Amara’s POV
I made it halfway back through the moonlit forest before I heard the engine.
It was not the low, quiet purr of the black sedan that usually prowled the clan grounds.
It was closer, sharper, and it was coming up the rough track that ran behind the row of blood servant quarters on our side of the territory.
I cut off the path.
I took the shortcut through the ancient oaks and I came up along the back of our dwelling, breathing hard.
The black SUV was already parked out front.
I stopped at the corner of the shabby quarters.
The driver’s door was shut.
The windows were tinted dark.
No one was in the vehicle.
That meant he was already inside my home, and he had walked in without announcing himself, because of course he had.
A pureblood prince needed no invitation in his own domain.
I climbed the weathered steps.
The door had been left open a crack.
I pushed it the rest of the way with my fingertips and I stepped in.
Killian stood in the middle of my front room.
He looked wrong there.
That was the first thing that hit me.
A man in a dark grey three-piece suit tailored to perfection, standing in quarters where the threadbare couch doubled as my bed and the moth-eaten blanket still lay pooled on the cushions from this morning.
His shoes were polished obsidian.
The shoulders of his jacket were cut with a precision that cost more than our dwelling was worth.
He was looking at the little wooden table with casual indifference.
The empty wooden table.
He turned his head when I came in, those green eyes catching mine with predatory focus.
I shut the door behind me.
I did not remove my worn cloak.
“You’re in my home.”
“Your blood servant quarters.”
“Don’t.”
He tilted his head a little.
Not quite a smile.
Not quite anything human.
“I was told,” he said, his tone lacking its usual razor-sharp hostility, “that you threatened a member of my household staff at the manor gates this afternoon.”
“I asked to see you.”
“Aggressively.”
“Firmly.”
His mouth moved.
Not a smile.
Just a small acknowledgement that I had hit the word he would have chosen.
“You were received by a member of my inner circle during a meeting with another clan prince,” he said.
“You made a scene at the entrance.
Lydia was in the great hall.
She heard you.
She had a great deal to say about it, in front of her uncle.”
I folded my arms across my chest, defensive and glaring.
“How tragic for you.”
“She wants you punished.”
“Is that what this is?
Your grand performance to appease her?”
He did not answer.
He moved, slowly, and he looked around the front room.
At the couch with the blanket.
At the stack of bloodline genealogy books I had left on the table.
At the cupboard door I had left hanging open when I searched frantically for any trace of value.
His eyes went over all of it without changing expression.
“Where is it,” I demanded.
“Where is what.”
“That absurdly expensive gown you had delivered.”
He looked back at me.
“It was in the wardrobe yesterday,” I said, biting out the words.
“It was on the table this morning.
It was gone by the time I got back from the human district.
Lydia was here last night during the blood moon gathering.
You tell me.”
“Beta Nigel collected it.”
I went still.
“What.”
“This morning.
While you were in the human settlement looking for work,” he clarified evenly.
“I had it sent out for proper cleaning and enchantment renewal.
It will be returned this afternoon.”
“You didn’t say.”
“No.”
“You let me walk across the territory thinking she’d broken in and stolen it.”
“I didn’t know where you’d walked.”
“You could have left word.”
“I don’t leave word with blood servants.”
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes for a second.
I breathed in.
I breathed out.
When I dropped my hands, he was still watching me with that unreadable expression.
“Is that it,” I said.
“Is that why you’re here.
To tell me Beta Nigel has my gown.”
“I’m here,” he said, “because Lydia wants me to discipline your disrespect.”
“Then discipline me.”
“No.”
The word was flat.
Unexpectedly lenient.
I did not know what to do with it.
I stood with my arms crossed and my cloak still on, and I looked at him, completely baffled.
I could not find the shape of the man who had brutally used his psychic pressure to force me into submission in the rose garden last night.
The contradiction of it made my head spin.
He moved again.
He went as far as the little wooden table and he put two fingers on the edge of it.
Then he looked at the genealogy texts.
“You’re studying bloodlines.”
“Researching my heritage.”
“You said at the manor you’d discovered your lineage.”
“I have enough proof.
I know what I am.”
“Good.”
I laughed, a short, bitter sound.
“Good?”
“You don’t need to pretend anymore.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
He nodded, very slightly.
