Chapter 10 - Pride

𝐙𝐀𝐘𝐍𝐄

"Looks like someone out-early-birded you, Zayne," Rafayel said, his golden eyes gleaming with amusement.

The words landed like a slap. I adjusted my glasses, keeping my expression neutral, but that cold thing beneath my ribs twisted deeper. She had bested me without even trying, without acknowledging the achievement, and now she was walking past me like I was nothing more than an obstacle in her path.

My hand shot out and caught her wrist before I'd fully decided to move.

She froze, her mismatched eyes widening as I pulled her around to face me. The wolf surged to his feet with a snarl, but I ignored him, focusing entirely on the girl in front of me.

"You seem to have forgotten your place," I said, my voice low and controlled. "You are not a guest here. You are not a princess. You are a thief, a liar, and a criminal who stole something divine." I tightened my grip just enough to make her wince. "I know what you're doing. You think if you play the obedient servant, if you clean and scrub and make yourself useful, we'll soften. That we'll start to see you as something other than what you are."

Her breathing quickened, her pulse hammering beneath my fingers where I held her wrist.

"You think we're fools," I continued, leaning in closer until I could see the individual flecks of green and blue in her eyes. "That you can weasel your way out of this by pretending to be compliant. But I see through it. I see through you."

I let my aura press outward, a deliberate weight that made the air around us grow heavy and suffocating. Her knees buckled slightly, and I felt a grim satisfaction in watching her struggle to stay upright under the pressure of my presence.

"Next time," I said, my voice barely above a whisper, "you will not look at me like that. You will not walk past me as if I am beneath your notice. Do you understand?"

She tried to nod, her face pale, her lips parted as she gasped for air under the crushing weight of my power.

And then something flickered.

A girl with green eyes, wide and frightened, staring up at me through a pair of oversized glasses. Her hair was shorter, her face rounder with youth, but those eyes—those eyes were the same. She was reaching for something, her small hand trembling, and I heard my own voice, younger and uncertain, saying something I couldn't quite make out.

The image snapped away as quickly as it had come.

I released her wrist like it had burned me, stumbling back a step. She collapsed against the wall, gasping, the wolf immediately at her side, growling low and protective. My hands were shaking, and I clenched them into fists to hide it.

"Get back to work," I said, my voice rougher than I intended. Then I turned and walked out of the room before anyone could see the confusion tearing through my carefully constructed composure.

—

𝐀𝐔𝐑𝐎𝐑𝐀

I still shook from my brush with Zayne but I kept cutting the vegetables. They were all waiting at the table for breakfast. I should have been nothing but a puddle after the hectic work I had done, scrubbing floors and polishing windows for hours before dawn, but my hands were steady on the knife and my legs held firm beneath me.

The Core had done something to me.

I'd noticed it first when I was cleaning the grand hall, lifting furniture that should have required two people to move. My bones felt different now, like they were forged from metal but somehow lighter, as if the Core had reinforced my entire skeleton without adding weight. My skin was tougher too—I'd scraped my knuckles against rough stone while scrubbing the floors, expecting blood, but found only faint red marks that faded within minutes. My body refused to ache from exertion the way it used to, refused to buckle under exhaustion even after hours of labor without rest.

It should have terrified me. Instead, I felt a strange sense of gratitude. If I was going to survive whatever they had planned for me, I would need every advantage the Core could give.

The wolf sat at my feet, watching me work with those intelligent green eyes. I'd set aside a plate of raw meat for him earlier, good cuts that any animal should have devoured immediately, but he'd just sniffed at it and turned away. He did the same thing now when I placed it in front of him again, his nose wrinkling in what looked like distaste.

"You're picky for a stray," I thought at him, then paused when I remembered the cheese I'd found in the cold storage. On a whim, I cut a small piece and offered it to him.

He took it immediately, his tail giving a single wag of approval.

I almost laughed. Of all the things for a wolf to prefer—cheese. He was kinda smelly too, that wild animal scent clinging to his fur despite how much I'd tried to brush him clean last night, but there was something sweet about him. Something loyal and protective that reminded me of better days.

"Cheese," I said silently, testing the name in my mind. "I'll call you Cheese."

He looked up at me like he understood, and I could have sworn he approved.

I returned to the vegetables, letting the familiar rhythm of chopping settle over me like a blanket. Alpha Darren had taught me to cook when I was young, back when he still smiled and called me his little shadow. He'd shown me how to season meat, how to layer flavors, how to make even simple ingredients sing. Cooking had been one of the few things that brought me peace in those early years, and it still did now, even with chains on my wrists and death hanging over my head.

I tried not to think about the fact that I could be dead in a month. That the scholars were working right now to find a way to extract the Core from my chest, and when they did, it would kill me. I tried not to think about how Sonya's lies had sealed my fate, or how the Lycans looked at me like I was something vile that needed to be eradicated.

I had lived in fear for too long. It had gotten exhausting.

So instead, I focused on the snap of the knife through carrots, the sizzle of onions hitting hot oil, the way Cheese settled against my leg like he belonged there. These small moments were all I had left, and I would take them for as long as I could.

I was plating the eggs when I heard the door to the kitchen swing open. I didn't need to turn around to know who it was—Sonya's footsteps had a particular cadence, deliberately light, that it was unnerving

"Well, well," she said, her voice dripping with false sweetness. "Look at you, playing house servant like you were born to it."