"I’m so hungry," Elyra whispered, her voice cracking, dry as leaves scraping across stone. "Food... please... just a little bit of food."
The two servants near the laundry basin didn’t even pause in their wringing. Martha, the elder of the two, let out a loud, mocking snort that turned into a full-throated laugh, the sound bouncing harshly off the damp stone walls.
Beside her, Nella tossed a damp linen sheet into the wicker basket with a heavy splash of soapy water, not even glancing in Elyra’s direction, as if the plea had come from nothing more than a draft under the door.
There was no cruelty in their indifference anymore, only habit... the kind that formed after years of watching someone suffer until suffering became scenery.
"Listen to the princess," Nella sneered, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of a soap-stained forearm. "Begging like a stray hound under the butcher’s table."
"You won’t get anything until you’re done with your chores, wolfless bitch," Martha said flatly, not bothering to look up from the soapy trough. "Alpha’s orders. Luna’s orders. If we give you so much as a crust of stale rye, it’s our backs that take the strap. Now keep scrubbing. The frost is coming off the mountain draft, and those flagstones aren’t going to polish themselves."
Elyra’s fingers tightened around the coarse wooden scrubbing brush until her knuckles burned white. She was shivering, a low, deep tremor that started in her spine and radiated out to her cold knees where they pressed against the wet stone floor.
Two days. It had been two full days since she had last tasted anything thicker than water from the well bucket. She tried to remember what bread felt like in her mouth, the give of a crust, the softness underneath, but even that memory had begun to blur, replaced by nothing but the gnawing present.
She wondered, distantly, if this was how the memory of warmth felt to someone freezing to death... a thing you knew you once had, but could no longer quite believe in.
Her stomach wasn’t even cramping anymore; it had gone past the sharp stage into a dull, hollow ache that made her head feel light, as if her mind floated an inch above her skull. Sounds seemed to reach her from underwater - the slosh of the wash basin, the servants’ laughter, all of it distant and strange, as though her body had begun the slow work of leaving her behind.
All because of a shoe.
Two nights ago, the pack house had been in an uproar preparing for the midwinter gathering at the neighbouring High-Mark pack. Elowen... blessed, golden, wolf-gifted Elowen, had wanted her silver-embroidered riding slippers cleaned.
Elyra had spent four hours scraping road mud from the velvet, her fingers cramping around the brush, her eyes burning from the strain of candlelight, but in her exhaustion, she had missed a thin smudge of grease along the left heel.
When Elowen saw it, she hadn’t just complained; she had screamed. She had thrown the slipper straight into the hearth fire, watched the silk lining curl and blacken, and then broken down into furious, breathless sobs, claiming her entire evening was ruined because she had nothing to match her sapphire gown.
Elyra remembered standing frozen by the doorway, watching the fire eat the velvet, understanding even then that the punishment to come would far outweigh the crime. She remembered, too, the strange calm that settled over her in that moment, the kind that came not from courage but from resignation... the quiet certainty that nothing she said would matter.
The memory of what followed burned hotter than the cold water soaking through Elyra’s wool skirts.
Lord Veyrith had slammed his heavy palm down on the oak desk in his study so hard the inkwell rattled. "You worthless creature!" he had roared, his wolf’s aura flaring just enough to make the air in the room heavy, suffocating Elyra where she stood by the door. "Your sister carries the noble blood of this family! She is meant to impress the regional elders tonight, and you sabotage her out of petty, wolfless spite?"
Before Elyra could open her mouth to explain that it had been an accident, that she had worked until her eyes bled from candlelight, her mother, Lady Mirela, stepped forward. The slap came fast, sharp, and ringing.
Crack.
Elyra’s head snapped to the side, her cheek burning instantly. For a moment she heard nothing at all, just a high, thin ringing, as though the blow had knocked the world briefly out of focus.
She remembered thinking, absurdly, that she had not even cried... that some part of her had simply gone still, the way small animals do when they understand that fighting back will only make the ending worse.
"How dare you upset Elowen?" Mirela hissed, her voice trembling with genuine outrage. "You know how important that party was for her! The Alpha’s son from the Northern Reach was attending! Yet you made her miss the departure window with your incompetence! You stay in the cellar wing. No food until you finish every inch of the floorboards in the grand gallery, the larder corridor, and the scullery. Not a scrap!"
Now, two days later, Elowen was sleeping off the late-night feasts in her heated suite on the third floor, while Elyra remained on her knees in the dark corridor outside the main kitchen, scrubbing at stone that never seemed to come clean, no matter how raw her hands became.
She had stopped expecting fairness long ago; what she had not yet learned to stop expecting was mercy, and that unlearned hope was, perhaps, the cruelest wound of all.
Even the lowest omegas in the pack house were treated better than her. They had wolves, at least. They had strength. They could heal fast, stay warm through sheer blood-heat, and pull energy from their inner beasts when the larders ran thin. Elyra had nothing.
Without a wolf, starvation didn’t just make her weak... it actively broke her down. Her skin had gone pale, her lips chapped to bleeding, and her breath smelled of dry copper. Sometimes she caught her reflection in a puddle or a polished pan and barely recognized the hollow-eyed girl staring back, a stranger wearing her face, worn thin by hunger and neglect.
