The Alpha's Regret, The King's Obsession

The scullery floor of Bloodfang Keep was colder than river ice, and grease never lifted cleanly in the dark.

My knees were completely numb against the wet flagstones, the coarse burlap of my servant’s shift soaked through with cold lye water, tallow scum, and sheep fat. Outside the high, narrow embrasure near the ceiling vaults, the autumn wind howled down from the jagged teeth of the northern passes, whipping through the pines of the southern basin and carrying the rich, taunting scents of woodsmoke, roasting venison, and spiced blackberry wine down into the damp cellar where I had spent ten winters.

Today was the autumn equinox.

In the ledger books kept by the river scribes, today marked my eighteenth naming day. In a true Alpha’s household, an eighteenth naming day was sacred. It was the dawn when an Alpha’s daughter was supposed to be dressed in fine bleached wool, her hair braided with river pearls, her natural scent unmasked so the young warriors of the valley could gather in the yard to contest for her favor.

Instead, I had a split wicker basket full of crusty iron kettles, an empty belly that had gnawed on itself since yesterday’s noon bell, and a pair of split, bleeding hands pressed flat into gray slop.

In six weeks, the Hunters’ Moon feast would bring forty river packs to the valley for the Choosing, the great autumn gathering where the bloodlines of the southern basin would seal their marriages, trade their timber rights, and swear their border treaties before the deep winter closed the passes.

Upstairs in the sunlit master chambers, my half-sister Camilla was laughing while three seamstresses pinned lengths of dyed crimson silk to her bodice.

Down here, the only sound was the scratch of my stiff hog-bristle brush against cold basalt.

“Faster, Valerie,” Martha’s voice cut through the damp gloom like the flick of a raw birch switch.

My stepmother stood on the bottom riser of the cellar stairs, holding a brass oil lamp that threw a harsh, yellow glare across her sharp, pinched features. She wore a high-collared gown of dark, heavy wool, a ring of iron household keys jangling at her waist like miniature shackles.

Beside her stood my father, Alpha Thomas, his heavy, aging bulk leaning hard against the timber doorframe.

Thomas did not look at my raw, purple fingers. He did not look at the threadbare burlap that barely covered my collarbones, nor the thin, shivering frame that made me look four winters younger than my years. He looked at me with the tired, irritated indifference he reserved for a rusted scythe, a dry well, or a draft horse that had gone lame before the autumn plowing.

“The banquet tables must be sanded and oiled before midnight,” Thomas said, his gravelly rasp hollow and flat, carrying the permanent weariness of an Alpha whose authority was slipping through his fingers like dry river silt. “Elder Gregory arrives at dawn with sixty River Claw riders to inspect the palisades. House Blackwood will not sit at a grease-stained board.”

“She is on the third tub, Thomas,” Martha replied smoothly, though her thin, bloodless lips curled with cold satisfaction as she watched me scrub. “The girl has no wolf to keep the frost from her marrow, but she has hands. She will earn her keep, or she will sleep without a blanket.”

I kept my head bowed, staring fixedly into the cloudy, grease-slicked water.

No wolf.

It was the verdict that had forged every chain of my life. In a pack built on claw, muscle, and territorial dominance, a wolfless child was worse than a corpse; she was an open insult to the bloodline.

My birth mother had been an outsider, brought down from the high northern border by my father after an ancient treaty expedition. She had carried strange, quiet ways, pale skin, and eyes dark as midnight ice, speaking little of the family she had left behind in the snow. When a sudden, violent chest fever took her when I was eight winters old, she took the secret of her blood with her into the earth.

The day she was buried beneath the roots of the valley birches, Martha moved into the master wing, bringing Camilla with her. Within a single turn of the moon, my mother’s carved cedar chests were pried open, her silver brooches were pinned to Martha’s collars, and I was moved from the warm hearth of the upper hall to a rotting straw pallet tucked beneath the scullery stairs.

“Drink your tea, Valerie,” Martha said, her tone softening into that sickening, performative sweetness she used whenever Thomas stood within earshot.

She stepped off the riser, setting a chipped clay mug on the chopping block beside my wash-tub.

“Your father cannot have you hacking and wheezing while the Blackwood elders cross the courtyard. Drink it down while it still carries the hearth heat.”

The liquid inside was pale green, steaming faintly with the smell of dried chamomile and wild mint.

Beneath that soothing herbal scent lay the faint, bitter, chalky copper tang I had tasted every morning of my life since my eighth winter.

Boiled wolfsbane.

Back then, in the blind innocence of childhood, I had believed her lies. Martha had stroked my hair with her cool, smooth fingers, telling me it was a sacred tonic brewed by the valley healers to soothe the burning in my lungs, a protective draft to keep a sickly, frail girl alive through the damp river frosts.

