The laundry room smells like bleach and broken promises.
I'm folding sheets when the door slams behind me, and I know before turning exactly who has found me. Sarah's heels click against the concrete floor with predatory precision.
"I've seen how you look at him." Her voice carries the quiet menace of a blade being unsheathed.
My hands still on the fabric, survival instinct screaming at me to run. But there's nowhere to go.
"I don't know what you mean," I manage, keeping my back to her.
"Don't insult my intelligence, cousin." She spins me around by the shoulder, her beautiful face twisted with ugly rage. "You watch him like a bitch in heat."
"I serve the pack as I was ordered to serve." The lie comes easily after years of practice.
Her fingers close around my wrist with bruising force, and I fight the gasp that rises in my throat.
"You're a whore spreading your legs for someone else's husband." She squeezes harder, grinding the delicate bones together. "Aren't you?"
"No." I shake my head, meeting her wild eyes. "I would never presume to touch the Alpha."
"Liar." She twists my arm until white spots dance across my vision. "I see the way he looks at you too."
Don't react. Don't give her anything.
"You're imagining things because you're stressed about the Luna ceremony." My voice stays steady despite the agony radiating up my arm. "I'm nothing to him, Sarah."
"You're right about one thing." Her smile stretches thin and vicious across her perfect features. "You are nothing."
She shoves me backward, and I catch myself against the industrial washing machine before I fall.
"A fat, pathetic slave who should have died with your mother." Each word lands with surgical cruelty. "That's all you've ever been."
The mention of my mother tears open wounds I've spent eleven years trying to close.
"If I find proof you're touching my husband," Sarah continues, advancing on me again, "I won't just tell Father."
"Sarah, please—"
"I'll kill you myself, cousin." Her eyes gleam with genuine promise. "And no one will care because corpses don't need alibis."
I press myself against the cold metal, nowhere left to retreat.
"Stay away from Paul." She straightens her silk blouse with deliberate calm. "Or I'll make what Father did to you look like kindness."
She leaves me trembling among the clean linens, her threat lodged in my chest like broken glass.
She means it. Every word.
I finish my duties on autopilot, my wrist throbbing with each movement. The bruises are already blooming purple beneath my skin.
Dinner that evening transforms into a performance I never auditioned for.
Sarah rises from her seat with theatrical grace, commanding the room's attention with effortless authority.
"I have an announcement regarding the packhouse management," she declares, one hand resting possessively on Paul's shoulder.
He doesn't flinch, but I notice his fingers tighten around his wine glass.
"I've decided to reassign certain household duties to better reflect each servant's capabilities." Her gaze finds mine across the crowded table.
"What changes did you have in mind, Luna?" Elena asks from her position near the healer's wing representatives.
"Morgan will be transferred to heavy cleaning." Sarah's smile could cut glass. "Scrubbing floors, hauling laundry, the physical work she's built for."
Built for. Like my body is a machine designed for punishment.
Murmurs ripple through the assembled pack, curious but ultimately indifferent.
"Is that really necessary?" Zane's voice carries a note of challenge. "She's been doing excellent work in her current position."
"Are you questioning my authority as Luna, Beta Zane?" Sarah tilts her head with dangerous sweetness.
Paul's jaw tightens, the muscle jumping beneath his skin. I watch him war with himself, watch him calculate the cost of contradiction.
He says nothing.
"Then it's settled." Sarah resumes her seat with triumphant satisfaction. "Starting tomorrow, Morgan reports to the maintenance supervisor."
I lower my eyes to my plate, appetite destroyed but survival demanding I eat anyway.
She's isolating me. Breaking me down where no one will notice or care.
The meal drags on for eternity before I can finally escape to my room.
Hours pass in the darkness before a soft knock announces him.
Paul fills my doorway, his presence overwhelming in the small space. His eyes travel over my face, reading the exhaustion there, the defeat I cannot hide.
"Show me your wrist," he commands quietly.
"It's nothing." I try to tuck my hand behind my back, but he's faster.
His fingers close around my forearm with devastating gentleness, turning it toward the light. The purple bruising stands out starkly against my pale skin.
"Sarah did this." His voice carries anguish I've never heard from him before.
"She cornered me in the laundry room this morning." I watch his expression darken with each word.
"What did she say to you?" He releases my wrist carefully, as though handling something precious.
"She accused me of wanting you." The admission scrapes past my lips like shards. "She promised to kill me if she finds proof."
"Kill you." He repeats the words like they're poison in his mouth.
"She meant it, Paul." My voice cracks on his name. "I saw it in her eyes."
He turns away, his massive shoulders rigid with tension. His fists clench at his sides until his knuckles go white.
"I can't protect you the way you deserve." Each word sounds like it's being torn from him. "Not while this alliance holds."
"I know." The acceptance tastes bitter on my tongue.
"But I won't let her kill you, Morgan." He spins back to face me, his ice-blue eyes blazing with fierce promise. "I swear it on my life."
"How can you stop her without revealing everything?" I gesture helplessly at the space between us. "Without destroying the treaty?"
"I'll find a way." His hand cups my jaw, thumb stroking my cheekbone. "I always find a way."
The tenderness undoes me more than his passion ever could.
"Stay with me tonight," I whisper, hating the desperation in my voice.
"You need rest." He presses his lips to my forehead with aching restraint. "Real rest, not what I would do to you."
The rejection stings even though I understand his reasoning.
"Tomorrow will be brutal," he continues, pulling away. "Sleep while you can."
He's gone before I can argue, the door clicking shut behind him with terrible finality.
My room feels like a prison cell without his warmth filling it.
I lie awake for hours, staring at the ceiling while Sarah's threats replay in an endless loop. The bruises on my wrist throb in time with my heartbeat.
Escape. The word surfaces unbidden, tantalizing in its simplicity.
I could run tonight while everyone sleeps. Disappear into the mountains before dawn breaks.
But even as the fantasy takes shape, I know its futility. Paul would hunt me to the ends of the earth.
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