The kitchen staff knew it, too. They dumped their own back-breaking work onto her plate because they knew she couldn’t complain. If she said a word to her father or mother, Martha or the head cook would simply claim Elyra had been lazy, and Lord Veyrith would double her punishment just to teach her "submission."
She had learned long ago that silence cost less than the truth, and that lesson had settled into her bones as surely as the cold from the stone floor.
"Hey! Wolfless!"
Martha’s voice barked across the damp hallway, cutting through Elyra’s fogged brain. She threw a dirty rag down right near Elyra’s bucket, the sound sharp enough to make Elyra flinch.
"Leave the brush," Martha commanded, putting her hands on her wide hips. "Mistress says Princess Elowen is waking up. Her lace dress for the afternoon tea needs to be retrieved from the iron-press room and laid out on her bed. Right now. If there’s a single crease in the hem, I’ll tell the Lord you were resting on the stairs."
Elyra bit the inside of her lip until she tasted iron. "I haven’t finished the threshold..."
"Did I ask what you finished?" Martha stepped closer, her boots clicking loudly against the stone. "Get moving. Now."
Elyra pushed herself up off the stone, her joints protesting with a stiffness that made her wince. Her legs wobbled, cold water dripping from her hem down into her cracked leather shoes. She nodded slowly, keeping her eyes glued to the floor. "Yes, Martha."
She turned and began walking down the narrow flagstone corridor toward the back entrance of the main kitchen, each step sending a dull throb up through her knees. Her route to the iron-press room took her right past the prep tables.
As she neared the open archway, a strange stillness hit her. The usual clamor of the kitchen... the clatter of iron pots, the shouting of sub-cooks, the chopping of root vegetables, had vanished, leaving behind an unnatural quiet that made the hairs on her arms rise.
Elyra paused at the edge of the doorway, holding her breath.
The grand kitchen sat completely empty. The afternoon shift had cleared out to the main courtyard to haul in the freshly slaughtered deer for tonight’s banquet, leaving the giant room filled with heavy, lingering steam and the thick, suffocating smell of roasted meats, baked breads, and spiced gravies.
The scent alone was enough to make her vision swim, and for a moment she simply stood there, breathing it in, letting it fill the aching hollow beneath her ribs even though it offered her nothing but torment.
Elyra swallowed hard. Her throat felt like sandpaper. Her eyes flicked wildly around the vast stone room... to the tall pantry doors, the rows of copper pans hanging from the ceiling, the big wooden central table.
Right there, on the edge of the prep block, sat a heavy earthenware platter. It had been left unattended, covered only by a thin linen cloth to keep the flies away. But the cloth had slipped sideways, as if fate itself had nudged it aside.
Underneath were the carved remnants of a roasted mutton rack - fat, salted bones trailing thick bits of dark meat, glistening with rendered fat and herbs.
Elyra stopped dead in her tracks. Her pulse didn’t just race; it hammered in her ears like a war drum, drowning out every warning her mind tried to raise.
No, she thought, her hands shaking at her sides. If they catch me... if my father sees...
Her stomach gave a violent, painful twist, so hollow it felt as if her ribs were scraping against each other. Whatever fear lived in her chest, the hunger was louder, and it had been starving her patience long before it started starving her body.
Some distant, rational corner of her mind screamed caution, but it sounded so small now, so far away, drowned beneath the roaring need to simply survive one more hour.
She took one quiet step forward. Then another.
Her worn shoes made no sound on the grease-stained floor. She tiptoed across the wide chamber, her eyes darting to every darkened doorway, every window ledge, listening for the heavy footfalls of the head cook or the sharp laughter of the guards outside.
Nothing. Just the spitting of tallow candles and the low hiss of dying embers in the main hearth.
Elyra reached the table. The smell hit her so hard her knees nearly gave out. Without thinking - without letting her brain process the sheer danger of what she was doing... she grabbed a thick mutton bone with both hands and shoved it into her mouth.
She bit down frantically, tearing off a strip of cold, salty meat. She barely chewed before swallowing it whole, her throat straining as the heavy food went down. It tasted like heaven, like life itself returning to her limbs. She tore at another chunk, meat grease smearing across her chin, her cheeks, her nose, and for one brief moment she felt nothing but relief, a fierce and desperate gladness that eclipsed every ounce of fear still lodged in her chest.
She was acting like a wild animal, completely stripped of pride, but the ravenous hunger driving her proved too absolute to fight. Some faraway part of her, the part that still remembered what it meant to be someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, watched in quiet horror at what she had become. But that part was weak now, and the hunger was strong.
Take more. Save it. You won’t get anything tonight either.
With trembling, filthy fingers, Elyra snatched two more small grease-soaked bones from the platter. She pulled back the neck of her coarse woolen dress and stuffed them directly into her bodice, pressing them against her ribs, ignoring the sudden slick wetness against her skin.
She reached out to pull the linen cloth back over the platter, trying to make it look as though nothing had been touched, her hands shaking so violently she nearly knocked a pewter salt cellar off the table.
She smoothed the cloth down. Her heart beat so fast she could barely breathe, each pulse a frantic reminder of how close she stood to disaster. For one fragile heartbeat, she allowed herself to believe she might actually get away with it.
"What do you think you’re doing?" a voice sneered from the doorway.