He kept looking at the ancient texts.
“I secured employment today,” I said, lifting my chin.
“Blood processing facility.
Out by the human settlement border.
The compensation is barely anything, but I start tomorrow before dawn.”
His fingers stopped moving on the edge of the table.
He observed the cramped, worn-down space around us.
“Doing what.”
“Vials.
Sorting.
Preparing for clan deliveries.”
“Why.”
“Because we feed,” I said fiercely.
“Because the heating enchantments don’t work.
Because I am getting out of this extreme servitude.
Pick one.”
He did not answer.
He looked around the quarters one last time.
The low ceiling.
The damp stain in the corner.
The desperate reality of my existence.
“If anyone asks why I’m here today,” he said simply, “say you’re on probation.”
“Probation.”
“For the incident with my housekeeper.
For anything else that’s been said.
You’re on probation.”
I opened my mouth.
I closed it.
He stepped past me to the door.
He paused with his hand on the frame.
He did not turn around.
“Get some rest,” he said.
Then he was gone.
The SUV started.
The tires crunched on the gravel.
The sound moved away down the path, leaving me alone in the dimming quarters.
I was utterly confused.
He had crushed me with psychic force mere hours ago, yet now, he was simply letting it go.
I stood where I was for a long time.
Then I made myself move.
I went to bed early, laying out my work clothes at the foot of the couch.
Pre-dawn came like a slap.
The alarm shrilled.
I shut it off quickly.
Her breathing stayed slow and even through the thin wall.
She was still deep in sleep.
Good.
I dressed in the dark.
I bound my hair back.
I let myself out and pulled the door shut behind me with both hands so the latch would not wake her.
The walk to the blood processing facility was cold and long and very dark.
The compound was already half lit when I arrived.
Loading bay doors stood open.
A string of enchanted lights ran along the overhang, and the breath of the workers moving underneath them came out in quick white clouds.
Gregory was waiting at the office door with a clipboard under his arm.
“You made it.”
“Morning.”
“Come on, come on.
I’ll show you the operation.”
He walked me into the belly of the facility.
Stone floor.
High metal shelving.
Rows and rows of blood vials wrapped in preservation cloth, stacked two deep, waiting.
He pointed.
“These are all for local clan delivery today.
You’re going to unwrap them.
You’re going to sort them.
You’re going to organize by blood type and potency.
Hundreds of them.
Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Blade.”
He handed me a silver knife.
His fingers brushed the back of my hand, lingering just a fraction too long.
“Careful with that edge.”
“I will be.”
He watched me handle the first batch.
I cut the preservation cloth.
I peeled it back.
I started sorting the vials by their crimson gradients.
He stepped in close behind me and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Like that,” he said.
“Just like that.
You’re a natural.”
His palm was warm through my thin shirt.
It stayed there, heavy and entirely inappropriate.
A wave of deep discomfort washed over me, my instincts screaming at the uninvited proximity.
I shrugged forward, small, pretending I just needed the reach, and stepped sideways to the next rack.
“I’ve got it,” I said lightly, acting unfazed and not turning around, refusing to jeopardize this desperately needed income.
“I’m getting the hang of it.”
“Holler if you need me.”
“I will.”
He went.
I worked.
The preservation cloth came off in long strips.
The vials came down in careful rows.
After several hours of work, my shoulders started to burn with a vengeance.
The cold of the stone came up through the soles of my shoes and settled in the arches of my feet.
He came back to check on my progress excessively.
Each time I heard him coming.
Each time I moved to the far side of the rack before he got there, keeping my hands full, and I answered him over my shoulder without turning, silently enduring the boundary violations to keep my position safe.
By the time my shift neared its end, I had processed dozens of blood shipments.
My back ached in a long hot line from my hips to my shoulders.
Both palms were raw and blistered from the relentless friction of the rough cloth and the silver blade.
I straightened up, pressing the flat of my hand against the small of my back.
I looked down at my blistering hands, then rolled my aching shoulders.
Exhaustion weighed heavy in my bones, but a strange, hard-won sense of accomplishment burned in my chest.
I had survived the first day.
I gripped the silver knife, bracing myself for another early morning of grueling labor, ready to endure whatever it took to buy our way out of this desperate servitude.