas, the old king's eyes seeming to track him no matter where he knelt."Every morning," said a voice behind him, dry with amusement, "the same words. Does repetition make them truer, Alpha, or just easier to survive?"Kael didn't turn. "Careful, Sarn. That almost sounded like a real question.""It was." His Beta advisor stepped into view, arms crossed, unimpressed by tradition the way only a man who'd known Kael since childhood could afford to be. "The council's waiting. Evelyne's family arrived early. Apparently punctuality is meant to signal enthusiasm.""Is it working?""You tell me. You're the one marrying it."Kael rose, brushing dust from his knee, and didn't dignify that with an answer. He didn't need to. Sarn had known him long enough to read the sil

Chapter 5The vase hit the floor before Elara even turned around."She pushed me!"Elara spun to find Lord Ashwood's youngest daughter, seven, maybe eight, cheeks already blotching red with practiced tears pointing straight at her, porcelain shards scattered across the hallway between them."I didn't touch her." Elara set down the linen basket slowly, hands raised. "I was three feet away.""She's lying," the girl wailed, louder now, drawing exactly the attention she wanted. "She bumped into me and made me drop it!"Doors opened. Heads turned. Elara felt the familiar prickle of a dozen eyes deciding her guilt before anyone had asked a single question."What is going on here?"Steward Bellamy arrived like a verdict already written, gaze sweeping from the broken vase to the crying child to Elara, and settling as it always did exactly where it was cheapest to settle."She broke it," the girl sniffled. "On purpose, I think.""I was carrying linens," Elara said. "I never came near her.""Th

Chapter 7The courtyard erupted.“Three weeks!” someone shouted.“Finally!”“My daughter has been waiting for this!”Elara stood at the edge of the crowd, laundry basket balanced on her hip, watching the crier pin the announcement to the board.She didn't need to read it closely to know her name wouldn't be on it.She checked anyway.It wasn't.“Of course,” she muttered, and turned to go only to nearly collide with Mira, who'd apparently been watching her check.“You're not surprised,” Mira said.“Would you be?”“No. But you're still angry.”“I'm not angry.” Elara shifted the basket higher. “I'm accustomed.”“That's the saddest thing I've heard you say all week, and you told me last week you got blamed for a vase you were nowhere near.” Mira fell into step beside her. “You should petition Bellamy.”“Bellamy hates me.”“Bellamy hates everyone. It's not personal. Petition him anyway.”Bellamy's office smelled like ink and impatience, which felt, to Elara, entirely appropriate.“I'd like

CHAPTER 9 "I hope it's Alpha Renwick," Tilda announced, hugging a pillow to her chest like it might overhear and get jealous. "He's got that jaw.""He's got a wife, Tilda.""Not yet, he doesn't.""Not yet is doing a lot of work in that sentence." Mira threaded a needle, not looking up. "What about you, Elara? Any Alpha preferences, or are you still pretending you don't care?""I'm not pretending." Elara smoothed the fabric across her lap, focused entirely on the seam she was mending. "I genuinely don't care.""You've re-hemmed that dress three times this week.""Because it needed hemming three times.""It needed hemming once. You keep finding new things wrong with it." Mira's mouth curved. "That's not indifference, Elara. That's a girl making sure her only decent dress is perfect for a ceremony she claims means nothing to her."Across the room, Tilda and two other girls had moved on to arguing about hair braided crowns versus loose curls, whether silver ribbon was too obvious a nod t