Irina's POV
I know what you're probably thinking. After Ian rejected me, I must have shifted into my wolf and fled into the woods. You're imagining me running through the moonlit forest, tears streaming down my face as I howled my sorrow to the uncaring stars, finally letting the wild solitude heal my broken heart.
Yeah, no. That would require a wild worth running with. I do love my wolf the way she is. But sometimes I wonder if she's really a wolf.
Compared to other werewolves my age—even back then, at eighteen—my wolf was a joke tot them. She was small. Pathetically, laughably small. Like a puppy that hadn't quite figured out how to grow. The other servants, the guards, even the younger pack members who should have respected their elders, they all had their fun at my expense.
"Look at Irina's wolf," they would snicker.
"A strong wind might blow her away. Hey, little pup, want some milk?" Even a child who had just had their first shift could probably pick me up and carry me around. That's not an exaggeration. That's the level of humiliation I lived with every single day.
Sometimes, in my weakest moments, I would catch myself wondering ridiculous things. Like if I ate more, if I gorged myself on the same raw meat the warriors consumed after training, would it make my wolf grow? Would she finally bulk up, become something respectable? It was such a laughable thought that I had actually laughed out loud once, startling a passing maid. Imagine trying to feed your soul into being something it's not. Imagine trying to diet your way into acceptance.
So no, after Ian's rejection, I didn't run to the woods. I walked. I simply walked out of the dining room, down the long corridor, and onto the path that wound through the castle gardens. My feet moved on their own, carrying me nowhere in particular.
And here's the thing about my life—it's always been determined to defy every storybook cliché. In all those tales, when the damsel is in distress, the skies open up. Rain pours down, dramatic and cleansing, hiding her tears as she crumples to the ground in despair. It never works that way for me.
That day, the sun blazed. It shone so brightly, so cheerfully, as if the universe itself was mocking me. The path was filled with people—pack members going about their business, servants hurrying with linens, children chasing each other with sticks. There wasn't a single shadowed corner where I could hide and let the tears come. Not one bench tucked away from prying eyes. I just kept walking, my face carefully blank, my spine painfully straight, while the sun kissed my skin and the world carried on around me like nothing had happened.
You don't expect me to smile like a fool when my mate just ripped my soul in half, do you? I couldn't even manage a grimace by the end of that walk. My face had frozen into something that probably looked like I just smelled something unpleasant. It was the best I could do.
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Present Day
That was five years ago. Five years of waking up before dawn, five years of scrubbing floors that would never stay clean, five years of avoiding Ian and Lindsey's paths like they were coated in poison. Five years of being a machine.
I've thought about leaving. I've planned it, dreamed it, mapped it out in my head a thousand times. The Redmoon Park castle is my prison, and I've served my sentence long enough. Other servants come and go—they hand in their notices, pack their meager belongings, and walk out the gates to find work in neighboring packs or human towns. It's supposed to be allowed. We're not slaves.
But Ian won't let me go.
I don't know why. Maybe my presence is a reminder of what he did, and he needs to keep me close to reassure himself that I'm still nothing. Maybe he enjoys having me here, under his thumb, a living testament to his power to crush people and leave them breathing. Maybe he's just cruel. Whatever the reason, every time I've tried to leave, I've been stopped.
Once, I almost made it. I managed to slip away during the chaos of a pack celebration, when everyone was too drunk on moon wine and too distracted by the dancing to notice a maid slipping out a side gate. I ran until my lungs burned, until my pathetic little wolf whimpered in exhaustion, and I made it to the border of Silverblue Park. They were strangers. They didn't know me. I thought I could disappear there, find work, start over.
I was so stupid.
Redmoon Park and Silverblue Park are allies. Friends. When Ian sent word that a runaway servant needed to be returned, the Silverblue warriors didn't ask questions. They didn't care about my story or my reasons. They just dragged me back by my arms, my feet barely touching the ground, and handed me over like a lost package.
Fifty strokes of the cane on my bare back. That was my welcome home.
I still have the scars. They've faded into pale, silvery lines, but I can almost feel them every time I bend over to scrub a floor or reach for a high shelf. Since that day, any plan of escaping through another pack has been canceled permanently. Permanently etched out of my brain with pain I'll never forget.
So I stay. I work. I survive.
"Irina."
That voice. Gosh, that voice. It slides through the air like a blade, sharp and deliberate, and my entire body tenses before my brain even fully registers it. Why now? Why today, when I'm already running on three hours of sleep and a stale piece of bread?
I turn slowly, schooling my features into the perfect mask of blank obedience.
Lindsey stands in the doorway of the sitting room I've just finished cleaning. She's draped in silk, her hair perfectly arranged, her makeup flawless. She looks like a queen. She looks like everything I'm not. Her eyes, once so familiar and friendly, now rake over me like she's searching for something to criticize. Something to punish.
She finds it.
"This vase," she says, her voice taking on that shrill, carrying quality she's perfected, "is so dusty. Look at it. Just look. Do I have to do everything myself around here? Do none of you actually work?"
I look at the vase. It's the one on the mantlepiece, a delicate thing painted with flowers. I polished it myself not twenty minutes ago. It gleams in the afternoon light. There isn't a single speck of dust on it. Not one.
Frustration builds in my chest, hot and acidic. My hands clench at my sides. I want to point out the truth. I want to grab a white glove and run it over the surface just to prove her wrong. I want to scream that I've been working since four this morning, that my back aches and my fingers are raw, that I didn't eat yesterday so the kitchen scraps could go to an old servant who's sick and can't work.
I do none of those things. I just lower my head.
"I'll clean it again, Luna. My apologies."
Luna. Did I forget to tell you that part? Lindsey is the Luna of Redmoon Park now. She's Ian's chosen mate, his rejection of me validated and sanctified by their union. She rules over this castle, over these servants, over me.
And everyone is so satisfied with her.
I watch them sometimes, the pack members, the visiting dignitaries, the other servants who haven't felt her particular brand of attention. They see the perfect Luna. The gracious hostess who smiles at every gathering, who remembers everyone's name, who donates to pack funds and visits the sick. They have no idea that the smile drops the moment the door closes. They don't know about the "dusty" vases, the ruined laundry, the meals sent back because they're "somehow" always cold.
They don't know that she wasn't his original mate. No one knows that I ever had a mate at all. Ian made sure of that. The rejection was clean, quiet, and completely erased. I'm just the strange, quiet maid with the tiny wolf. Nothing more.
Sometimes, late at night when I can't sleep, I catch myself wishing. Wishing for something I barely dare to name.
I wish I had a second chance mate.
I know it's possible. Rare, but possible. When a rejection happens, when the bond is truly severed, sometimes the Moon Goddess grants another chance. Sometimes she sends a second mate, a true gift, someone who will actually cherish what the first one threw away.
It's a stupid dream. I'm twenty-three years old, I work like there was no tomorrow, and my wolf is the size of a house pet. Who would want me? What kind of mate would look at someone like me and see anything worth having?
But still. Still, when the moon is full and the castle is quiet, when I press my hand to my chest and feel the empty space where a mate bond should live, I wonder.
What if?
The thought is dangerous. It's a crack in my armor. So I push it down, the same way I push down everything else. I pick up my cloth and I walk toward the perfectly clean vase.
"Yes, Luna," I murmur. "Right away."
Lindsey's lips curl into a small, satisfied smile. She turns and glides away, her silk dress whispering against the floor, leaving me alone with her imaginary dust and my very real humiliation.
I start polishing. The vase gleams. It already gleamed. But I polish anyway, because that's what I do. I work. I survive.
One day at a time.