Chapter 8

Chapter 8

I waited a couple of hours in my room, then snuck out, padding down the other hallway where Hale’s room, study, and his mother’s room were. I wasn’t sure if Hale had taken the master suite or not after his father died, or if Astrid was still in there, but that wasn’t my destination anyway.

I was going to the study.

The door was ajar, and I could almost hear laughter from my childhood–my father and Hale’s father chuckling over something we’d done or some joke one of them had told.

In reality, though, there was silence. I reflected on the fact that, even while I’d been back in my old room, I hadn’t heard. laughter in the halls at all.

I leaned back against the wall, scanning what I could see of the room through the slit in the doorway.

Hale’s desk was unoccupied, and the room appeared to be empty.”

With an inner sense of victory and relief, I pushed into Hale’s study and let the door rest back in its old position behind me. If I was only going to have two months to learn what had really happened with my father and the rebellion, I was going to have to get crafty.

Hence the breaking and entering

Not that I’d broken anything–yet. My eyes scanned a wall of old, expensive, locked wooden cabinets. Of course, they weren’t labeled for the convenience of thieves like me. I took a nail file I’d found in the small vanity in my room and decided I would start opening them one at a time.

I was just sliding the file under the first latch, frowning and jiggling the file when it wouldn’t budge, when I heard footsteps in

the hall

I pulled the nail file back out, snapping it at the handle in the process, and trotted over to Hale’s desk. His open itinerary said he was supposed to be out reviewing the warriors in the field.

Whoever it was, even if it WAS Hale, I would make up some excuse. Maybe I’d been called to the office to see Hale. Maybe I was just looking for him.

I was just solidifying my excuse when the door swung open and Giselle stood before me, hands on hips.

“THERE you

are!” she snapped. “What the HELL do you think you’re doing here?!”

“Whatever. It doesn’t matter. You don’t belong here, and you know it,” Giselle snapped/

“I was just looking for Alpha Hale…” I tried again.

Giselle slapped me across the face. “Don’t even say his name. Don’t even THINK it. Until the day of that wretched ceremony, you’re going to avoid him like the plague. You aren’t worthy to be in his presence!”

My nostrils flared, but I bowed my head and nodded. I didn’t need her paying too much attention to the cabinets where I’d been working, Knowing my luck, the file would still be sticking out.

“You are absolutely useless. And you look like you lost a fight with a fork,” Giselle snarked, talking about my scars from my previous rejections.

I didn’t reply, which must have pissed her off more because she slapped me again.

“I can’t wait until he exiles you. You ugly, stupid, interfering C–NT.”

I imagined if I raised my head and looked at Giselle, smoke would be coming out of her ears I suppressed a snicker at the image.

Giselle grabbed me by the collar and lifted me onto my toes. Her arm shook, and I could tell it took all of her delicate strength. A warrior, she was not. “You find something funny?” she yelled.

It wasn’t as though I could answer her.

“You know, I’m throwing a HUGE party after the rejection ceremony,” Giselle crowed. “You won’t be there to see n deserved proposal, the one you stole from me. You’ll be off starving in the woods somewhere.”

me get my

There was a loud clearing of a throat behind her. I looked up, and Giselle turned around, then nearly dropped me when she saw it was Hale.

“Alpha, Kora broke into your study. I caught her!” Giselle said quickly.

“Hmph.” Hale’s face was blank

“She’s a traitor AND a thief! I’m sure she’s stolen something..” Giselle started ransacking my person, but couldn’t find anything but the broken file handle in my hand. “See?!”

Hale frowned and took the file handle.

I swallowed.

He looked it over, saw the pretty pink heart at the end, and his l*ps twitched. He showed it to Giselle, who turned beet red.

“She… she stole that… she stole that from…” Giselle stuttered.

“Herself?” Hale provided.

“It could be mine!” Giselle argued.

Hale raised an eyebrow. “What would it have been doing in my office?”

“L. it.. L…” Giselle cast about for something else to say.

“Why don’t you take Kora out of here? NEITHER of you belongs in my office,” Hale said.

