Rejected by the Pack, Claimed by the Shadow Commander

Alaya POV:

"My Lady, the kitchens sent the midday broth."

Breonna kept her voice so low it barely carried-and even then the last word shook.

"Please eat, lady, "she whispered. "If you starve, the Duke will not care. You will die in this cold, and no one will even think to open the door." ​

She was my only loyal maid, an Omega bound to my mother's former household, risking daily floggings just to bring me scraps.

"This is not food, Breonna," I said, setting the bowl down with a sharp clatter. "This broth is laced with Corpse-Gorge blood parasites from the Western Wastes."

Breonna choked on her breath, slamming both hands over her mouth to swallow a scream.

I reached into my knotted hair and pulled out a crude, sharpened silver pin.Without hesitation, I plunged the metal point into the oily depths of the soup.

When I drew it out, a thread-thin, dark crimson worm wriggled violently against the pale metal.

Breonna's breath tore loose.

"It is her, is it not?" she gasped, her fingers knotting in her apron. "That woman. She means to kill you." ​

"She means to ruin me first," I said.

Dian Simmons. The mistress who had usurped my mother's place in my father's bed - who wanted me gone without the inconvenience of a trial.

The parasite was a patient, obscene thing. It seeded an insatiable hunger, rotted the host's inner channels, and bloated the flesh until the woman wearing it became an unrecognizable freak for the court to laugh at.

She wanted me to eat myself into an unrecognizable freak before the court.

I grabbed an empty ceramic vial from the corner shelf, used the pin to flick the squirming worm inside, and slammed the wooden cork tight.

Breonna scrambled up, her teeth clicking together.

"We must go to Duke Arno! We must show him this poison!"

"Show him?" I met her terrified gaze, letting my voice drop to an icy whisper. "He gave Dian the run of the castle while my mother rots in an exile keep. Without absolute proof, he will only whip you for slandering his favorite whore."

I carried the bowl to the dark corner of the cell and dumped the tainted broth down a gaping rat hole.

Soft silk rustled in the corridor outside.Heavier footsteps followed, deliberate and arrogant.

I nudged Breonna toward the shadows, dropped to the edge of the cot, and slumped my shoulders into a trembling heap.

The heavy door was kicked open.

A wave of heavy rose oil swept through the stench of the cell.

Dian Simmons glided inside, her green velvet gown trailing across the grime.

Behind her stood Isabela Bradford, her daughter, preening before a handheld bronze mirror.

Dian glanced at the empty bowl on the table, her painted lips curving into a smirk as she raised a silk handkerchief to her nose.

"Look at that. Our sickly little pup managed to lick the bowl clean."

Isabela lowered her mirror, eyeing my hunched frame with open disgust.

"Mother, she looks more wretched every day. It smells like a dog kennel in here."

I kept my head down, letting my unwashed hair fall across my face as I rasped out a pathetic whine.

"Is there... is there more? I am still so hungry."

Dian let out a sharp, mocking laugh and tapped Isabela's arm with her jade-tipped finger.

"Feed her as much as she wants from now on. Soon enough, she will be nothing more than a bloated sow fit for the slaughterhouse."

Isabela sneered, snapping her mirror shut.

"Let us leave, Mother. Looking at her ruins my appetite for tonight's banquet."

They turned on their heels, their laughter echoing down the stone corridor as the guards slammed the iron door shut and turned the lock.

I slowly straightened my spine.

The pathetic tremor vanished from my limbs.

I rolled the small ceramic vial between my fingers, feeling the worm thrash against the baked clay.

And I smiled-I knew exactly what that worm was.

Because I had already died once.

And in that life, accused by Dian Simmons and Isabela Bradford, a stolen vial was pushed beneath my mattress. I became a poisoner and a traitor to my own blood.

There was no open trial. My family strangled me quietly in this dark corner.

But luck was with me-the Moon Goddess did not let me dead.

My soul fell through a tear in the world and landed somewhere no wolf had ever dreamed of-a stellar empire of steel towers and cold starlight.

I studied at their feet. I learned to name a poison by its scent, to read a dying body like a page, to brew a cure out of a corpse. When I closed my eyes in that world for the last time, I thought my journey was over.

Then I woke up here. Same stone. Same stench. Same ruined shoulder, still puckered and raw beneath my fingers.

And the whole of that other life sitting quietly behind my eyes.

So no. I will not die in this cell, and I will not let them bloat me into a court jester's joke.

I will get my mother out of that exile keep if I have to burn the Duchy down around it.

I will take back what is mine, one stolen thing at a time.

And I will wash my name clean in front of every lord who ever called me defect.

Starting with the bowl they sent me today.

I walked to the narrow, rusted window bars and peered down into the snow-covered courtyard.

The two guards stationed near the outer gate were slumping against the timber fence, passing a flask of cheap spirit between them.

Darkness had completely swallowed the Bradford Duchy.

I turned back to Breonna, holding out the ceramic vial.

"Take this through the lower drainage grate beneath the kennels," I ordered in a low whisper. "Deliver it to the black market peddler behind the tannery."