The Alpha King's Secret Maid

Lanthe would remember for the rest of her life that the last sound she heard as a princess was laughter.

Her mother's, low and warm, at some small joke her father had made over the last of the wine. The three of them had lingered at the table long after the dishes should have been cleared, simply enjoying each other's company. It was a night like any other so Lanthe had no reason to think things would ever change. That was the cruelty of it. How ordinary that night had been, how little warning the world had given before everything changed for good.

The first scream had come from the west wing.

Her father had been on his feet before the second one, sword poised in hand before Lanthe even understood what she'd heard.

"Take her," he'd said to her mother, voice calm in a way that chilled Lanthe's blood more than any yell could have. "Now."

Her mother seized her wrist without a word, nails digging into Lanthe's skin as she pulled her toward the secret passage behind the tapestry. The one Lanthe had used a hundred times as a child while playing hide and seek with Wren. Never once did she imagine she'd use it to escape her own murder.

Through the gap in the stone, Lanthe watched Theron's men spill into the hall. Wolves in half-shift, teeth bared as they surrounded her father. She watched her father meet the first of them with steel, watched him hold his own for three, four, five heartbeats longer than anyone should have been able to. Long enough that for one wild, foolish second, Lanthe let herself believe he might actually win.

Until Theron himself emerged and her father's five heartbeats ran out.

She didn't see the blow that killed him, her mother's hand had already clamped over her eyes, hiding what she knew was a gruesome sight. But she heard it. The unmistakable silence that fell after, worse than any sound could have been.

Her mother made a noise Lanthe had never heard a human throat produce before, a gutteral cry that could only belong to wounded animal, and then she went very still. So still that for a second Lanthe had feared she'd met the same fate as her father.

"Look at me," her mother whispered, pulling Lanthe's face up by the chin. Her eyes were wet and yet terrifyingly calm. "Lanthe. Look at me. Whatever happens now, you run. You don't stop, you don't look back, you don't wait for me. Do you understand?"

"Mama..."

"Do you understand?" The grip on her chin tightned and there was a sterness in her mother's voice that Lanthe wasn't used to so she had no choice but to nod.

The passage door at the far end scraped open. Wren was there, white-faced, one hand already extended towards Lanthe.

Her mother shoved Lanthe toward it with a strength that would later leave bruises Lanthe would have no recollection of gettng. "Go. I'll hold them as long as I can."

"You can't fight them-"

"I don't have to fight them. I only have to be loud enough that they follow the wrong scent." Her mother's smile in that moment was the most terrible and the most beautiful thing Lanthe had ever seen. And her eyes swirled with emotions Lanthe couldn't fully name. Grief. Love. Resignation. Determination. "I love you more than this crown, more than this kingdom, more than my own life. Now run, and don't you dare let it be for nothing."

Wren's hand closed around Lanthe's wrist, dragging her into the dark of the passage. The last image Lanthe carried of her mother was her turning back toward the hall, spine straight, chin high, walking toward the sound of her husband's killers like a woman with nothing left to lose.

The passage led them into the kitchen gardens, the cold night air hitting Lanthe's face like a slap. Lanthe willed her legs into moving on their own, desperately fighting the urge to crumble to the ground as she felt the link with her mother sever.

Behind them, the palace was beginning to glow. Torches, or something worse, throwing long orange light across the walls Lanthe had grown up within. Somewhere in that light, she knew without being told, her mother's voice had already gone silent.

They ran.

Lanthe would never afterward be able to say for how long. Through the gardens, over the low wall at the eastern edge of the grounds, into the tree line beyond. Wren's grip on her wrist was the only thing anchoring Lanthe to a body that felt like it belonged to someone else. Branches tore at her gown. Roots caught at her slippers until she kicked them off entirely and ran barefoot. The pain was a distant, unimportant thing compared to the roaring emptiness spreading through her chest.

They didn't stop until the palace was nothing but a smear of firelight on the horizon behind them. And even then only because Lanthe's legs finally gave out beneath her, dropping her to her knees in the wet grass of some unnamed field, gasping for air that tasted like smoke even this far away.

"We have to keep moving," Wren said, hauling her back up by the arm, voice shaking as badly as her hands. "Lanthe, I know, I know, but we have to keep moving, they'll have trackers coming after u-"

"They're dead." The words came out flat, disbelieving, like she was testing whether saying them aloud actually made them true. "Both of them. They're dead."

