The lye burned in the cracks of Rowan's knuckles, biting into the skin like tiny white-hot teeth. She didn't flinch. Flinching earned you a beating in the Frost Peak Keep, and her ribs were already bruised, a deep mottled plum from where Beta Holden had kicked her two days ago. She scrubbed the flagstones back and forth. The bristle brush was worn down to the wood, scraping against the rough hewn stone of the great hall.
It was freezing, the kind of medieval winter cold that seeped through the soles of your boots and nested in your marrow. Rowan didn't have boots. She had rags bound around her feet with frayed twine, soaked through with the gray slush tracked in by the pack warriors.
"Harder, cur."
The voice belonged to Miller, the head steward, a fat, balding wolf who compensated for his weak standing in the pack by terrorizing the omegas. Rowan didn't look up. She just leaned her weight into her shoulders and drove the brush harder against a stubborn stain of dried blood. One of the hunters had brought in a stag yesterday, dragging it straight through the hall.
She had no name here. Not officially.
Ten years ago, there was a fire in the pack archives. The official story was a stray ember from the hearth. The truth, known only to the silent stones and the terrified omegas, was that Alpha Cedric had ordered it burned. Every scroll, every tapestry, every bloodline record tying the old rulers of Frost Peak to the current age, gone.
Rowan had been eight. She remembered the smell of burning parchment. She remembered her mother coughing on the smoke before Cedric's guards dragged her away. Her mother never came back, and Rowan ceased to be a person. She became a scrub, a stray, a punching bag for a pack that wanted to forget where they came from.
A heavy wooden door slammed open at the far end of the hall, letting in a howling gust of wind and a flurry of snow. Alpha Cedric stormed in. He was a massive man, thick with muscle, and wrapped in heavily pelted cloaks. His face was flushed, his jaw tight.
"Clear the hall," Cedric bellowed. "Get the fires stoked. Bring out the winter reserves. The king is two leagues out."
The word sent a ripple of pure panic through the room. Servants dropped their brooms. Warriors scrambled to their feet. The Alpha King — he didn't just visit border packs. King Cassian was a warlord who had spent his decades unifying the warring territories through blood, iron, and an unrelenting, brutal will. He didn't care about the petty squabbles of lords. If he was coming to Frost Peak, he was coming for taxes, for soldiers, or for an execution.
Cedric's boot suddenly planted itself heavily on Rowan's shoulder, shoving her backward. She hit the wet stone hard, biting her tongue to keep silent. The taste of copper flooded her mouth.
"Get this filth out of sight. Lock her in the root cellar. I swear to the goddess, if the king smells the rot on her, I'll take your head, Miller."
Miller scrambled forward, grabbing Rowan by the collar of her coarse tunic. "Up. Get up."
Rowan didn't fight. She let herself be hauled to her feet. She kept her eyes glued to the floor, her expression carefully blank. Inside her, her wolf was curled into a tight, miserable ball, too starved and beaten to even whimper.
She was shoved down the narrow, twisting stone stairs that led to the underbelly of the keep. The air grew damp, smelling of earth and rotting potatoes. Miller shoved her into the small, lightless room and pulled the heavy iron-banded door shut. The lock clicked.
Rowan stood in the pitch black. She wiped the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand, feeling the sting of the lye against her split lip. Above her, the ceiling trembled as the keep prepared for royalty. Heavy footsteps, shouting, the dragging of oak tables.
She sank to the dirt floor, pulling her knees to her chest to conserve heat. It didn't matter. Kings and alphas, they were all the same. Men who wore crowns and men who wore fangs, both just looking for throats to rip out. She closed her eyes and waited for the cold to put her to sleep.
The cellar banged open, letting in a harsh slice of torchlight. Rowan blinked, raising a hand to shield her eyes. Her joints ached, stiff from hours on the freezing dirt. It was night now. She could tell by the heavy, drunken rhythm of the footsteps above. The feast had started.
"Get up, useless," a kitchen maid snapped, tossing a clean, albeit threadbare, servant's apron at Rowan's face. "They drank through the main barrels. Miller says you're to haul the black ale casks up to the hall."
"The alpha said—"
"I know what the alpha said." The maid hissed, her eyes wide with terror. "But if the king's guard runs out of ale, Cedric will have our hides anyway. Keep your head down, pour the drinks, and don't make a sound."
Rowan stood slowly. Her muscles screamed in protest, but she tied the apron around her waist. She walked past the maid, heading for the heavy oak casks stacked in the corridor. Each one weighed nearly as much as she did. She hoisted one onto her shoulder, staggering for a second under the sheer crushing weight before finding her balance. She climbed the stone stairs.
The noise grew deafening. When she pushed through the servant's entrance, the heat of the great hall hit her like a physical blow. The room was packed. Hundreds of bodies, sweating and drinking. The massive hearths roared with six-foot flames. The smell was overpowering. Roasted boar, sour sweat, spilled mead, and the heavy metallic tang of the royal guard.
Rowan kept to the shadows along the wall. She moved mechanically, dropping the cask at the serving station, tapping it, and filling the heavy iron tankards. She chanced one glance at the high table.
Alpha Cedric was sweating. He sat stiffly in his carved wooden chair, offering forced laughter at whatever was being said. Beside him sat King Cassian.
He wasn't what the stories claimed. There was no divine aura, no golden crown resting perfectly on his brow. Cassian looked exhausted. He wore boiled leather and dark iron, practical and scuffed. His dark hair was tied back roughly, and a thick, jagged scar ran from his temple down to his jawline. He was leaning on one elbow, staring into his cup with a look of absolute, lethal boredom. The air around him was distorted, heavy with an alpha command so thick it made Rowan's lungs ache from fifty feet away.
"Girl." A rough voice barked.
Rowan snapped her attention down. One of the king's guards, a massive man with a broken nose, was holding out an empty flagon. She hurried over, pitcher of black ale in hand. Her hands were shaking slightly. The lye burns were cracking again from the heat of the room.
She poured the ale, but as she did, a drunken Frost Peak warrior stumbled backward, slamming heavily into Rowan's shoulder. The pitcher slipped.