When My Mate Tortured Me Before Discovering I’m Royal

Giselle didn't come inside. She stood in the doorway in a cream silk robe, with his mark fresh on her neck. She held a clipboard like she was a schoolteacher.

"Good morning, trespasser," she said sweetly.

I didn't answer.

"That's what you are now. A rogue who crossed our border without permission." She tapped the clipboard. "Alpha Callahan has been kind. Instead of a trial, you'll serve a detention period. With the Omegas."

"How long?"

She smiled. "Until I say."

---

She gave me the worst shifts on the board.

At four in the morning I hauled firewood from the shed to the packhouse. It was nine below zero. The logs were crusted with ice, and the bark tore my palms open. Without my wolf, I didn't heal fast. The cuts stayed. By the third day, my hands looked like raw meat.

At five I scrubbed the stone floors of the great hall on my knees. The same floor where I had fallen. I scrubbed the spot where my cheek had hit. I didn't let myself stop there.

At noon I washed ceremonial linens by hand, in water so cold my fingers turned white. Giselle's Mate Ceremony tablecloths. Her napkins. Her wine stains.

The Omegas didn't speak to me. They were too scared. When Giselle walked in, they all looked at the floor like it might save them.

The Deltas were worse. They passed me in the corridors and sneered.

"Look. The Alpha's leftovers."

"Smells like a stray."

I kept my head down and my mouth shut. I saved my strength. Every ounce of it.

And I watched.

Old Martha, the head cook, slipped an extra heel of bread into my apron when no one looked. She never said a word about it. A boy named Pip left the woodshed door unlatched so I didn't have to fight the frozen bolt. Tessa, the pretty Omega with the red braid, smiled at me every morning. Then every afternoon, she went up to Giselle's room for exactly ten minutes.

I noted it all. The back stairs that creaked. The guard who napped after lunch. The supply room keypad. First two numbers, three and seven.

I tucked it away like a blade I wasn't ready to use yet.

---

On the sixth day, I was peeling potatoes in the kitchen.

My station sat at the bottom of a short flight of stairs. Four stone steps led up to the pantry. I had my back to them when I smelled jasmine.

I turned my head.

Giselle stood at the top step. She wore a long-sleeved sweater, which was strange. The kitchen was always hot. She was rubbing her left arm, slowly, like it ached.

Our eyes met.

She smiled. Small. Private.

Then she threw herself sideways.

Her arm slammed into the wall with a crack. She tumbled down two steps and landed in a heap near my feet. Then she screamed.

"She attacked me! Her wolf! Oh Goddess, her wolf came out!"

The whole kitchen froze. A pot boiled over. Nobody moved to turn it off.

I stood there with a potato in one hand and a knife in the other. That was a mistake. I knew it the second I saw Tessa's eyes go to the knife.

The door banged open.

Callahan filled the doorway. His eyes were already gold. Ash was right at the surface, snarling.

"Callahan!" Giselle sobbed. She pushed up her sleeve with shaking fingers. "Look what she did!"

A bruise wrapped her forearm. Dark purple. Almost black at the center.

I stared at it. A fresh bruise is red. This one was hours old. And along the edge, I could see a faint pattern. Little links. Like the gold bracelet she always wore. The bracelet that wasn't on her wrist today.

"That bruise is old," I said quietly. "Look at the color. Look at the edge. Ask her where her bracelet is."

Giselle collapsed into his chest. She wept like her heart was breaking. "She hates me. She's always hated me. I was so scared, Cal."

He didn't look at the bruise. He didn't look at the stairs. He didn't ask Martha, who had been standing ten feet away the whole time.

He looked at me.

"My wolf is gone," I said. "You know it is. You felt it."

"Shut up." His Alpha tone hit me so hard the knife fell from my hand.

He crossed the kitchen in three steps and grabbed my arm. Right over the raw cuts from the firewood. I bit my tongue so I wouldn't make a sound.

"Callahan," Martha said. Just his name. Barely a whisper.

He didn't even turn around.

---

The punishment cell was under the east wing. Down two flights. Past a door so thick it took two Deltas to swing it.

The walls were lined with silver mesh. I could smell it before I saw it. Sharp and bitter, like pennies and smoke.

Callahan chained me himself. Silver cuffs on my wrists. Silver cuffs on my ankles. They hissed when they touched my skin.

I didn't scream. I wouldn't give him that.

He stood over me for a moment. Ash paced behind his eyes, back and forth, back and forth. For one second, his nostrils flared, like he was searching for something in the air. Lavender, maybe. Then his face shut.

"You'll stay until morning," he said.

The door slammed. The lock turned. The light went with him.

The cold came fast. There was no heat down here. Frost crept up the walls in thin white lines. My breath came out in clouds I couldn't see.

The silver burned. A steady, chewing burn, like hot wire under my skin. Every time I shifted, the cuffs slid and found fresh skin to bite.

So I stopped shifting.

I felt along the wall behind me with my shoulders. Ice. Ice. Ice. Then one panel, low and to the left, that wasn't quite as cold. Maybe a pipe ran behind it. Maybe the kitchen chimney.

I pressed my back against it and pulled my knees to my chest.

Then I counted my heartbeats.

One. Two. Three.

At four hundred, my fingers went numb. At nine hundred, I stopped feeling my toes. At two thousand, the burning in my wrists turned into something worse. Something quiet.

I kept counting.

Because somewhere deep inside me, so faint I thought I'd dreamed it, something cold and silent shifted in its sleep.