"I know." Wren's own voice broke on it. "I know. I'm so sorry. But if we stop now, you will be too, and I am not losing you as well. Do you hear me? Get up."

Lanthe got up.

They ran until dawn bled into the skyline, and kept moving even after. They ran off the roads and through terrain no search party would expect a princess to know how to survive in, though survive it she did. Some numb and stubborn animal part of her took over where grief had hollowed the rest of her out. She didn't cry, not that first day, not the second. The tears came later when it all became too much to bear.

What kept her moving in those first raw days was her mother's words. 'Don't you dare let it be for nothing'.

Theron was after her, but not to kill her. No, if he ever wanted to fully claim the Silvermist crown, he would need her alive. Only one of the Fenris Bloodline could sit on the throne, or one mated to a Fenris. Theron would never truly be king unless he mated Lanthe. Theron needed her alive. That was the only mercy in any of it, and it was no mercy at all.

Suddenly it made sense why he'd tried courting her so aggressively. Lanthe hadn't believed Theron was a bad person back then, but she'd turned him down because she'd had faith in finding her fated mate just as her parents had found each other.

Now she didn't know whether to be grateful or rueful that she'd turned him down. Would things have been different if she'd simply accepted his advances?

"Oakhaven," Wren said on the third day, when Lanthe could finally speak in more than fragments. "He won't follow us into Oakhaven. Not without starting a war he isn't ready for."

"And if he decides he's ready?"

Wren didn't answer that. She didn't have to.

They reached Oakhaven's border three days after that, half-starved, heart still raw from the events of the last few days.

Lanthe stood for a long moment, staring at the cold grey walls of a kingdom that had never been anything to her but a name on a map. A rival territory, ruled by an Alpha King known more for his silence than his mercy. It was the last place anyone would think to look for a Silvermist princess.

Which was exactly why it was the only place left to go.

"What do we tell them?" Wren asked, as they approached the gate.

Lanthe thought of the girl who had laughed with her parents over wine, a lifetime and a handful of days ago. She thought of her mother's voice in the dark, 'don't you dare let it be for nothing'. That girl was gone now, buried somewhere in the ash of a burning hall, and there was no bringing her back.

"Tell them my name is Lira," she said. "Tell them I need work."

She didn't look back at the horizon again after that.

The palace was busier than usual. It was the very first thing Lanthe noted when she woke up that morning. She'd spent a better part of the past week adjusting to life in Oakhaven and learning the norms of the palace so she immediately knew something was off.

The sun had only just made its appearance in the sky but the hustle and bustle around her was like midday. Hurried footsteps echoed in the halls and a loud voice boomed orders in the distance. She'd barely rubbed the sleep out of her eyes before Old Mabel was yelling at her to gather some firewood from storage. The not so friendly head maid was pricklier than usual, antsy if anything.

It hadn't taken long for her to figure out what all the fuss was about. Today was the day the King returned to the palace from the northern border. He'd spent a better part of a fortnight settling a dispute that arose among the outlying packs of Oakhaven and his return was enough to send the usually quiet Oakhaven into a frenzy. Like a hive poked with a stick.

"Move faster, girl, the wood won't gather itself!" Old Mabel snapped, already turning to bark orders at someone else before Lanthe could respond. Lanthe's wolf sneered at the old hag's tone, irritated that someone far beneath their station dared to speak to them in such a way. But there was little her wolf could do than prance around in Lanthe's head in annoyance. Not because her wolf understood they needed to avoid trouble and remain as unremarkable as possible, but because the glamour spell Lanthe used to hide her appearance had transferred to her wolf in the form of a cage.

Lanthe couldn't shift because of the spell.

At times the restriction grew suffocating but in this case it was a good thing. It kept Lanthe's very impulsive wolf from flying into a rage and blowing their cover.

She ignored the prancing, and hurried to the storage shed. Her status didn't matter here. If anything, she prefered to be treated like a common maid. It meant no one knew who she truly was, it meant she was safe. And her safety mattered more right now than her pride.

Her arms were soon full of split logs, and she let herself be swept along in the current of the morning. The work was a welcome distraction from the thoughts that constantly occupied her mind ever since that night.

By the time she'd delivered the firewood and received a fresh basin of linens to scrub, she'd pieced together from scraps of overheard conversation, just how significant this homecoming was. The King rarely left Oakhaven himself but the dispute up north had apparently been serious enough to warrant his presence. Two packs on the edge of a blood feud over land rights. He'd ridden out personally to settle it before it became something bloodier.

