Todos os capítulos de THE LYCAN PRINCESS THEY BURIED : Capítulo 1 - Capítulo 10

Elira’s POV The fist caught me in the ribs before I even saw it coming. I hit the stone floor hard, air punching out of my lungs, and rolled just in time to miss the boot aimed at my head. “Thought you could take my rations, pretty girl?” Mira’s voice, all gravel and glee, followed by the scrape of her boots circling closer. “Thought nobody would notice?” I hadn’t taken anything. It didn’t matter. In here, accusations were currency, and Mira liked spending mine. She’d decided months ago that I made an easy target — quiet, compliant, never fighting back. Prey learns fast which stories keep it breathing, and I’d learned mine. I scrambled up, back hitting the wall, hands already rising — not to fight, just to cover. Two years taught me that much. Don’t fight. Fighting earned you worse. A split lip healed in days. A week in the dark box didn’t. “Please,” I said, and hated how flat my own voice sounded, stripped of anything that might have once passed for fear or defiance. “I don’t

Elara’s POV I woke before dawn, the way I had every morning for two years, my body still keeping a schedule no one had asked it to keep. The estate was quiet in a way it hadn’t been the night before — no laughter drifting up from the gathering, no clink of silver, no voices raised in toasts to a King I’d never met and never would. Just the pale grey light easing in through unfamiliar curtains, and the particular stillness of a house sleeping off its own performance. I dressed slowly, favoring my ribs, and slipped out into the hallway before anyone else was awake enough to notice me moving through it. There was a place I wanted to see. I hadn’t let myself think about it directly since coming back — not the room, not my old life, just this one place, tucked away past the west wing, that had belonged to something quieter and truer than any of it. The greenhouse. Mother used to bring me there when I was small, back when her hands were steadier and her breath came easier. We’d spend

Elira’s POVCassian found me again the next afternoon, in the same corner of the kitchen, elbow-deep in a fresh basket of silver that had appeared sometime overnight.I felt him before I saw him — that particular weight of someone standing too close, watching too openly, already certain of what he’d find. I kept polishing.“Still at it,” he said, voice flat. “Still playing the martyr.”“I’m polishing silver, Cassian.” I didn’t look up. “There’s nothing being played.”“You know what I think?” He leaned against the table, arms crossed, blocking most of the light. “I think you know exactly how this looks. The bruised, humble little servant, quietly suffering in the house that cast her out. It’s a good story. Very sympathetic. I almost believe it myself, and I know better.”I set the fork down slowly, giving myself a second to choose my next words instead of simply reacting to his.“I didn’t ask you to believe anything.”“You didn’t have to. You just needed enough people to feel sorry for

Elira’s POVRonan found me three more times over the next two days, each visit a little more deliberate than the last, like he was working through some private checklist of how to fix what he’d only just started to notice was broken.The first time, he brought tea I hadn’t asked for and sat with me while I drank it, filling the silence with small updates about the estate — nothing that mattered, just the comfortable noise of ordinary conversation. A dispute over grazing rights with a neighboring pack. A servant’s upcoming wedding. The King’s plans to extend his visit another week, something about trade negotiations that required more careful handling than anyone had originally anticipated. I answered when he asked me things directly. I didn’t offer anything beyond that, and if he noticed how carefully I was rationing my own words, he didn’t say so.The second time, he asked outright if I wanted to talk about prison.“Not yet,” I said, and he nodded like he’d expected that answer, thou

Elira’s POVI’d started avoiding the east corridor around midday, when Cassian typically passed through on his way to the training yard. It wasn’t difficult — the estate was large enough that avoiding one person required only minor adjustments to my usual paths, a different staircase here, a longer route there, small rerouting that cost me nothing but a few extra minutes. In prison, I’d learned to map a much smaller space with the same instinct, memorizing which corridors held which guards on which shifts, which paths let me pass unnoticed and which ones guaranteed trouble. The skill transferred more easily than I would have liked.But today I’d lost track of time restocking the linen closet near the servants’ stairs, counting and folding long past when I should have finished, and by the time I realized how late it had gotten, he was already rounding the corner ahead of me, flanked by two other packmates I didn’t recognize.There was no graceful way to turn back without it looking ex