Chapter 8

Elowen's POV

I lowered my head, wishing I could disappear behind the veil.

The Countess immediately stepped forward with a pleasant smile.

"Please forgive her. Our daughter has always had a rather unusual scent because of her delicate health."

As she spoke, she quietly slipped a full-moon gold into the Warrior's hand.

"She has been rather spoiled since childhood. I would be grateful if you looked after her during the journey. She is to become His Highness's wife, after all."

The Warrior weighed the coin in his palm. His expression softened.

"Very well."

The Countess smiled again.

"She has been frightened today, so she may not speak much. Please don't take it personally."

Her voice was gentle and affectionate. Anyone watching would have thought she was a loving mother sending her precious daughter away to be married.

She even reached up and straightened my veil, her fingers brushing the gauze into place with a mother's careful touch.

Then they slid down to the cuff of my sleeve, smoothing the fabric over my wrist—a small, finishing gesture that would have looked like affection to anyone standing two feet away.

But her nails bit into the soft skin of my inner wrist.

I flinched.

The Countess didn't even glance at me. Her smile remained fixed on the Warrior, but something cold pressed against my mind.

A Mind Link.

I felt the intrusion before I heard her voice. It pushed past the edges of my consciousness, sharp and unwelcome, leaving no room to mistake who had forced her way in.

Listen carefully, Motley.

Her voice was no longer gentle.

From this moment on, you are Beatrice Vaux. You will answer to her name, wear her face beneath that veil, and keep your mouth shut unless someone addresses you. You will not remove that veil. Not for the escort, not for the priest, and not even if the King himself demands it.

Her nails pressed harder into my wrist.

You will smile when you are expected to smile. You will obey when you are given an order. And you will not do a single thing that draws attention to yourself.

The pressure against my mind tightened.

Do you understand what will happen if you ruin this marriage?

I couldn't answer. Not through the Mind Link. I could only feel her presence bearing down on my thoughts.

I won't waste another coin selling you. I won't bother beating you, either. I'll have you dragged back to the beast pit, and I'll make certain you never leave it again.

A cold shiver ran down my spine.

And when anyone asks what happened to the Count's daughter, we'll tell them the bride took ill and died on the road. No one will come looking for an ugly little Omega slave.

The words settled inside my head like a death sentence.

I kept my gaze lowered. My wrist throbbed beneath her grip, but I didn't dare pull away.

Do you understand me?

I forced myself to give the smallest nod.

Only then did the pressure withdraw.

The Countess released my wrist and turned back to the Warrior, her warm smile never faltering.

"Thank you for your patience," she said sweetly.

I looked down at the red marks her fingers had left.

Her gentle words had never been meant for me. They were only for the people watching.

A heavy metallic clatter interrupted my thoughts.

One of the Warriors had approached the wagon and reached for the iron latch securing its rear gate. He pulled it free with a sharp scrape, then heaved the heavy iron-barred door open.

The gate creaked on its hinges.

My gaze drifted past the bars and fell on the silver strips bolted into the inner walls, set at the height of a man's shoulders.

Even from where I stood, I could feel the faint, familiar sense of oppression they carried.

Selene stirred again.

I don't like that, she murmured.

The Warrior pulled out the heavy iron bolt and pushed the barred door outward.

And then I saw him.

Aldric Auren was still inside the wagon.

He sat against the wooden wall, his tall frame held unnaturally still. His legs stretched awkwardly before him, and even the slightest movement seemed to cost him. His clothes were worn and travel-stained, nothing like the fine garments I had imagined a royal heir would wear.

Yet the moment my eyes found him, everything else seemed to fall away.

He was handsome. Strikingly, almost impossibly handsome.

His features were sharply defined, but it was his hair that caught my attention first.

His hair was silver-gray, so pale it almost looked white beneath the light. It fell casually across his forehead, making the cold lines of his face even more striking.

His shoulders were broad, his waist narrow, and even beneath the rough fabric, I could make out the solid build of his body.

He had a strong, well-built frame, but his legs lay stiffly in front of him, stretched out at an unnatural angle. He barely moved, as though even the slightest shift would send pain shooting through them.

A strange scent drifted from inside the wagon.

Cedar, faint and cold, beneath a much sharper metallic smell.

At first, I thought it was blood. But the scent was too cold, too sharp. Then my gaze fell to his legs, and a terrible realization struck me.

Silver.

The metallic smell wasn't coming from a wound. It was coming from the silver lodged inside his legs.

My breath stopped.

Why would anyone drive silver into a prince's legs?

I stared at him, unable to make sense of what I had just realized.

Then his eyes lifted.

For one brief moment, our gazes met.

My heart gave a violent thud. A rush of warmth swept through my chest, spreading outward until my fingertips tingled. My breath caught, and an unfamiliar ache bloomed deep inside me, as though an invisible thread had suddenly tightened around my heart and begun pulling me toward him.

I couldn't look away.

Every instinct in me wanted to move closer. I wanted to reach for him, to touch him, to ease the pain I could sense beneath his stillness. It made no sense. He was a stranger. I had never even spoken to him.

Yet my body seemed to know him.

Elowen... Selene's voice trembled with an excitement I had never heard from her before.

The wariness she had felt around the silver strips was gone. She pressed eagerly against my consciousness, her attention fixed entirely on the man before us.

Fated Mate.

The words rang through my mind.

I froze.

He's our Fated Mate.

Him?

Prince Aldric Auren?

Was my Fated Mate the prince?

I had never imagined this could happen to me. Every wolf was born with a Fated Mate, but I had never dared to wonder who mine might be. I had not thought I would be lucky enough to find him.

And now he was right in front of me.

My heart was still racing. That strange warmth continued to spread through my chest, and every instinct in me wanted to move closer to him.

But I was an Omega.

An ugly, unwanted Omega slave who had been forced into another woman's wedding dress.

How could someone like me be his Mate?

If Aldric hadn't been stripped of his claim and sent to the border in chains, a girl like me would never have been allowed within a hundred feet of him.

Even now, I wasn't here because anyone had chosen me.

I was here because Beatrice had refused to come.

My fingers tightened around the wedding dress.

The pull in my chest hadn't disappeared. If anything, it seemed to grow stronger the more I tried to resist it. Selene still wanted to go to him, but I could only stand there, feeling the cruel distance between what fate had given me and what I could ever hope to have.

He was my Fated Mate.

But I wasn't someone who deserved to stand beside him.

I lowered my head, letting the veil hide my face.

Because now I knew what I had been given.

And I also knew that a girl like me could never have it.