"You'd think the Moon Goddess herself was coming down from the sky," Lanthe muttered, wringing out a sheet with more force than the task required. To think a week ago she'd never even washed her own undergarments herself, now here she was wringing sheets used by goddess knew who.

Yara snorted, elbow deep in the basin beside her. "To half this palace, that's near enough what he is. Careful how loud you say things like that, though. Some of the older staff take it seriously."

"Do you?"

Yara considered the question with more weight than Lanthe expected. "I take seriously that he's the reason Oakhaven hasn't burned in the last ten years, if that's what you mean. Whatever else people say about him, it's because of him Oakhaven isn't plagued by war anymore. That's worth something."

Lanthe said nothing, focusing on the sheet in her hands instead. The mixed responses to the King of Oakhaven were strange to her. She'd always believed the king of Oakhaven was nothing more than a ruthless killer feared by all who crossed his path, at least that was how he was portrayed in Silvermist. When she got here though, she realised fear wasn't the only emotion his people held for him.

The fear was definitely there but in the midst of that was gratitude and respect.

Her father had been loved and adored by the people of Silvermist. So much so that she couldn't imagine a single negative word uttered about the King of Silvermist. At least not before Theron.

It was one of the many ways Oakhaven differed from Silvermist.

What was it like to rule a kingdom by fear instead of affection? She shook the thought away because a princess in hiding had no business being curious about how other kings held power. She'd relinquished her place when she chose to run away like a coward.

The morning wore on in much the same fashion, an edge of anticipation Lanthe didn't share and couldn't fully understand, hanging in the air. She scrubbed floors that had already been scrubbed the day before. She helped haul fresh linens to guest chambers that, as far as she knew, held no guests. She watched guards drill in the courtyard with unusual intensity, as though even they wanted to look their sharpest for a king who would likely spare them no more than a passing glance.

By early afternoon, word rippled through the palace that the King's party had been spotted on the northern road, close enough now that his arrival was a matter of hours rather than days. The shift in the air was almost immediate, almost like everyone collectively held their breaths.

"You'll want to see this," Yara had said, catching Lanthe's arm as they passed the corridor overlooking the main courtyard. Other maids had gathered around windows, straining for a clearer view of the courtyard. "Everyone does the first time."

Lanthe went, mostly to avoid the strangeness of refusing. There wasn't exactly a polite way to say she had no interest in their King.

The corridor hadn't been the only place crowded. The number of people lingering in the courtyard slowly grew as evening fell upon the palace, servants and guards alike, all eager to catch a glimpse of their King.

Lanthe had to admit, she was a bit curious now. Just what sort of man was Nikolai Blackwood to rouse such a reaction from people who supposedly feared him?

She heard him before she saw him. Not his voice, but the subtle shift in the air. The sudden quiet that fell upon the courtyard as every head turned towards the gates.

Then the gates opened, and Nikolai Blackwood rode through them.

He looked, Lanthe thought, exactly like what she'd expected the King of Oakhaven to look like. He was a large male, she could tell that much even from this distance. His shoulders were broad and his body looked to be carved of stone, a warriors build if she'd ever seen one. His dark hair was damp and he looked travel worn but even in his haggard state, he was a glorious sight to behold.

Guards bowed as he passed by but he didn't so much as glance in their direction. He didn't need to. Authority sat on him the way trained soldiers wore armor, like something he'd stopped noticing the weight of a long time ago.

Lanthe tried to look away, but she couldn't manage to peel her gaze away from him.

Instead something low in her chest pulled tight, like a hand had suddenly reached into her chest and grasped her heart. She felt an ache she had neither a name nor explanation for. His gaze swept the courtyard and her whole body stilled, the world around her seeming to fade away till he was the only thing in her line of vision.

For one disorienting heartbeat, she was certain his eyes caught on the window where she stood, on her, though there was no possible reason a king would notice one maid among a hundred pressed against the glass three floors up.

Then he was past the gate, dismounting, already speaking to a waiting advisor, and the moment broke apart like it had never happened at all.

Lanthe stepped back from the window so fast she nearly knocked Yara into the wall.

"You alright?" Yara asked, laughing. "You've gone pale as milk."

"Fine," Lanthe said a bit too quickly, pressing a hand flat against her own sternum as though she could physically hold the strange, thrumming ache still. "Just long day."

