Selah’s POV
I could not sleep for the rest of that night and before the sun rose,
I stood in the gallery I had wandered through the night before, tracing the carved edge of the golden frame on the portrait of Lord Garrick’s mother with my fingers.
The wood felt cool against my skin as I studied the young, radiant woman with Garrick’s green eyes.
I was so absorbed in looking at her face that I didn’t hear the light footsteps coming up behind me until they were nearly right beside my shoulder.
I turned around quickly to see Vera standing there with a feather duster under her arm, looking surprised to see me up.
I didn’t bother reaching for any of the formal greeting signs Mira had been drilling into my head all week.
Instead, I raised my hands and mimed, with exaggerated stealth, someone tiptoeing down a hallway with their arms loaded high with stolen food, then stopped, rested my hands on my hips, and raised one eyebrow at her pointedly.
Vera’s face went through several hilarious stages of denial in under two seconds—first wide eyes, then an open mouth to protest, before she completely gave up and laughed outright, slapping a hand over her mouth.
“Oh, no!” She giggled, shaking her head as her cheeks turned bright pink.
“You saw me last night? I thought everyone was dead asleep!”
Then she leaned against the wall and shrugged her shoulders.
“Alright, fine, I admit it. I raid the kitchens on most nights. But in my defense, the cook pretends not to notice as long as I’m not too greedy about it. Half the household staff have been covering for my habit since I was old enough to reach the top of the counter anyway.”
She crossed her arms, looking at me teasingly.
“So… how much did you actually see, Lady Selah?”
I lifted my hands, signing back carefully: I SAW ENOUGH TO KNOW WHICH ROOM TO CHECK IF MY FOOD GOES MISSING.
Vera burst out laughing again, clapping her hands together.
“Hey, I would never steal from your plate! Well… unless it was those sweet honey pastries the baker makes on Thursdays. Those are fair game for anyone in this house.”
She walked up beside me, resting her hands on her hips as she stared up at the portrait of Lord Garrick’s mother.
The teasing in her voice turned to reverence.
“She was beautiful, wasn’t she?” Vera murmured, looking at the frame.
“You know… she was like you. She was mute.”
I paused, my hand freezing on the carved frame as I looked at Vera in complete shock.
She was mute too?
“It’s true,” Vera said, nodding.
“She couldn’t speak a single word. So the entire household had to learn sign language just because of her, including Uncle Garrick himself. He grew up using his hands to talk to his mother.”
Vera gestured back toward the corridor leading to the living quarters.
“Lady Mira used to be her personal handmaiden back then too. That’s why she knows so much about sign language and why she’s teaching you now. She learned it all while serving Garrick’s mother.”
A profound sense of awe rushed through me, quickly followed by sadness.
Suddenly, everything clicked into place.
All the burning questions I had carried since arriving here especially on how everyone in this mansion seemed to understand sign language, why Mira was so skilled at teaching me, and why Garrick never looked at me like I was broken just because I couldn’t speak—were answered in a single breath.
The entire household had been built around loving a woman who was just like me.
I lifted my hands, struggling to piece together a complex sentence.
I didn’t know the exact signs for half the words I needed—country, remember or time—so I used crude gestures, pointing at the painting, tapping my wrist, and mimicking a fast-passing wind to get my point across.
But thankfully, Vera caught my meaning surprisingly fast, watching my awkward movements with a knowing nod.
GARRICK’S MOTHER MUST NOT HAVE BEEN DEAD FOR TOO LONG FOR EVERYONE TO STILL REMEMBER HOW TO DO SIGN LANGUAGE, I conveyed through my fragmented gestures.
Vera chuckled, though a faint shadow crossed her eyes.
“It really wasn’t that long ago that the entire country was at war, do you know? I still remember every single part of it, to be honest. It was during that war that she died.”
A sad silence settled between us.
For some odd reason, my heart ached for Lord Garrick, imagining him losing his mother during the chaos of a war.
