Episode 3

Chapter 3: The Girl in the Attic

"You will marry Alpha Ronan Ashford."

Ingrid's fingers stopped mid-turn on the page of her planner. She looked up at her father across the wide mahogany desk.

Alpha Victor Hargrave didn't blink. He sat with his hands folded, the overhead light catching the silver threads in his dark hair. Behind him, the Bloodthorn crest hung on the wall — a thorned wolf skull, cast in iron.

"When?" she asked. Her voice came out steady. Good.

"He arrives within the week. The bonding ceremony will follow shortly after." Victor's tone carried the same flatness he used for territory reports. "Your education in Geneva, the etiquette courses, the language training — all of it was preparation for this."

Ingrid closed the planner. She set it on her lap, aligned the pen beside it. A perfect right angle. Control in small things.

"I wasn't aware negotiations had progressed that far."

"They hadn't. I accelerated them." Victor leaned back. The leather chair creaked under his weight. "The Ironhowl alliance secures our northern border and doubles our trade access. Ashford is young, powerful, and unmated. You are the obvious choice."

The obvious choice. Not the beloved daughter. Not even the willing participant. The chess piece that fit the square.

Warrick's face surfaced in her mind — the heat of his mouth, his hands on her waist, the way the bond had lit up her nervous system like a circuit closing for the first time. She crushed the image flat.

"I understand," Ingrid said. She stood, smoothed her skirt. "I'll begin preparations."

Victor nodded once, already reaching for the next document on his desk. Dismissed.

In the hallway, Ingrid walked with measured steps. Her heels clicked against the stone floor in even intervals. She didn't speed up. She didn't slow down. She turned the corner, climbed the east staircase, and entered her room.

She locked the door. Sat on the edge of her bed. Pressed her palms flat against her thighs and breathed.

Ronan Ashford. She'd seen photographs. Tall, dark-haired, a jaw that looked carved from granite. Cold eyes. The kind of Alpha other Alphas didn't challenge twice.

She would be his Luna. She would run his household, attend his councils, bear his heirs. She would do it perfectly, because that was what she'd been built to do.

Warrick didn't matter. He was an Omega. He'd been a detour, not a destination.

Ingrid opened her planner again and wrote: "Ashford arrival — prepare wardrobe, review Ironhowl customs, draft greeting protocol."

Her handwriting didn't shake. She made sure of it.

---

Three floors above the main hall, past the servants' quarters and up a narrow staircase that smelled of dust and old wood, Sera sat cross-legged on a pile of blankets that served as her bed.

The attic was long and low-ceilinged. Exposed beams ran overhead, and a single window — cracked in one corner, patched with tape — let in a square of gray afternoon light. No dresser. No mirror. A wooden crate held her things: two spare shirts, both too large, a pair of shoes with the soles worn smooth, and a book.

She picked up the book now. The cover was soft with handling, the spine cracked, the pages yellowed. A fairy tale collection. Olivia had given it to her before she left.

"Keep it," Olivia had said, pressing it into Sera's hands. "For the bad nights."

That was a year ago. Olivia had found her mate — a wolf from a southern pack — and left within days. She'd hugged Sera so tightly it hurt, promised to write, and then she was gone. No letters came. Sera didn't blame her. Mates came first. Everyone knew that.

Before she left, Olivia had taught Sera things no one else bothered to. Which herbs grew behind the kitchen garden wall and what they were good for. That yarrow stopped bleeding, that chamomile eased sleep, that the small white flowers near the creek were wild garlic, not poison. Practical knowledge, given freely, as if Sera were worth teaching.

She opened to the story she liked best. A girl locked in a tower, visited by birds who brought her seeds. She grew a garden on the windowsill and eventually the vines grew strong enough to climb down.

It was a stupid story. Sera liked it anyway.

She was nineteen, though no one would guess it by looking at her. Her wrists were thin enough to circle with a thumb and finger. Her collarbones jutted sharp beneath her shirt. The face that looked back from the rare surface of still water was narrow, hollow-cheeked, with dark eyes too large for the rest of her features. She looked fifteen. Maybe sixteen on a good day.

The Bloodthorn Pack had never formally accepted her. No initiation, no mind-link, no place in the hierarchy — or rather, a place so far below the bottom it didn't have a name. She cooked, cleaned, hauled firewood, scrubbed floors. She ate whatever was left after the ranked wolves finished. Some days that was cold soup. Some days it was nothing.

She had no wolf.

Other shifters talked about their wolves the way they talked about their own heartbeat — something constant, interior, alive. A presence. A voice. A pull toward the moon.

Sera had none of it. No voice. No pull. No presence lurking beneath her skin, waiting to surface. Just silence where something should have been. She'd never felt even a flicker — not during her first shift window at fourteen, not during full moons, not during the moments of fear or anger that supposedly woke dormant wolves. Nothing. Ever.

She'd stopped wondering about it years ago. Some wolves were late bloomers, people said. But no one bloomed this late. She was simply empty. A shifter without the shift. A body in a pack that wasn't hers.

A knock came at the trapdoor. Three sharp raps.

"Sera. Medical room. Now."

She closed the book and tucked it back into the crate. Monthly checkup. She'd lost track of the date again.

The medical room was in the basement, cool and bright with fluorescent lights that buzzed. Luna Odessa waited beside a metal table, her dark hair pulled into a low knot, her expression pleasant and blank. A tray sat ready: cotton swab, small blade, glass vial.

"Sit down, dear." Odessa's voice was warm the way a painted fire was warm.

Sera sat. Extended her left arm without being asked. She knew the routine.

Odessa swabbed the inside of her forearm and drew the blade across — a short, shallow cut, precise as a signature. Blood welled up, dark red. Odessa held the vial beneath it and let it fill. One vial. Same as always.

"Good." Odessa pressed a cotton pad to the cut and held it there. "Any dizziness this month? Headaches?"

"No, Luna."

"Eating well?"

Sera almost laughed. "Yes, Luna."

"Good girl." Odessa removed the pad. The cut had already closed — a thin pink line that would fade by morning. Sera healed fast. Faster than made sense for someone with no wolf. She'd noticed this but had no framework to question it. It was just another odd thing about her body, like the way her eyes sometimes caught light strangely in the dark.

Odessa labeled the vial and tucked it into a small case beside two others from previous months. "You may go."

Sera climbed back to the attic. The light through the window had shifted, turning gold. She sat on her blankets, pulled her knees to her chest, and stared at the dust motes floating in the beam.

Footsteps on the stairs. Heavier than the servant who'd fetched her. She tensed.

Remy appeared at the trapdoor, ducking his head to fit through. He was tall for seventeen, broad-shouldered, with the easy confidence of someone who'd never been told no. The young Alpha. Victor's nephew.

He tossed something at her. She caught it — a bread roll, still warm.

"You look like a skeleton," he said. "Eat."

"Thank you," Sera said quietly.

Remy shoved his hands in his pockets. For a moment he just stood there, looking at the low ceiling, the bare floor, the crate of her belongings. Something flickered across his face. Then it was gone.

"Don't tell anyone I was up here." His voice had already shifted — harder, careless. The version of himself he wore downstairs. "Last thing I need is people thinking I'm feeding strays."

He left without waiting for a response.

Sera bit into the bread. It was soft, warm, faintly sweet. She ate it slowly, making it last, the way Olivia had taught her — small bites, chew thoroughly, trick the stomach into thinking there was more.

Outside the cracked window, the sky was darkening. Somewhere beyond the tree line, beyond the mountains she'd never crossed, a car would soon be pointed in this direction. An Alpha she'd never heard of, coming for a bride she'd never met.