She didn't believe it any more than Yara did. But she made herself walk away from the window anyway. Whatever that was back there, whatever this ache in her chest represented, she wasn't eager to find out the reason.

All Lanthe knew in that moment with strange clarity, was that she had to stay away from Nikolai Blackwood no matter what it took.

Nikolai had been Alpha King of Oakhaven for about a decade now. He'd assumed the throne when he was barely nineteen years old, after his father had been brutally murdered by some power hungry fools who'd thought the throne suited them better. The same fools who'd stupidly thought he'd be easy quarry but learned the hard way just how different he was from his father.

It was under his father's rule that Oakhaven had fallen to chaos and Nikolai had been intent on righting his father's wrongs no matter what it took. He'd vowed to be a better king than his father and he liked to believe he'd succeeded at that, though that wasn't exactly a difficult benchmark to cross considering the kind of man his father was.

In his time as King, Nikolai had trained himself not to react to things.

He'd found it was the only way to rule a kingdom without losing his mind to it. React to every threat or provocation from Silvermist and he'd have gone to war a dozen times over already. React to every scheming lord angling for his favor and he'd have no advisors left. Nikolai had built himself into a man who noticed everything and startled at nothing.

Which was why the moment in the courtyard bothered him more than he wanted to admit.

"You're distracted," said Callum, his second and the closest thing he had to a friend, as they walked the war room's perimeter. They were reviewing troop placements along the northern border. "That is unlike you. Long ride?"

"Long fortnight," Nikolai said, which was true, though not the reason why he couldn't focus.

For a brief moment in the courtyard, something had drawn his attention to a window in the servant's quarters. Some inexplicable pull that Nikolai couldn't make sense of. He'd gotten the feeling he was being watched but that much was to be expected with all the palace folk that had gathered to welcome him. Nothing strange had happened, nothing worth this level of fixation on that single moment, yet he couldn't shake it off.

Nikolai tried to convince himself it was just nerves left over from the border dispute. Two packs had nearly gone to war over fucking land and it had taken every ounce of his authority to talk them down without bloodshed. The Alphas of those packs were two old fools who still held on to the old ideals of Oakhaven when power meant everything and every conflict was resolved with violence.

Animals the whole lot of them.

'Well technically...'

He ignored his wolf's comment. Just because they were wolves didn't mean they had to act like mindless beasts and run wild. It had taken so much from Nikolai to change things and bring this level of peace to Oakhaven. He became the Ruthless king in the process but he didn't mind that title so much, as long as it kept fools from acting out.

He ran a hand down his face. Yeah it was just the leftover nerves making him edgy. His senses were just heightened, searching out possible threats after being surrounded by so much hostility for a time.

However, that didn't explain why his usually quiet, often sarcastic wolf had grown restless the moment he peered up at that window.

"The Renata girl's father sent another letter," Callum interupted his thoughts, pulling Nikolai back to the map spread across the table. "He's pushing for a formal introduction before the season turns. He's not being subtle about what he wants from it."

The scheming never seemed to end. "I'm aware of what he wants."

"And?"

Nikolai studied the map instead of answering, tracing a line on the paper as though it held an answer to his plights. House Renata, a long standing noble family with ties that spread farther than Nikolai's current reach. Over the past year the head of the house had been pushing for Nikolai to meet with his oldest daughter and it didn't take a genius to figure out what the old fogey was plotting.

A marriage alliance with their family wouldn't exactly be a bad thing. They were a powerful house and an alliance would secure the northern packs' loyalty in a way ten years of careful diplomacy hadn't quite managed. There were simply too many who didn't approve of him as king, though they were too scared to do anything about it.

An alliance with House Renata was by every practical measure, exactly the kind of match a King in Nikolai's position ought to want.

But marriage to him held more meaning than mere alliances. Nikolai couldn't bear the thought of spending the rest of his life with a she wolf he barely knew. He wasn't asking for a fated mate, he knew how slim the chances of finding one were, but was it too much to ask for a Queen he actually held affection for?

"Draft a response," he said finally. "Noncommittal. I didn't just return from settling a dispute to start negotiating a betrothal I haven't agreed to."

Callum studied him for a long moment, "You haven't agreed to it because you haven't met her, or because you don't want to?"

"Because I have a kingdom to run and a border that nearly caught fire two days ago," Nikolai said, sharper than he meant to. "Draft the response, Callum."

