“I’ll see to him, then. Thank you, Aliz.”
She found the messenger, standing near the hearth in the great hall, still cloaked in road-dust, a sealed parchment in his gloved hand. He bowed when JingYi entered, his eyes flicking to her cheek only briefly before lowering again.
“Your Highness.”
She kept her tone neutral. “As you’ve been informed, Lord Wulfbane is away. You may leave the letter with me.”
The messenger hesitated. “I was given strict instruction?—”
“It’ll take some time. My husband is dealing with a natural disaster.”
The messenger shifted, caught between his explicit order and her authority. He cleared his throat. “If Her Highness insists . . .”
JingYi nodded. “Rest assured that I will relay the message to Lord Wulfbane once he returns. You may go to the kitchen for some refreshments.”
With a final, reluctant bow, he surrendered the parchment and retreated.
Alone, she looked down at the letter, its weight immense in her hand. The king’s crest—a stark, raised impression in crimson wax—gleamed. To open it felt like a transgression. Yet to leave it sealed, when it was so urgent, seemed a dereliction of the duty she’d just claimed.
She broke the seal, unfolded the letter, and read.
Alexander,
I received your marriage annulment request.
Come to court. I expect to see you within three days.
—Ferdinand
The world stopped. Her vision went white at the edges, then gray. The floor dropped, and she swayed, knees buckling. She caught a table. A cold hand seemed to reach inside her chest and snuff any lingering warmth.
Last night, as they lay entangled in the nest, as she’d fallen asleep against his chest, she’d believed something had shifted.That she’d finally been allowed inside the walls he kept around himself.
Annulment.
He had already asked to be rid of her—perhaps from the very start, when he’d left her alone on their wedding night. And she, blind, had fought for his trust, laboured to win over his people, telling herself that every glance, every smile, every small kindness meant something more. But they’d only been a performance. An Alpha lord waiting for the king to approve his annulment request.
And last night, when he touched her as if she were something to be cherished—had that been a kindness from a noble Alpha to a pitiful Omega in Heat? A duty performed? A mercy?
Woodenly, the letter still in her hand, she climbed the stairs. The stone felt uneven, the air thinning with each step. Her room was cold. Not Alexander’s bedchamber, where their combined scents still clung to the nest. This was the polite room he had given her on arrival—separate, distant.
She sat at her dressing table, staring at the rose-coloured birthmark. Her lifelong companion.
To him, she was only the blemished woman he did not want. Once the annulment was official, she would be sent back to Xûen-Sarai.
She knew what waited there. Her father’s fury. The court’s sneer. But beyond that?
She remembered the knot of young Alphas closing in, their laughter slurred and mean. One of them, breath hot against her ear: ‘Doesn’t matter what she looks like. She can still give pleasure in the dark.’
Her father might trade her to some low-ranking vassal as a concubine, or send her to the army barracks. She’d become the Imperial Army’s whore, a body offered up so Alpha soldiers could better serve the kingdom’s interest. Or the Emperor mightdecide she’d shamed the empire enough and summon two oxen and a length of rope, and the court would cheer as her blood filled the courtyard stones.
Which was more likely? Rape or death? Perhaps both, in no particular order.
Her fingers trembled against the tabletop.
No.
The word was a line drawn in the sand of her soul. She wouldnotgo back. She wouldnotbe caged, humiliated, broken down until death seemed a blessing.
