The smell of copper always lingered in the lower levels of the Lunar Palace, but tonight, it was thick enough to taste.
Lyra kept her chin pressed against her chest, her fingers gripping the handles of the heavy wooden scrub bucket until her knuckles turned white.
She timed her breaths to the rhythmic slosh of the water.
In, out.
Heads down, eyes on the floor.
It was the first rule her mother had beaten into her the day they were brought into the royal household as servants.
“To a pureblood wolf, a human is a shadow,” her mother had whispered.
“Be invisible, Lyra.
Shadows don’t get slaughtered.” But tonight, the palace felt less like a royal court and more like a cage waiting for a spark.
The old King was dying upstairs, his life leaking away syllable by syllable, and down here, the air hummed with the brutal, restless energy of his heirs.
The triplet princes didn’t walk the halls; they stalked them.
A sudden, heavy thud from the end of the corridor made Lyra freeze.
It wasn’t the sound of a door closing.
It was the sound of a body hitting the floor.
“Please,” a voice gasped, ragged and wet.
“Please, Your Highness…
I didn’t know—” “You knew enough to carry the letter to the southern border,” a smooth, chillingly calm voice cut through the dark.
Prince Jaxon.
The eldest by three minutes, and the mind behind the family’s cruelty.
He didn’t raise his voice; he didn’t need to.
His tone carried the precise weight of a guillotine.
Lyra’s heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird.
She shouldn’t look.
She should turn the bucket around, walk back toward the kitchens, and pretend she was deaf.
But her feet wouldn’t move.
The primal, human instinct to locate the predator kept her eyes glued to the shadow of the pillar ahead.
“The Council won’t protect a traitor, Vance,” a second voice growled.
This one was deeper, rougher, vibrating with an unsettling edge of pure amusement.
Prince Cassian.
“In fact, they paid for the silver we’re about to use.” Through the narrow gap between the marble pillars, Lyra saw them.
The three princes stood in a semi-circle around a man groveling on the floor.
Even in the dim torchlight, they were terrifyingly identical—tall, broad-shouldered, with sharp, aristocratic features and eyes that gleamed with a faint, predatory amber in the dark.
But their postures gave them away.
Jaxon stood perfectly still, his hands folded behind his back, watching the scene with the detached curiosity of a scientist studying an insect.
Cassian was leaning against the wall, twirling a long, serrated silver dagger between his fingers, a lazy smirk tugging at his lips.
And then there was Ryker.
The youngest triplet, the commander of the vanguard, didn’t speak.
He didn’t need to.
He stepped forward, the heavy soles of his combat boots clicking sharply against the stone.
He grabbed the kneeling man by his hair, forcing his head back with terrifying ease.
“Wait—” the man choked out.
Ryker didn’t wait.
With a swift, practiced motion, he brought a silver blade across the man’s throat.
There was no grand speech.
No dramatic declaration of justice.
Just the sickening, wet slice of steel through flesh, followed by the heavy, choking sound of a man drowning in his own blood.
Lyra gasped.
It was barely a sound—a tiny, sharp intake of air—but in the dead silence of the corridor, it sounded like a thunderclap.
Cassian’s dagger stopped spinning.
Jaxon’s eyes instantly shifted toward her pillar.
Ryker let the dead man’s head drop with a hollow thud, his gaze snapping directly to the shadow where Lyra stood.
“We have a mouse,” Cassian murmured, his smirk widening into something genuinely monstrous.
Lyra didn’t think.
She dropped the bucket, the soapy water splashing across her leather shoes, and she ran.
She bolted down the corridor, her breath tearing through her throat, her lungs burning.
The servant’s quarters were three levels up, past the heavy iron grates.
If she could just reach the crowded hall, if she could just disappear among the dozens of other humans— A heavy hand clamped around her upper arm, stopping her so violently her feet left the floor.
She was spun around and slammed hard against the stone wall.
The impact knocked the wind from her lungs, leaving her gasping.
Ryker stood over her, his massive frame completely blocking out the light.
He didn’t look angry; he looked bored, like an apex predator that had caught a rabbit without even trying.
The scent of blood and metallic silver rolled off him, suffocating her.
“A human,” Ryker reported, his voice low and gravelly, not looking back as his brothers approached.
His grip on her arm was like an iron vice, turning her skin white.
“One of the kitchen staff.” Jaxon stepped into view, his amber eyes scanning Lyra from head to toe with cold precision.
“Did she see it?” “She’s trembling enough to break her own bones,” Cassian chuckled, stepping up beside Jaxon, his bloody dagger still loose in his grip.
“She definitely saw it.
What do we do, Jax?
The palace is already crawling with Council spies.
If the human servants start whispering that we’re executing ministers before the King is even dead, it gets messy.” “Kill her,” Ryker said simply, his fingers tightening on her arm.
“It’s cleaner.” “No—please,” Lyra managed to choke out, her voice trembling violently.
She hated how weak she sounded, but the sheer gravity of their alpha aura was pressing down on her chest, making it hard to breathe.
“I didn’t see anything.
I swear.
I was just cleaning.” Jaxon tilted his head, stepping closer.
He reached out, his long fingers catching her chin, forcing her face upward.
His touch was freezing.
“You’re a terrible liar, little mouse.
Your heart is hitting your ribs so hard I can hear the rhythm from here.” He leaned in, his nose brushing against the skin of her neck, inhaling deeply to catch her scent—to taste her terror.
But the moment Jaxon’s skin brushed the side of her throat, something shifted.
A violent, electric shock snapped through the air.
Lyra gasped as a sudden, blinding heat flared beneath her skin, radiating outward from where Jaxon touched her.
It wasn’t the heat of fear; it was an ancient, foreign power that roared to life in her blood, making her vision blur.
Jaxon ripped his hand away as if he’d been burned, his pupils instantly dilating until his eyes were almost entirely black.
He staggered back a step, a low, defensive growl tearing from his chest.
“What the hell was that?” Ryker barked, but before he could pull Lyra away, his own grip on her arm suddenly ignited with the same terrifying heat.
He recoiled, his hand dropping from her sleeve as a sharp, feral gasp escaped his lips.
Cassian’s smirk vanished entirely.
He stepped forward, his eyes wild as he stared at Lyra, his chest heaving as if he were running out of air.
“The scent…
Jax, tell me you don’t smell that.” The air in the corridor grew thick, heavy with the suffocating, sweet scent of midnight flora and winter frost—a scent that was tearing through the room, forcing all three alpha princes to their knees.
Lyra slumped against the wall, clutching her burning arm, staring at the three terrifying men who were suddenly looking at her as if she held their souls in her hands.
“Impossible,” Jaxon whispered, his voice trembling for the first time in his life.
He stared at her, his fangs extending, his body shaking under the weight of an ancient magic.
“She’s a human.
A human cannot be a mate.” “But the bond…” Cassian choked out, his eyes locked on Lyra with a terrifying, sudden hunger.
“The bond just chose her.”