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I’ve never allowed myself to consider the implications of that. He risked his life to come and claim me, and argued against his Beta on my behalf. He opened his home to me, gave me my own room, and offered me his word that I would be safe here.
It’s more than I would ever dare ask for.
“All this trouble and I still don’t even know your name,” he says at last, and my breath catches in my throat.
I don’t have one.
My mother lost her mind when I was just a baby. She was never able to tell anyone who my father was. Viktor was furious when he discovered his sister was pregnant, but she went properly insane, rambling nonsense and speaking in made-up languages. She’d wander around, lost in her own house, falling into fits of unexplained screaming or laughter. No one in the pack stepped forward to claim me as a daughter, and my mother bore no mating mark.
I was a bastard, and before my lunatic mother could name me, she passed away, presumably killed by whatever had destroyed her sanity in the first place. My uncle never bothered to name me after her passing. No one did. I was just ‘the girl,’ ‘the mutt,’ or ‘that bitch’ on a bad day. Uncle Viktor had a lot of bad days.
I pull my hand away, retreating back into myself.
“You are my mate and a guest in my home. I would like to know your name,” he insists, reaching to take my hand, but I take a step back, wrapping my arms around myself.
How can I tell him? How can I stand before him and reveal this broken, unwanted thing that I am? How can a nameless slave be destined for a king?
From the corner of my eye, I can see his muscles going taut, his back going rigid.
“What’s your name, girl?” he asks, that patient uncertainty now gone from his voice. I just shake my head. I don’t have the heart to tell him.
Weak, foolish thing.
I can’t bring myself to look at him, too ashamed to speak the truth and unwilling to lie. He makes a sound somewhere between a huff and a hiss, going for the door.
And just like that, there’s nothing to say, hold back, or wonder about.
He’s already gone.
Chapter Nine
That night, all the beauty and comfort of my room in Tristan’s villa can’t keep my demons at bay.
In my dreams, I was back in my uncle’s pack house, tending to the garden. It sounds strange, but I was at my happiest with soil under my nails and sweat on my brow, hunched over a flower bed. When I heard footsteps approaching, I set down the rusted old water tin, frowning at the familiar sound.
My cousin rounded the corner, followed by two of his friends. One of them was the girl that would become his future mate, and the other I recognized as the Gamma’s eldest son. He was a low-ranking lackey of the pack that liked to follow Oscar around like a lost pup, scrambling for scraps of his approval. One of the easiest ways to obtain that approval was by tormenting the one person in the pack who ranked even lower than he did, assuming I mattered enough to the Banes to rank at all.
I lowered my head, keeping my eyes trained on the flowers at their feet.
In dreams, time and season do not matter, and all the blossoms were in full bloom. Poppies flowered next to chrysanthemums and petunias, filling the air with a scent that became sickly rather than sweet as the dream became a nightmare, mixing with memories that were all too real.
“What do we have here? A witch tending to her weeds,” the Gamma’s son snickered.
“Oh please, don’t insult witches like that,” Oscar retorted. “The mutt doesn’t have any powers. At least if she were a witch, she’d be interesting.”
“Didn’t her mom go crazy and kill herself? Maybe she realized her baby was cursed, and that’s what drove her insane,” cooed the girl by his side, quirking her head to the side in a catlike motion, like a predator examining its prey. “Or was it the childbirth that killed her?”
“Either way, it was probably the mutt’s fault.”
The words cut deep, not just because of the malice behind them but because I could not refute them. No one knew for sure what drove my mother mad, and for all I knew, it could very well have been me.
You tell yourself that people are kind and decent, you tell yourself the world is good, and then life proves you wrong.
I tried to shrink away from them, but Oscar and his friends closed in, their laughter ringing in my ears. They thrived off of each other, their taunts becoming crueler and more cutting.
“Maybe her father knew she was a cursed freak, too,” said the girl, tapping her chin as if pondering the possibility. She took a step forward, stomping carelessly over the flowers. “That’s why he abandoned her and refused to mate with the mother.”
The petals were crushed underfoot, the stems snapped in two, and the soil churned up. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, and my hands were shaking. I couldn’t take my eyes off the destruction, feeling like it was a reflection of my own shattered self-worth. My eyes stung with unshed tears for the soft, pretty things that grew from the earth.
