Chapter 2
**ELIRYA**
Liyara's screams had stopped by morning.
Screams meant fighting. Silence meant finished.
I kept my eyes on the floor and kept walking.
Selyra fell into step beside me.
"You understand what happened to her."
"Yes, head chief."
"Good." She peeled off into a doorway. "Don't repeat it."
---
The throne room smelled like candle wax and cold stone.
And something else underneath both. Something that made the air feel thick. Heavy. Like standing too close to a fire that hadn't caught yet.
I stood third from the left. Eight of us in a line. Hands folded. Eyes down.
Around us the court watched without watching. Lords. Ladies. Wolves. All of them still and careful in the way prey animals go still when something larger enters the room.
I counted his footsteps.
Slow. Even. No rush.
They stopped.
The silence after was worse than the sound.
"This one."
The line went rigid around me. That particular stillness of people who are glad it isn't them and scared to show it.
I looked up slowly.
He was closer than I expected.
Dark eyes. Flat. Moving across my face the way you check a room before entering it — not seeing me, just checking what was there.
I held still.
"Name," he said.
"Elirya."
Something shifted in his eyes. A flicker. Gone fast.
He turned away. Two attendants appeared and pulled me from the line.
The other women didn't look at me.
Smart.
---
He walked the room after.
A woman stepped forward and offered him something — wine, cloth, I couldn't see. His hand caught her wrist and held it just long enough.
She stepped back.
Nobody moved again.
He stopped at the center and let the quiet stretch until it had weight.
"You move as if the ground is yours." Flat. Almost bored. "It is not. It belongs to me. Remember that."
He left.
Half the room exhaled.
I watched the doors close and kept my face empty.
---
A maid found her way beside me in the corridor after.
Young. Still shaky.
"He looked at you twice," she whispered.
"He looks at everyone."
"Not the same way."
I didn't answer.
She dropped back and let me go ahead.
Don't be interesting, I told myself.
One day, the truth would emerge, and i would be ready.
For now, I watched the wilderness of women around the Alpha King, and realized: most would never survive the night. But i had no intention of joining them.
Not yet.
---
I stopped in front of her.
"This one."
She looked up slow. Not scared. Not bold either. Just — waiting to see what the moment required before she responded to it.
A human. Doing that.
It irritated me.
"Name."
"Elirya."
One word. Clean. No shaking in her voice.
I turned away before the irritation showed.
---
The woman with the gift learned quickly enough what offering without permission cost her.
I didn't need to do much. That was the point.
I spoke once before I left. Loud enough for all of them.
The ground belongs to me. Remember that.
A reminder. Nothing more.
The human at the edge — Elirya — stood still through all of it. Watching. Head down but eyes tracking everything.
She thought that wasn't visible.
It was.
---
KHARZAK**
Torvak spread the map across the table and waited.
I looked at it without sitting. The northern border. Three human settlements sitting on land I needed for the supply route east.
"How long," I said.
"Four days to mobilize." Torvak traced the route with one finger. "We hit the first settlement at dawn, the second before they can send word ahead. The third falls on its own after that."
"Casualties."
"Minimal if we move fast. They have no wolves. No real defense." He paused. "It's humans, Kharzak. It won't take long."
It never did.
I studied the northern pass. Narrow. Manageable if we split the regiment and took both sides simultaneously.
"Send word to Draven tonight," I said. "I want the eastern flank ready before we move."
Torvak nodded. Then didn't leave.
I looked up.
"The throne room today," he said carefully. "The human girl—"
"Is a servant." I looked back at the map. "Is there something else."
Torvak knew that tone. He'd known it for twenty years.
"No," he said. "Nothing else."
He rolled the map and left.
---
I stood at the window after.
The courtyard below was moving — soldiers, servants, wolves running patrol in the outer yard. My empire. My ground. Everything in its correct place and order.
Humans scurried at the edges of it. Small. Purposeless without direction.
I had no reason to think about any of them.
And yet.
Something had been sitting at the back of my skull since the throne room. Not a thought. Not quite. More like a sound just below hearing — the kind that shouldn't bother you and does anyway.
I didn't know what it was.
I turned from the window.
Four days to mobilize. A supply route to secure. A northern border that needed closing before the winter rains made the pass useless.
I had real things to think about.
I glanced back at the map.
Higher up.
In a conquered kingdom, that meant one thing.
Someone had survived.
A knock sounded once against the chamber doors.
Torvak entered without waiting for permission this time.
Which meant it mattered.
"There’s been a problem," he said.
I said nothing.
"The patrols caught someone trying to leave the palace grounds."
My attention sharpened.
Torvak’s gaze held mine carefully.
"A servant girl."
Silence.
Then—
“She killed two wolves before they restrained her,” he continued carefully. “One of them swears she moved like trained military.”
The room went still.
Slowly, Torvak placed a parchment onto the table beside the map.
“The survivor records from the royal bloodline arrived this morning.”
I looked down.
Most names had been marked dead.
One had not.
Princess Elirya Vaelthorn.
Missing.
My gaze shifted to the blood smeared across the bottom of the report.
Fresh.
Then to the final line written beneath it in hurried
ink—
Last seen inside the palace.
