When My Mate Tortured Me Before Discovering I’m Royal

I didn't wait for the guards.

I shoved the oak door open with my shoulder and stumbled out into the night. The cold slapped my face. Behind me, Giselle shouted something, but the wind ate her words.

The rear gate stood maybe two hundred yards away. Past it, the territory line. Past that, freedom. My legs burned. I ran anyway.

I made it to the gate. My hand closed around the frozen iron bar.

Then a shadow stepped out from the trees.

Callahan.

He must have left his own ceremony to cut me off. His formal jacket was gone. His white shirt was open at the collar, and Giselle's blood was still on his bottom lip. His chest rose and fell too fast.

I looked at his eyes and saw his wolf. Ash, pacing behind the gold like a caged animal. Back and forth. Back and forth. Ash used to press his nose into my palm. Now he wouldn't stop moving.

"Let go of the gate, Sydney."

His voice was rough. Jagged at the edges, like he was holding something down with both hands.

I didn't let go. "Move."

"You humiliated me tonight." He took a step closer. "In front of my pack. In front of the elders. Do you have any idea what you did?"

I almost laughed. *I* did.

"I brought you bracers," I said.

His jaw flexed. For one second, his eyes dropped to the bundle under my arm. Ash lunged forward behind them. Callahan shoved him back. I watched it happen.

"You'll stay on Ironveil grounds," he said, "until I decide what to do with you."

"Decide what to do with me?"

"If you cross that line, I'll have you detained as a rogue trespasser." He said it slowly, like he wanted every word to land. "And you know what we do to rogues."

No apology. Not even a flicker of one.

Five years ago, I would have cried. Five hours ago, I might have begged.

Now I just looked at him. Steady. Calm. The way I used to look at a deep wound before I stitched it.

"You just rejected me before your entire pack," I said. "You no longer have the right to hold me."

Something cracked across his face. It was there and gone. Then he lifted two fingers.

Two guards came out of the dark. Big men. Deltas. One of them grabbed my left arm, the other my right. Their grip was hard enough to bruise.

I reached inside myself for my wolf. For the snarl I had felt in the great hall. For anything.

Nothing answered.

Just silence. Cold, heavy silence, like a house after a funeral.

Callahan saw me go still. I think he understood. His mouth twisted, but he didn't say a word. He just turned and walked back toward the light and the music.

He never looked back. He never did.

---

They marched me through the side entrance of the packhouse. Past the laundry. Past the kitchen, where the Omegas stopped scrubbing to stare at me.

I kept my head down. But I kept my eyes open.

Left at the pantry. Down the narrow hall. Third door on the right had a brass plate that read *Healer*. The door beside it was steel, with a keypad lock. The supply room. I saw a guard punch in the code last spring when I came to drop off salves. Four numbers. I still remembered the first two.

I counted my steps from that door to the stairs. Thirty-one.

At the bottom of the stairs, the guard on my right yanked the bracers from under my arm.

"Alpha's orders," he muttered. He couldn't look at me either.

I let him take them. Let them think that was all I had.

---

The Omega quarters were in the basement. One room. A cot, a thin wool blanket, a single bulb hanging from a wire. The walls smelled like bleach and old sweat. The lock clicked behind me.

I sat on the cot and waited until the footsteps faded.

Then I took inventory.

First, what I carried. The guards hadn't searched under my coat. Strapped against my ribs was my small leather satchel. Inside were dried lavender, comfrey root, beeswax, and a vial of moonwater. Not much. But enough to make three jars of healing salve, if I was careful.

Second, the bracers. Gone. But the pattern was still in my head. Every stitch, every knot, every way I wove my scent into the leather. No one else in Virginia knew it. They had taken the leather. They hadn't taken the hands.

Third, what I knew.

I closed my eyes and walked through the pack in my mind.

Gamma Reid. Torn shoulder, two winters ago. Allergic to arnica. Give him arnica and his throat swells shut.

Delta Hayes. Old silver wound in his thigh. It flares every full moon. He needs a double dose of yarrow or he can't run.

Delta Brooks. Bad left knee. Hides it from everyone. Only I know.

Callahan himself. A healed rib that aches in the cold. A temper that spikes after battle. A wolf that gets hungry for blood without my scent to calm him down.

I went through them one by one. Forty-two warriors. Every scar. Every fever. Every dose I had measured by hand at two in the morning while he slept.

Clara Vance, the healer, was good. But she didn't know half of this. She had never needed to. I had always been there.

I opened my eyes and stared at the bulb.

This was my ledger. Every line was something Ironveil needed and didn't know it needed. Every line was something they would miss when the old bracers lost their scent and the salves ran out and winter came hard.

My wolf was silent. My bond was ash.

But my mind was clear. Clearer than it had ever been. Cold, like creek water in January.

At some point, the music upstairs stopped. Somewhere above me, Callahan was taking Giselle to bed. I waited for it to hurt.

It did. But only a little.

When the small window near the ceiling turned grey with dawn, I had made my choice.

I would not beg him. Not today. Not ever.

I would survive this place.

And when I walked out of Ironveil, it would be through the front gate, on my own two feet, on my own terms.

Above me, I heard heels on the stairs. Light. Quick.

And under the door, the first thin breath of jasmine.