I raised my hands to ask more, to inquire about what happened to her and how Garrick had survived it, maybe about the war itself,
But Vera had already fallen back into her usual habit of rambling on and on about this and that, filling the air with her endless chatter, while I simply stood there nodding and miming my responses.
“You know, everyone in the servants’ wing is talking about what happened at the council meeting two days ago,” Vera said, stepping closer and dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
“Uncle Garrick really gave those old alphas a piece of his mind! I heard Alpha Thomas nearly fell over a chair trying to run out the door!”
She let out a delighted snort, adjusting the feather duster under her arm. This chapter was taken from novelping.com without permission.
“And frankly, I am so, so happy that Lady Cynthia won’t be marrying my Uncle Garrick anymore. I know I shouldn’t say it, but I don’t care! She is a nightmare, Selah. Every time she comes here, she acts as if she owns the place and treats us like dirt under her shoes.”
Vera rolled her eyes aggressively, her voice turning vindictive.
“She’s a mean, spoiled brat who thinks her father’s title makes her better than everyone else. She used to scream at the younger maids over the smallest crease in her dress. I hope her father takes her far away and keeps her there. You are a hundred times better for Uncle Garrick than she could ever be.”
As she kept talking without taking a single breath, I quickly formed my opinion about Vera.
I guessed she couldn’t be older than eighteen, three or four years younger than I was.
She talked a lot, so much that it was very exhausting just listening to her jump from one topic to another without stopping.
But despite her big mouth, she was a generally harmless person, and in a house full of scary wolves like this one, I was happy for the distraction she brought.
“You know what?” Vera declared.
She suddenly reached out, grabbed me firmly by the wrist, and started pulling me down the hall.
“We should go and steal some fresh breakfast from the kitchens before my uncle wakes up.”
I opened my mouth to pull back, raising my free hand to sign a protest, but she was already dragging me down the grand staircase before I could even begin.
“Come on, fast feet!” Vera laughed, tugging me through the lower corridors.
When we reached the basement level, Vera pushed open the doors to the main kitchen.
The room was already bursting with motion.
The air smelled of roasting meat and melted butter, fresh bread and woodsmoke.
The smoke floated like a cloud over our heads, making the kitchen even darker than it already was.
Kitchen staff and servants were moving past each other in a fast and practiced rhythm, shouting orders, carrying pots and chopping vegetables.
I stood near the entrance, slightly awed and terrified at the same time.
But unfortunately, the feeling didn’t last.
A few of the kitchen staff noticed me standing in the doorway with Vera.
Then one after another, people began turning around, their eyes fixing onto me, onto my plain dress and my long, silvery-white hair.
Then, the whispers started.
“Is that her?” One man muttered to the woman next to him.
“The one from the Blood Moon Market?”
“That’s the Oracle,” a middle-aged woman holding a basket of apples whispered.
“They say she brought down the western wall just by looking at it.”
“Keep your voice down!” an older man warned, clutching a butcher knife to his chest as he stared at me.
“Don’t look her in the eyes! Lord Garrick screamed at the entire council yesterday because of her. She’s got him under some kind of dark spell.”
“A dead guard in her room on her third day,” another voice hushed nervously.
“She’s a curse, I tell you. A curse on this whole territory.”
The whispers drifted across the warm kitchen, and I felt the weight of every single pair of eyes on my body.
I was definitely not sure I liked being stared at like this.
I would have snapped at them to stop, but for the lack of a voice.
Vera, however, didn’t seem to notice the sudden change in the room at all.
She was still completely absorbed in her own mission, stepping right up to a long wooden table covered in freshly baked breakfast trays.
“Look at these!” Vera chattered away loudly, pointing her finger at a tray of warm-looking pastries.
“Now, these apple ones are worth stealing every single time. But avoid the plum tarts today, because the baker accidentally burned the bottoms on those, and they taste like charcoal.”
She grabbed two warm, sweet rolls right off the tray while the head baker watched her in stunned silence, too afraid of looking at me to scold Vera for taking them.
I decided not to point the fear in the room out to Vera.
There was no point in ruining her cheerful mood or making things even more awkward than they already were.
