Riding with the Pack

Talia's POV

The slap came out of nowhere.

My cheek stung, my ear rang, and I stumbled back against the wall of the storage room with my hand flying to my face. I did not need a mirror to know a red mark was already blooming across my skin. They always bloomed fast on me, like bruises were the one thing my body did without being asked.

Celeste stood in front of me, her hand still raised, her face twisted with fury. Blonde hair perfect. Pale blue gown flawless. But her eyes were wild, like a wolf that had been cornered by something smaller than itself.

"Look what you did," she spat.

I looked. I saw nothing.

She pointed at her own chin, at a tiny red bump I would never have noticed if she had not shoved her jaw in my direction.

"There's a pimple," she shrieked. "On the day the Alpha of Shadowfang arrives. You did this. It's all because of your ugliness and your bad luck. It has contaminated me."

I did not say anything. I learned years ago that silence was safer than words, and cheaper than pride.

"You think because the Alpha is coming, you can make yourself noticed?"

"No."

"Then why were you looking at me like that?"

I lowered my gaze.

It was the answer she expected, and the only one that usually ended the conversation before it became more expensive.

In Cresswood, arguing could cost a person more than pride. A servant who spoke back might lose her supper, her blanket, or the right to sleep indoors. I had learned to weigh every sentence before allowing it past my teeth, because even an innocent answer could become an excuse for punishment in the hands of someone who wanted one.

Celeste stepped closer.

Her perfume was sweet and thick, with a faint floral note that seemed designed to cover the smell of something sour underneath.

"Vivienne wants you in the kitchen before sunrise," she said. "You are not to leave unless someone orders you to. If the Alpha asks whether there are any other unmated women in this household, you will say no."

My fingers tightened at my sides.

I nodded. "Do you understand?"

"Yes."

Her lips curved. "Good. You are almost useful."

She turned and walked out, leaving the storage-room door partly open behind her.

The lock remained on the outside.

I waited until her footsteps faded into the corridor before I let my shoulders loosen. My hands were trembling, and the skin beneath my cheek had already begun to swell. It would turn purple before nightfall, then yellow at the edges over the next few days, provided no one struck the same place again.

I crossed the room and stood before the cracked mirror above the basin.

The face looking back at me was the one Cresswood knew.

My brown hair hung unevenly around my shoulders, dry from years of being washed with harsh soap and rarely brushed. My eyes appeared smaller than they were, my skin duller, and the narrow line of my jaw seemed to belong to someone older and more exhausted than twenty.

I hated that face.

Not because it was ugly, but because it was a lie I had been forced to wear for fifteen years.

My fingers slipped beneath the collar of my dress and found the silver chain resting against my skin. The small stone hanging from it was smooth and cool, its surface almost black in the weak morning light.

My mother had tied the chain around my neck fifteen years ago.

I had been five years old.

The house had been burning when she found me. Smoke filled the hallways, flames climbed the curtains, and the heat had grown so fierce that I could barely keep my eyes open. She knelt in front of me with ash across her face and blood running from a cut above her eyebrow.

"Never remove the glamour charm before your twentieth birthday," she had whispered.

Her hands had shaken as she fastened the chain.

"Wear it, and they will not see you. Keep wearing it, and they will not hurt you."

Then she had pushed me toward the back door and turned toward the flames.

I had never seen her again.

Everyone in Cresswood said she died in the fire. They said I had caused it, although no one had ever explained how a five-year-old child could have set fire to an entire house. They called me cursed, said my mother had sacrificed herself because she could no longer bear to look at me, and treated every misfortune that followed as proof that they had been right.

They were wrong about the fire.

They were wrong about my mother.

I could feel it, even after fifteen years of silence, in the stubborn part of me that had refused to let her become a memory. She was somewhere beyond Cresswood, and if she was alive, I would find her.

Three years after the fire, I learned my mother's name.

I was eight. It was winter, and I had been sent to scrub the pots until the kitchen fires died. When I finished, I did not go back to the storage room. I went where I always went-the narrow passage behind the dining hall, where the wall was thin and the voices came through.

Vivienne was inside. So was Celeste. I could hear the clink of glass and the low crackle of the hearth.

"Say it again," Celeste said. "The name."

"Ashford." Vivienne's voice was flat and uninterested, the way she spoke when she was already bored of a thing. "Seraphina Ashford. That was the woman's name before she married your father."