Flustered, Giselle grabbed my wrist and dragged me out of Hale’s office.

Just as I turned back to look, I saw Hale cross to the cabinets and pull something silver out from under the first one’s door.

I was screwed

Giselle didn’t notice, however. Small mercies. She dragged me down to the servants‘ quarters, still harping on my scars and my ugliness and my intelligence–or lack thereof.

We stopped before one of the servant’s doors, and the smell was overwhelming even before Giselle opened it.

“Clean ber up,” she said, pointing indifferently at the elderly maid huddled in bed in her own filth. The smell is bothering the other servants.

I imagined caring for the poor maid was a duty that also should have fallen to Giselle, that she’d ignored for days, perhaps even weeks. I wondered when was the last time the poor thing ate or drank anything.

“Giselle, how could you let her get this way?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking. Holding my breath, I went to the maid’s bedside and found her back and legs riddled with bedsores.

“Ex–CUSE me!!” Giselle gasped. “You have no right to take that tone with mel Traitor’s daughter!”

I shook my

head and ignored her, calling on the few who had gathered outside for water, bandages, food, ointment, etc. Giselle circled like an angry harpy, still berating me.

When I put a straw to the old maid’s l*ps, she trembled, sipping desperately, but also weakly. She blinked at me a few times, then her wrinkled face softened “Princess,” she breathed.

Giselle’s squawk of indignation could have shaken the walls loose. Her eyes were wide as if she’d seen a ghost and I faintly heard her breathing hitch in her throat as I focused on the sick woman.

After several heartbeats, she stomped out of the room, and I sighed

At least that would be the end of it.

PRINCESS?! I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t BELIEVE what I’d just heard.

I went straight to the only person I knew would feel my pain, and be willing to do something about it. My poor Mason was just too blinded by childhood nostalgia to do the right thing where Kora was concerned.

But I wasn’t. And neither was Astrid,

I knocked on the door to her suite, conjuring up tears as the door opened.

“Oh, Luna, I sobbed, throwing myself into her arms. “It’s so terrible! I took Kora down to the servants quarters because she’s been neglecting this poor old, sick woman, and now she’s started making the servants call her ‘princess?”

“What?” Astrid replied, frowning deeply.

“Princess! Can you believe it? She’s always causing trouble,” I sniffled. It might not have been entirely true, but it was necessary to get that thorn Kora out of my side.

She was standing between me and my Mason’s happily ever after.

“You’re… telling me she has the servants calling her “princess“?” Astrid repeated.

Ugh. Stupid seemed to be epidemic around here.

I raised my wet gaze to Astrid’s and pouted. “Yes. Princess, of all things! As if she was ever a princess.”

“And especially now.. as a traitor’s daughter..” Astrid mumbled, looking troubled.

2

I hid smile. I had her. If only her son were so easy. “I don’t know what to do, Luna. They looked as though they’d mutiny if

I corrected her.”

“No… no. You’re right. The Kora problem has gotten out of hand,” Astrid agreed.

“What can we do?” I asked, feigning wide–eyed innocence. “Mason–er–Alpha Hale, he’s so blinded where she is concerned.” Astrid’s jaw set, and she took me by the wrist. “Come with me.”

I eagerly trotted down the hall to my Mason’s office with her.

He was sitting behind his desk, playing with that stupid little trinket Kora had brought in with her and a little silver piece, his l*ps curved up slightly.

My Mason was smiling. SMILING! Because of THAT B*TCHI

He never smiled at me.

“Mason,” Astrid said, “why aren’t you reviewing the warriors right now?”

When he looked up, my Mason’s smile faded. “I was just on my way.”

Someday, my words would set him to act that way, too. When I was his Luna. He’d listen to ME and do what I said.

My Mason left us alone, and Astrid quickly crossed behind the desk. “Where is it…” she mumbled. Then she pulled a typed list out of a pile of papers. “Yes!”

I saw the heading at the top, and I felt my heart skip with glee as Astrid handwrote, with finality, Kora’s name at the bottom,

of the list.

Spearhead Team.