It was warm and slightly half-burnt along one edge, smelling strongly of cinnamon and sugar.
“Here,” Vera said happily, nudging my shoulder.
“Eat it quick before anyone comes looking for us!”
I gave her a forced smile, took a small bite of the warm pastry, and did my best to ignore the frightened whispers around us, refusing to let them get to me.
Before long, the servants returned to their jobs, and I was left alone again.
Then, the kitchen doors suddenly opened, and Lord Garrick stepped inside.
The shift in the room was instant.
Every single cook and kitchen assistant who had been whispering about me just a second ago froze like statues in the middle of their work, dropping whatever they were holding: wooden spoons, baskets of apples, iron pots, and scrambling to bow their heads low toward the cold stone floor.
Several maids instantly sank into deep, groveling curtsies, their shoulders shaking slightly as their voices tumbled over each other in nervous, terrified greetings, tripping over their own words in their haste to show total submission.
“Milord,” one older cook muttered, keeping his face glued to the floor and his hands clasped tightly together in front of his apron.
“Welcome to the kitchens, Lord Garrick. We are deeply honored by your presence….”
Garrick walked right past the bowing crowd of staff as if they were nothing more than inanimate pieces of furniture, his broad shoulders filling the doorway and his dark eyes locked straight on me.
He stopped just a few feet away from where Vera and I stood near the prep tables.
The sheer size of him, combined with the aura of command rolling off his shoulders in waves, made the warm kitchen feel suddenly small and breathless.
“Selah,” he called out.
I swallowed the rest of the pastry, wiping my hands quickly and clumsily on the front of my dress, and looked up to meet his intense gaze.
“Good morning.” He greeted.
GOOD MORNING, LORD GARRICK.
I mimed with my fingers.
“What are you going to do with your day?” he asked, his tone dropping just a fraction of its usual iron hardness as he looked down at me, waiting patiently for my answer.
I stared back at him, picking up on his expression.
There was an invitation hiding just under the surface of his question.
He was hinting at something, making it clear without actually saying it aloud that he wanted me to spend the day by his side.
A strange, warm flutter rippled through my stomach at the thought of being with him.
Deep down, I wanted to spend the day with him too.
More than anything, I wanted to feel the safety of his presence, and I desperately wanted to ask him a million burning questions about the radiant woman with his green eyes who looked like a true Luna, the mother he had lost.
I looked up into his face, letting my silence speak for me for a moment before I answered honestly.
I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING PLANNED FOR TODAY, I signed.
But before Garrick could open his mouth to reply, Vera suddenly bounced forward out of nowhere, stepping right into the space with all the subtlety of a falling boulder.
“Oh, but she does have plans!” Vera chirped brightly, her eyes shining with enthusiasm.
She threw an arm around my shoulders and gave me an overly enthusiastic, bone-crushing squeeze.
“We are going to spend the whole day together doing fun things, right, Lady Selah?”
Then she grabbed my arm, shaking it gently back and forth, looking all jumpy and bubbly like a bird that had eaten too much sugar.
I shot her a pointed look that I hoped conveyed every ounce of my irritation.
Inside, I groaned loudly, desperately wishing that she would pick up on the obvious silent message I was broadcasting and just leave me and Garrick alone for once.
Read the room, Vera, I screamed silently in my head.
Let me talk to him!
Can’t you see we are having a moment?
Vera, completely oblivious to my desperate mental pleas and the murderous daggers being thrown her way, just grinned wider and pulled me closer to her side, patting my arm cheerfully.
“Vera, leave us.” Garrick grunted.
“Oh, relax, Uncle Garrick!” Vera teased, tossing her dark hair over her shoulder with an airy wave of her hand.
“I’m not going to kidnap your precious wolf mate. We’ll give her back by dinner time, I promise!”
And before Garrick could reach out his massive hand and physically drag her away, Vera hooked her arm firmly through mine and started tugging me hard toward the exit doors.
“Come on, Selah. We have so much to do today, and I am not letting you waste it standing around talking about boring lord business!”