I had swallowed every cup with gratitude.

I did not know that three drops of boiled root every dawn acted like liquid lead, coating my veins, freezing the spiritual conduit between my marrow and the moon, and locking the white wolf inside my blood into an endless, chemical slumber. It kept me scentless. It kept me weak. It ensured that Camilla, with her bright golden curls and healthy, blooming heat, would shine as the undisputed jewel of House Bloodfang while I scrubbed her chamber pots in the dark.

I reached out with stiff, trembling fingers, lifted the warm mug, and brought it to my lips.

The bitter venom burned down my throat, settling heavy and cold in the pit of my stomach, sending a dull, familiar numbness washing outward into my limbs. My wolf whined deep in the dark recesses of my soul, a faint, muffled cry behind an iron door, before going silent once more.

“Good girl,” Martha murmured, taking the empty mug from my red fingers.

Heavy, deliberate bootsteps echoed across the timber floorboards above our heads, rattling dust from the beams.

A moment later, the low timber door opened, and Garrick Blackwood stepped into the cellar.

He was nineteen, tall, broad-shouldered, and golden, moving with the lazy, swaggering arrogance of a predator who had never known a cage. His father commanded the sixty heaviest lances along the Black River, and this marriage alliance with Thomas would bind the timber mills, the fertile pastures, and the river crossings under Garrick’s future mantle.

His amber eyes were bright, sharp, and predatory, his thick, sunlit hair curling slightly against the nape of his neck.

Over his broad shoulders hung a short mantle of prime white ermine, edged with silver wire.

My heart seized in my chest, a cold, suffocating weight dropping through my ribs.

That pelt had belonged to my mother. It was the only heirloom she had carried south from the glacial peaks of her homeland, kept wrapped in dried lavender until Martha had forced the lock on her cedar chest three moons ago. Now, it rested carelessly across the shoulders of a boy who had never spent a single night shivering in the freeze.

Garrick did not look at my face. His gaze swept over the wet flagstones, his lip curling in sharp distaste at the sour smell of lye and grease.

“Thomas, the perimeter scouts have returned from the eastern ford,” Garrick said, his baritone booming in the low cellar, completely ignoring my presence on the floor. “Vance’s river raiders have set fresh watch fires along the willow flats. If we do not reinforce the palisade before the first frost seals the ground, the spring timber floats will never reach the coast.”

“The logs are already squared at the sawpits, Garrick,” Thomas replied hastily, his voice carrying that eager, deferential edge he always used with the Blackwood heir. “We will double the guard along the lower crossing at dawn.”

Garrick gave a sharp nod, turning to leave.

As he pivoted on his heel, the heavy, iron-shod heel of his riding boot caught the lip of my wooden wash-tub.

The heavy tub overturned with a dull, wet thud.

Ten gallons of gray, greasy lye water flooded across the flagstones, soaking instantly through the thin burlap of my shift, hitting the raw, split scrapes on my knees with the biting fury of liquid fire.

I let out a sharp, strangled gasp, pitching forward onto my palms to keep from sliding flat into the filthy tide.

Garrick stopped.

He glanced back over his shoulder, his amber eyes dropping to where I knelt trembling in the sludge. He saw my torn, bleeding hands clutching the stones. He saw the ermine mantle brushing against his sword scabbard, barely three inches from my face.

There was no pity in his eyes. There was not even the mild curiosity one might offer a stray hound in the yard. There was only the cold, impatient contempt of an Alpha heir who found an obstacle cluttering his boots.

“Watch where you put your slops, girl,” Garrick muttered, stepping over my outstretched fingers with careless ease. “Some of us have a pack to lead.”

He climbed the stairs behind Thomas and Martha, their voices fading into the warmth of the hall above. The cellar door swung shut with a hollow, final thud, plunging the scullery back into freezing, shadow-choked silence.

I stayed on my hands and knees in the muck.

The lye burned the skin of my thighs. The bitter taste of wolfsbane coated my teeth like lead.

I did not weep. I had learned years ago that tears did not soften stone, and they did not warm a straw pallet.

Slowly, dragging my numb limbs through the grease, I righted the wooden bucket, picked up the stiff hog-bristle brush, and pressed my knees back into the filthy water.

I had no idea that in six weeks, the boy in the white ermine would stand beside Camilla under the full moon and discard me like refuse.

I had no idea that fifty-six days from now, my father would watch silently while a silver spear pinned me to the floor of a flooded river dungeon.

I simply scrubbed the dark flagstones, blind to the truth that the family calling me a ghost had already begun to dig my grave.