*Maddy*
King Isaac stands before a window overlooking the castle grounds. The treeline is lush with heavy reddish green buds, the first inklings of spring foliage. I find myself gazing past him and out the window as I wait for him to turn around and explain why I’m here, in his office.
Just beyond the garden is the foreboding wall that encloses the castle grounds, and beyond that?
Miles and miles of untouched wilderness. I’d run toward that wall once, hoping to find freedom on the other side.
“Have you ever felt the mate bond with anyone?”
I jerk in surprise at the question and turn my attention to the king. He isn’t looking at me, his focus still locked on the world beyond the window.
“No, I haven’t.” I swallow back the bite in my voice. Last night, he said he hadn’t sensed a wolf in me, so why would he assume I’d found my mate?
“Do you have anyone–a brother, or father–who would lay claim to you after what transpired with the kidnappers?”
“N-no.”
His shoulders are rigid with tension, and every word he says is clipped. I can feel the discomfort radiating from him even though I stand several feet away.
“How did you come to be under that man's control?”
“Reginald?” I’m not sure why I need clarification. Who else could he mean?
Other than himself….
King Isaac turns to face me now, his blue eyes intent. He gives a single sharp nod and leans against the windowsill in a casual stance that suddenly makes him look like the prince I’d met three years ago. The sharp planes of his face soften at the edges. I can tell he hasn’t slept, just like me. I see the exhaustion in his eyes, and the questions he desperately wants to ask.
“I was sold to him.” The truth tastes like acid. I try to swallow but find it impossible as he examines my face, looking for any hint that I’m lying.
“By whom?”
I hesitate, not wanting to bring up Lousia and Elodie. If he remembers Elodie from the ball, he might try to return me to what’s left of my family, however cruel they are. I don’t want to go back. I’d rather be dumped on the edge of town and left to figure out how to survive on my own than go back to the life I’d been forced to leave behind. A life I hated.
“My stepmother.”
He exhales, eyes narrowing. “You just said you don’t have a father or–”
“My parents are dead,” I blurt out, my hands curling into fists at my side. “My father died six years ago, and my mother–” Grief paralyzes my vocal cords, but I choke out my next words. “I was ten when she died.”
If he catches the pained emotion in my voice, he doesn’t show it. If anything, he remains as icy and expressionless as before. He shifts his weight, crossing his arms over his broad chest as he turns to face the window once again. “Were you aware of his plans?”
Ah, here we go.
“To an extent.” I sit on the red leather couch in front of his desk, my legs suddenly unable to support my weight any longer. “He wanted me to seduce you. He was very serious about it. I was under the impression he meant to sell me to you.”
“Do you know why?”
“If you’re asking if I knew that he meant to make me the Luna of this Kingdom so he could get his hands on whatever payment you offered the families of the other woman under consideration, no.” I don’t hide the bite this time. I want to scream. I want to throw something. How many years had I been reduced to nothing more than a tool? Someone to cook, someone to clean, someone to sell for a few coins? How many years had I kept my mouth carefully closed and let everything I was before fall to the wayside so I was nothing more than a shell of a woman, too weak and scared to do anything but submit?
I feel his gaze on me and look up from my lap, finding him right in front of me now instead of near the window. He sits on the edge of his desk looking down at me, a brief and secret smirk touching his lips before it slips away.
“Ella said you thought I kept you here to make you my mistress. Or worse, a breeder.”
“Is that what I am?”
“I have no need for those things.”
“Then why keep me here? If Reginald is no longer a threat, I can leave.”
“And where exactly would you go? Weak as you are, I know you can’t shift. You have no money and no connections in my kingdom. You were trying to run and climb over the garden wall that day you came here, weren’t you?”
I rise from the couch as my cheeks flame with sudden embarrassment. “Are you taunting me?”
He kicks off the desk, squaring up to me, or down, considering he towers over me by over a foot, if not more. “Are you a Celestorian spy?”
“W-what?” I snort with laughter. “A spy? You just said I was weak! How the hell do you expect me to spy on you if I can’t walk up a flight of stairs without feeling like I’m going to pass out? What do you want me to say, Your Highness? I told you I was sold. I had no choice in coming here.”
I reach down and pull my sleeves up to my elbows, showing him the healing bruises on my forearms. “He beat the hell out of me daily. I escaped once and almost didn’t survive when I got caught. I am not a spy. I was not a willing participant in whatever game you have going on here with those other women!”
His body relaxes, and a somewhat boyish, wry smile ghosts over his mouth. The smile is gone as quickly as it came, but some of my anger lessens at the sight. He walks toward the corner of the room where a large bookshelf hugs the wall. He scans it, pulling a few books off, and stacking them neatly in his arms.