Before Callum could push further, a runner entered without knocking forcing both mens attentions to the door. The boy was road-dusted and breathless and Nikolai knew whatever he had to say was an emergency seeing as the pup hadn't bothered to knock.

"Scouts spotted movement past the eastern ridge, Your Grace. Silvermist colors. A dozen riders, maybe more."

Nikolai's focus sharpened instantly, the restlessness of the evening slipping to the farthest corners of his mind. "Scouting party or something larger?"

"Too far to tell. They didn't cross the border. Didn't seem to be trying to."

"Then what were they doing?"

The runner hesitated. "We're not quite sure but they seemed to be searching for something, Your Grace."

Nikolai exchanged a look with Callum. Silvermist riders didn't linger near the border of an enemy territory for no reason. Especially not now when the new king had barely held his claim to the throne for a season. A new king with a shaky claim didn't send men to stare at his neighbors unless he was looking for something specific.

Or someone.

"Double the ridge patrols," Nikolai said. "I want to know the moment they move, in either direction."

The runner bowed and fled to relay the order. Callum turned to Nikolai, his earlier teasing gone entirely. "You think this is about the succession mess in Silvermist?"

"I don't know and frankly I don't really care about the goings-on of Silvermist, but something has always rubbed me the wrong way about their new king." Nikolai said. He'd met Theron a few times in the past while handling diplomatic issues with Silvermist, though back then the man had only been a general, but even then, something about the man had made Nikolai's wolf edgy. He almost wasn't surprised when news spread of King Fenris' death and who was responsible. "Increase watch on the eastern villages too.

Whatever or whoever it is Theron is so desperate to find, I want to know."

He didn't know, saying it, how close to the truth he'd already come.

Nikolai excused himself not long after, telling Callum he wanted an early night after the ride, which was half true. In reality though, the restlessness that had started since the courtyard hadn't faded. If anything, it was worse now, coupled with the news of Silvermist troops.

But at some point he'd forgotten about Silvermist and Theron, and all that remained was an edginess he couldn't explain.

He told himself a walk would settle it, a casual stroll while enjoying the cool night air. It was pure coincidence that he found himself walking towards the servants' wing, at least that was what he wanted to believe.

It was his palace, there was no restriction on where he chose to take a walk to. Right, there was nothing strange about a king taking a stroll to the servant' quarters.

The air smelled of lye soap and washed linen and something his sharpened nose couldn't place. Something warm. Something that made the wolf beneath his skin go very, very still, the way a hunting animal goes still right before it strikes a prey.

He didn't know how long he stood there, in a corridor he couldn't have named a use for, chasing a scent that almost felt like a figment of his imagination. It was, however, long enough for him to hear footsteps approaching from the far end.

For some reason, in that moment he felt a sudden wave of mortification engulf him but he refused to let that show and instead chose to act like he was inspecting the place rather than lingering aimlessly.

It was only a young manservant carrying a stack of ledgers that had nearly fallen to the ground when he realised who he'd stumbled on. The lad fell into a steep bow, somehow managing to hold the pile in his hand steady in the process.

"Your Grace... I didn't expect..."

"At ease," Nikolai said, already regretting the impulse that had brought him here. "Carry on."

The boy fled the encounter as fast as he could without actually running. Nikolai stood alone in the empty corridor a moment longer, irritated with himself in a way he rarely allowed and told his wolf firmly that whatever it thought it had scented, it had scented wrong.

His wolf did not seem inclined to agree.

He turned back toward his own wing, intent on burying this strange day the way he buried everything else that threatened to unsettle him.

It did not work now.

He'd barely made it two steps down the corridor leading to his own wing when his wolf surged forward again, sharper this time, insistent in a way that made his pulse pick up before his mind had caught up to why.

'This way.'

"There is no way," Nikolai muttered under his breath, already turning down the corridor his wolf wanted regardless. "We're going to bed."

'This way.'

He told himself he was humoring the thing purely to shut it up faster, that indulging one restless impulse was a small price to pay for getting his own head back tonight. It was a lie he almost believed, right up until he rounded the corner and the scent hit him full in the chest. It wasn't his imagination.

He didn't see her until it was too late to stop.

She came around the opposite corner at the same moment he did, arms full of folded linens stacked high enough to block half her view, and there was no time for either of them to do anything but collide.

The linens scattered across the floor and she stumbled backwards. His hand caught her upper arm on pure reflex before she could hit the floor.

The second his skin touched hers, the restlessness that had hounded him all evening didn't just settle, it detonated.