Chapter 1

Elowen Vane's POV

The split-jawed beast in the pit had started screaming again.

I pressed my scraping blade into the stone groove and dragged it back toward me. A strip of frozen, dark-red matter came loose with a brittle crack, like a chip of sugar candy snapping off and hitting the floor.

I didn't look at it.

After eleven years, I had learned not to look too closely at the things left behind.

The execution beast-pit occupied the lowest level of Greystone Keep's east wing, a rectangular trench carved straight out of the bedrock. It was wide enough to hold several bodies and deep enough to swallow most sounds. The nobles called it the beast-pit, though that name didn't tell the whole story.

It was also where they held their feeding shows.

Condemned prisoners. Inconvenient slaves. Anyone the earl decided was no longer worth keeping alive.

They were thrown into the cages while the beasts waited. Above them, the nobles sat on carved benches with their wine and their wagers, watching things get torn apart.

My job was to make sure the pit was clean before the next show.

I scraped the walls back to stone, dragged away whatever the beasts had left behind, washed the floor with lye water, and spread fresh straw. The stains had settled into the rock over the years, old blood dried black beneath newer splashes. No amount of scrubbing could ever reach the bottom of them.

Most servants avoided this wing. The smell alone was enough to turn a wolf's stomach: iron rot, ammonia, and the sweet-sick stench of meat left too long in the sun. Even the stable hands took the long way around rather than pass the gate.

I had been assigned here on my first night at Greystone Keep.

No one had ever offered to trade.

Just an Omega. What else was I expecting?

I dipped my rag into the bucket. The alkaline wash had split the skin across my knuckles three times that week, and the cracks stung whenever the water touched them. I had stopped counting the little injuries a long time ago.

Across the pit, the split-jaw beast paced its enclosure.

Its lower jaw had been divided into two uneven halves, which clicked open and shut in an alternating rhythm. Bone scraped against bone, producing a sound I had hated the first time I heard it. Now I recognized it as easily as I recognized the change in the weather.

Its fur was scorched black from an old performance injury. One ear was missing, torn away during a feeding show two summers ago.

I remembered the crowd laughing.

The beast stopped pacing and watched me with its flat yellow eyes.

"Bad night?" I asked.

It lowered its head. The two halves of its jaw hung slightly apart, exposing the dark flesh between them.

A low rumble rolled out of its chest.

I stepped closer, stopping just beyond the reach of its teeth. It pushed its nose toward the bars and breathed against them.

I reached two fingers through the gap and scratched along the ridge of its brow.

The rumble deepened.

"Yeah," I murmured. "Me too."

It leaned harder against the iron, as if the pressure of my fingers was something it wanted to keep. I scratched until its breathing settled, then wiped my hand on my trousers and returned to my bucket.

I heard boots on the iron rungs before I saw anyone.

Rhynn and Hilde came down from the upper passage, their footsteps ringing against the walls of the trench. They were castle servants like me, except they were ordinary wolves, and I was a weak, useless Omega. Apparently, that difference was worth climbing all the way down here to remind me of.

Hilde stepped off the last rung and looked around the pit with a dissatisfied expression.

"Motley. Scrape it clean."

I kept working.

Motley.

They had given me that nickname when I was too young to understand every word they used against me. It meant a patchwork of mismatched pieces, something ugly and badly put together.

I knew why they had chosen it.

My left eye was completely white, as though frozen fog had settled over it and swallowed the pupil. A dark-red mark spread from above the eye down across my cheekbone, its uneven edges making it look as if someone had smeared paint across my face with a careless hand.

One white eye. Half a red face. Gray, dusty skin.

I looked like something torn from two different people and stitched together badly.

At first, the nickname had hurt. I used to return to my room at night, bury my face in the straw, bite down on my sleeve, and cry as quietly as I could.

But crying changed nothing.

The next morning, my eye was still white. The mark was still there. And the others laughed just as much as they had the day before.

Eventually, I learned to hide the hurt somewhere deep inside me. I let them laugh. Sometimes I even laughed along.

It was easier than giving them the satisfaction of seeing me cry.

Rhynn stopped a few paces from the bars. He looked at the beast, then at me, his mouth twisting.

"You useless, ugly creature. Can't even shift, can you? Waste of an Omega. Waste of a body. Waste of the air it takes to—"

"Don't bother," Hilde interrupted. "Don't waste your breath on it."

Rhynn's boot struck my bucket.

The bucket tipped sideways, and gray water spilled across the stone. It swept over my boots and splashed both knees, soaking through my trousers. The cold liquid carried the dirt and blood I had spent the last hour scraping away.

I stared at the spreading puddle.

For a moment, I thought about the work I would have to do all over again. Then the iron bars shook.

The split-jaw beast had slammed its full weight against the enclosure.

The impact travelled through the stone and up the soles of my boots. The bars bowed inward, sprang back, and shrieked.

Rhynn let out a startled cry, high and thin like a kicked dog. His boots shot out from under him in the dirty water, and he went down hard on his backside, arms flailing, one hand slapping into the puddle he had just made.

"Get back! Get it back!" he shrieked, scrambling backward on his elbows and heels, dragging his wet trousers through the filth.

Hilde jumped back so quickly that her shoulder cracked against one of the iron rungs.

"Seven hells—" she spat, her voice stripped of all its flatness now. "What's wrong with that thing?"

The beast pressed its divided jaw against the bars.

And screamed.