"Was she anyone?" Celeste's voice sounded.

"She was no one. A girl from a minor house with a pretty face and no fortune. She died in that fire three winters ago and did us all a favor."

"And the girl?" Celeste had asked.

A pause. I remember the pause more clearly than anything else in the room. It was the kind of silence that has a smile inside it.

"The girl keeps trying to answer to Cress," Vivienne said. "She will not. Not one of Edmund's daughters will carry that name unless I say so. Whatever comes to this house-the titles, the gold, the standing-all of it belongs to you, Celeste. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mother." Celeste replied.

"Say it back to me."

"Whatever comes to this house is mine."

"Good girl."

I did not move for a long time after that.

I had spent three years being told I was cursed, ugly, a burden, an accident that should have died with its mother. None of it had ever touched the thing that mattered most. They could take my food. They could take my blankets. They could lock me in a room with no windows and call me whatever they liked.

But there was one thing I had that Vivienne had not known about.

I had my mother's name.

Seraphina Ashford. A girl from a minor house with a pretty face and no fortune.

I said it to myself that night, over and over, until it was the only thing in my head. Not to spite Vivienne. Not to spite Celeste. Just to have something of my own that they could not take, because they did not know it mattered.

The next morning, when Marta asked me for my name to put in the kitchen ledger, I said it out loud for the first time.

"Talia Ashford."

She wrote it down without looking up. She never questioned it. No one ever did.

I had been Talia Ashford for twelve years.

But it started that night, in a dark passage, with a name I was not supposed to hear.

Two days remained until my twentieth birthday.

I would reach it. I would leave Cresswood. Then I would find out what had happened to my mother.

A soft knock sounded at the door.

It was not Celeste's fist, nor the impatient pounding of a servant who expected immediate obedience. Whoever stood outside had tapped three times, carefully and quietly.

I knew that knock.

I opened the door just wide enough for Piper Holloway to slip inside, then shut it behind her. Her hair was loose, her cheeks were flushed, and she was breathing as though she had crossed the entire estate without stopping.

"You will not believe what I heard," she whispered.

I glanced at my reflection in the cracked mirror. "You should be looking at my cheek instead."

Piper's expression tightened. "Celeste struck you again."

"She was upset."

"That does not make it acceptable."

"It makes it predictable."

Piper moved closer, lowering her voice even though there was no one on the other side of the door. "The Alpha of Shadowfang is coming to Cresswood."

I turned toward her. "Why?"

"To choose a mate. Vivienne is presenting Celeste to him, and everyone in the household has been talking about it since midnight."

"I do not care about Celeste's presentation."

"You should care about the Alpha."

"I have more urgent problems."

Piper glanced toward the silver chain hidden beneath my collar. She was the only person in Cresswood who knew what the charm concealed, and even she had never seen my real face.

"You have two days left," she said.

"I know."

"Then perhaps this is not a coincidence."

I looked toward the small window near the ceiling. Dawn had begun to lighten the gray sky, and the first servants were already moving through the outer courtyard.

"What do you mean?"

"Something has been wrong since the Shadowfang envoys arrived." She folded her arms tightly across her chest. "The guards have been doubling the patrols, and Marta told the kitchen staff not to speak to anyone from the visiting pack. Even Vivienne has been frightened."

"Vivienne is frightened of losing control, not of the Alpha."

"Those may be the same thing today."

I wanted to dismiss her, but the warmth beneath my collar made it difficult.

Piper caught my hands. "Be careful, Talia. Whatever Vivienne is planning, she does not want you near the main hall."

"She never wants me near the main hall."

"This time she ordered the servants to deny that you exist."

That made me look at her.

Piper's face had lost its color.

Before I could ask what she meant, footsteps sounded in the corridor. She released me and moved toward the back wall, where a narrow service door opened into the old laundry passage.

"Go," I whispered.

She slipped through the door just as the outer lock turned.

Marta entered without knocking.

Her eyes moved from me to the service door and back again, although she did not comment on what she had seen.

"You are late for the kitchen."

"I was-"

"Do not explain. Come with me."

She turned before I could finish and walked away.

I followed because refusing would only delay the punishment, but Piper's warning stayed with me as I crossed the corridor.

And beneath my dress, my mother's charm had begun to warm against my skin.

For the first time in fifteen years, I wondered whether my mother had known this day would come.