I wait, fuming, and unsure what to do with my hands as he picks through a few more titles. He moves to another shelf and crouches down low to reach the bottom self.
“These are my old workbooks from when I learned to read. My mom keeps everything for sentimental value, I assume.”
He hands me a few thin, paperback books.
“Hannah has already agreed to help you learn to read, write, and speak our language when she’s not busy with Ella.”
“Why–”
“These are more advanced. This–” He places a heavy, leather bound book on the top of the stack I’m now balancing in my arms. “This is a detailed history of my family tree and our accomplishments. And this–”
I grunt under the weight of the next two books he places on the stack, my arms straining and burning from the effort of not dropping them.
“This is everything else.”
“Everything else?”
His eyes glimmer with sudden mischief. I felt a pang of longing–the same kind of feeling I’d had when we danced at the ball all those years ago.
“Everything you need to know before we marry.”
I feel myself pale, but I refuse to give him the satisfaction of dropping the books. “Marry?”
“You are going to be my wife, and the Luna of my Kingdom.”
“I can’t–”
“Are you spoken for?” There’s a fleeting look of disappointment in his eyes that’s gone in a flash. The carefully curated mask he normally wears snaps back into place, but that strange feeling lodged in my chest remains.
“No, I am not.” My arms tremble with the weight of the books. I feel so, so weak. So small. So unsure of what to do or say next. His wife? Absolutely not. But, I’m standing before the Alpha King.
And what he says, goes.
“You’d have a roof over your head. Food, money, anything you wanted–”
“You can’t marry me,” I say, and dump the books on the couch before my arms give out completely. “You can’t.”
“Why not? It’s just business.”
It’s just business. There’s something so distant about the way he says it. I look up into those eyes–eyes I used to dream about. He doesn’t remember me. He has no idea who I am, and yet, in a single second, all of those girlish dreams I used to have, have come true.
Except for the part where he loves me.
And this is wrong. I know it’s wrong.
He doesn’t even know my name.
“I need someone seated beside me on the Luna’s throne. I need someone to see to the duties of my house, and family. I wouldn’t expect much from you other than playing the part, and maybe down the line giving me an heir.” His eyes hold my gaze. A flicker of heat rushed down my spine and settled low in my belly, once again blurring my senses. No, no. I can’t. I can’t do this. I tell myself this is wrong over and over, but I’m lost in those eyes of his, unable to break free, unable to stop thinking about how his hand felt wrapped around mine while he spun me across the ballroom.
“You don’t love me,” I say, each word more pained than the last.
“This isn’t about love.”
“But what if you find your mate?”
“I have intentions of doing so–”
“No one does,” I cut in, finding it harder and harder to keep my mouth shut. “That’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? It’s something fated, and I can’t–I can’t marry you. I can’t even consider it–”
“Why not?”
“I’m not the Alpha King of Celestoria’s daughter. I’m not from a royal bloodline in any way shape or form. I–I’m a maid, Your Highness. I spent the last six years scrubbing floors and mending clothes. I am nothing. Why would you even consider me, when there are so many others who would fill this role for you without question? Why ask me when you haven’t yet found your mate? And when you do, what then?”
King Isaac hesitates. His eyes finally leave mine, looking down at his hands now clenched into fists at his sides. When his eyes meet mine again, they are full of emotions I can’t decipher. Hurt, pain, confusion, and maybe a little flicker of hope.
“Have we ever met? Before all of this.” He waves a hand, alluding to the times Reginald dragged me here against my will.
“No,” I lie. The word sinks between us and carves an even greater distance between me and the prince who haunts my dreams.
He’s quiet for a long moment. “I must have a wife, and you’re in a position where you have no home, no money, and no connections. I could offer you safety above all else, and I’m willing to, as long as I get what I need from you. Besides, I would expect a marriage with you to be less complicated than it would be with the daughter of an Alpha or someone of royal blood”
Irritated by all of it, I shake my head. “Someone to fill a seat and give you a child?” I let the ridiculousness of the notion fill the words.
“This benefits both of us.”
I shake my head again and try to find the words to argue with him, but I can’t.
He’s right. I have nothing. I can’t go back home. I’m not prepared to be on my own. I have no way to survive once I’m outside the castle walls.
He’s the only one with something to lose here. Not me.
I have nothing–so how can I lose it?
I barely notice him moving toward me. He reaches past me and picks up the books I dropped, handing them back to me.
“Think about it,” he says, the words brushing over my ear.
“You don’t know me,” I reply, but my words are met by the sound of his footsteps echoing through the hallway outside of his office and answered by crushing silence.