After My Alpha Humiliated Me, I Awakened as Royalty

I saw Dallas before he saw me.

He was standing near the terrace railing with Amanda on his arm, the velvet box still in his hands like a prop he couldn't put down. The evening light turned the stone pale gold. A few wolves stood in clusters nearby, holding drinks, pretending to admire the view. No one was looking at the cliff. They were all looking at each other.

I had come out here for air. The guest wing was too small, and my ribs were still pulling wrong when I breathed too deep. I needed the cold.

I should have turned around.

Dallas's head came up. His eyes locked on me across twenty feet of open terrace, and something shifted in his face—recognition, then calculation, then something that looked almost like satisfaction.

"Vivian," he called out. Carrying volume. Not shouting, but close enough that the nearby clusters went quiet. "Didn't expect to see you here."

I kept walking toward the far end of the terrace. My boots made no sound on the stone.

"I'm talking to you," Dallas said, louder now, and stepped away from the railing. Amanda came with him, her hand tucked into the crook of his elbow, her face arranged into something soft and concerned.

I stopped. Turned to face them. Said nothing.

Dallas closed the distance in four strides. Amanda stayed at his side, her cream dress catching the light, the replacement pendant gleaming at her throat. She touched it once—that small fluttering motion I'd watched her do all afternoon—and tilted her head.

"This is embarrassing," she said quietly. Not to me. To the wolves standing near enough to hear. "For everyone who knew her."

A few of them looked away. One of them—a Beta I didn't recognize—made a small sound that might have been agreement.

Dallas was close enough now that I could smell the faint trace of his wolf. It was weaker than it used to be. Thinner. Something about it felt wrong, like meat left too long in the sun.

"A wolfless reject," he said, his voice pitched for the audience, "at a royal Summit. What exactly are you claiming, Vivian? Charity?"

I looked at him for a long moment. Then I moved to step past.

Amanda's hand shot out and caught my wrist.

I stopped. Her fingers were cold. Her grip was tight enough that I felt my pulse against her palm.

"Where do you think you're going?" she asked. Still that soft, reasonable tone. Still looking at the others rather than at me.

I pulled back. She held on.

Dallas stepped forward and brought his boot down on my hand.

Not a kick. A deliberate placement. His full weight pressing down, the edge of his heel grinding against my knuckles where they'd hit the stone when Amanda yanked my arm. I felt something crack—not bone, but close.

The pain was clean and sharp and I swallowed it whole.

None of the nearby wolves moved. A few turned their backs. One walked away entirely, drink still in hand.

Dallas leaned his weight forward just slightly. I felt my knuckles flatten against the stone.

"You should have stayed gone," he said quietly. Just to me this time.

Then he stepped back.

I pulled my hand toward my chest. Blood welled up across two knuckles. My wrist was already starting to bruise where Amanda had gripped it.

Amanda was staring at my throat.

I saw her eyes lock on the pendant—the small silver replica I'd fashioned from the braided cord's remaining threads, the only piece of my mother I had left after Amanda dropped the original into the fire. I'd worn it under my collar all day. The chain must have slipped out when I stumbled.

Her hand moved before I could react.

She grabbed the chain and pulled. Hard. The clasp snapped. The pendant came free in her fist.

She held it up between us so I could see it clearly. The silver caught the light. For one breath I thought she might say something.

She didn't.

She turned and hurled it over the cliffside.

I watched it arc through the air and disappear into the rocks below.

Something inside me moved. Not my wolf—I had only heard her voice once, the night of the rejection, and she had been silent ever since. But something deeper. Older. A pressure building against a door I didn't know I had.

My vision went white.

Not blind. Just—white. A wash of colorless light that blotted out the terrace, the cliff, Dallas and Amanda standing in front of me. I felt my knees lock. My ribs pulled. My hand bled.

The white held for three full seconds.

Then it receded, slow as a tide going out, and I could see again.

Dallas was staring at me. His face had gone still in a way I didn't recognize.

I looked at him. I did not blink. I did not speak.

Then I turned and walked away.

Behind me I heard Amanda say something to Dallas in a voice too low to catch. He didn't answer.

I kept walking until I reached the colonnade at the far end of the terrace. My hand was still bleeding. My wrist was swelling. The place where the pendant used to rest at my throat felt cold and exposed.

I pressed my back against the stone column and closed my eyes.

Somewhere above me—I couldn't see him, but I felt it the way you feel a storm coming—the still man was watching.

I did not look up.

I counted my breaths until my vision stopped shaking. Then I pushed off the column and walked back toward the guest wing, my bleeding hand pressed against my ribs, the cold air biting at my throat where the pendant used to be.