The doctor came an hour later. An older man with careful hands and reading glasses. He cleaned the lash wounds with something that burned and stitched the deepest one with thin black thread. I sat on the edge of the bed and gripped the sheets and stared at the far wall.
“Whoever did this used a leather belt with a metal buckle.” The doctor’s voice was tight with disapproval. “The second strike caught the edge of your shoulder blade. Another inch and it would have cracked the bone.”
Grayson was lying on the bed behind me, eyes closed, performing sleep. But I felt his breathing change when the doctor described the wounds. A small hitch. A held breath.
“She brought it on herself,” Grayson said. His voice was flat. His breathing hadn’t steadied.
The doctor glanced at him a quick, careful glance that said he’d been around the royal family long enough to know when to keep his mouth shut. He finished bandaging my back in silence, packed his kit, and left.
The room was quiet. The ghost-wolf’s pale light pulsed at the foot of the bed. Outside the windows, the last edge of sunset bled across the sky.
We didn’t speak for three days.
Grayson stayed on his side of the bed. I stayed on mine. Meals arrived and were eaten in silence. I changed his clothes without meeting his eyes. He submitted to the massage without comment. The ghost-wolf watched us both with its pale, flickering gaze and occasionally made a low sound in its throat that could have been concern.
The wounds healed faster than they should have. By the third morning, the stitches were pulling at skin that had already closed underneath.
My wolf hummed – pleased, restless, straining at the walls.
On the fourth day, a servant knocked.
“Luna Princess. Your training schedule begins today. Lady Ophelia is expecting you at the grounds.”
I pulled on the training clothes they’d left outside the door fitted black pants, a sleeveless top, boots that actually fit. I braided my hair back and looked at Grayson.
He didn’t open his eyes. “Don’t start anything you can’t finish.”
I walked out.
Ophelia was waiting at the training grounds with six of her followers arranged behind her. She wore a smile that didn’t reach her eyes and a look that said she’d been planning this for days.
I squared my shoulders. Whatever she had in store, I’d handle it.
The training grounds smelled like sweat and trampled grass and iron. I stood at the edge of the field in the fitted black pants and sleeveless top they’d issued me, my hair braided tight, my boots laced to the ankle. The lash wounds on my back pulled when I rolled my shoulders, but the pain had shrunk to a dull hum underneath everything else.
I knew it was rigged the moment they handed me the training weights.
The vest was heavier than the ones the other trainees wore – I could tell by the way they shrugged theirs on with one smooth movement while mine dragged my shoulders down hard enough to make my knees buckle. The ankle weights were the same. Double, maybe triple what anyone else carried.
I strapped them on without comment. Ophelia watched from the edge of the field, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised, waiting for me to quit.
I ran the laps. My lungs burned and my legs shook and the lash wounds pulled with every stride, but I kept my face blank and my pace steady.
I finished the set two seconds behind the fastest trainee and thirty seconds ahead of the slowest.
Ophelia’s smile thinned.
The obstacle course was next. Climbing walls, balance beams, rope nets. Every station was standard military training I’d watched the warriors at Shadow Creek do these drills a hundred times as a girl, memorizing the footwork, the grip patterns, the way they shifted their weight at the top of the wall. Calvin had told me a Luna didn’t need to climb walls. So I’d stopped climbing.
Now I climbed. The extra weight turned every pull-up into a fight, but my body remembered what my mind had tried to bury. My hands found the holds without thinking. My feet knew where to land. I cleared the wall on my first attempt, hit the balance beam without pausing, and scaled the rope net faster than two of Ophelia’s own followers.
By the time I finished the last station, my arms were shaking and my tunic was soaked through with sweat. But I was standing. And the whispers had started – not malicious this time. Curious.
Ophelia stepped forward. “Group combat drills. Teams of four.” She turned to the instructor – a stocky male Beta who’d been running the session. “I’ll take the new girl on my team.”
The teams formed. Ophelia, me, and two of her followers – the smirking one from the courtyard encounter and a tall girl with a jaw like a brick. We faced another group of four across the sparring circle.
The bell rang. The other team held back.
The smirking girl came at me from the left. The tall one came from the right. And they weren’t aiming for my guard or my legs. Every strike targeted my abdomen. My stomach. The place where a surrogate’s value lived.
I blocked the first hit with my forearm. The impact rattled up to my shoulder. I deflected the second with my hip and caught the tall girl’s fist before it connected with my navel. The third strike got through the smirking girl’s knee drove into my side, and a bolt of pain cracked through my ribs.
My wolf surged inside me, snarling. This wasn’t training. This was a plan. Damage the surrogate’s womb, and the problem takes care of itself.
Ophelia hung back at the edge of the sparring circle, arms loose, weight on one hip – the posture of a spectator, not a fighter. She was directing this, not participating.
I changed the angle.
The next time the tall girl lunged, I sidestepped and drove my elbow into her ribs. She staggered. The smirking girl hesitated. I used the gap to close the distance between me and Ophelia.
One strike. Controlled. My wolf lent it speed I didn’t know I had.
My claws caught the front of Ophelia’s training top and raked downward. The fabric split from collar to waist and fell away in two pieces, leaving her standing in the middle of the sparring circle in nothing but her chest wrap Her face went white.
The courtyard went dead silent.
Ophelia’s arms crossed over her chest. Her face went from white to red in a single breath.
Her followers rushed in – draping a jacket over her shoulders, hustling her toward the exit. She didn’t look at me. Her jaw was clenched so hard the muscle jumped in her cheek.
“Lucky shot,” the smirking girl muttered as she passed me. But she wouldn’t look me in the eye.
The training resumed. Nobody targeted my stomach again. The instructor – the stocky Beta who’d been running drills all morning – gave me a curt nod as I left the field. Two trainees I’d never spoken to stepped out of my path without being asked.
A girl with dark hair and a crooked nose caught my arm on the way out. “That was the best thing I’ve seen on this field in months,” she said, low enough that only I could hear. Then she let go and walked away.
I crossed the courtyard toward the palace with sweat cooling on my skin and my wolf humming behind my ribs. My back ached. My side throbbed where the knee had connected. But for the first time since I’d arrived at the Royal Territory, people looked at me and saw something other than a surrogate.
OPHELIA
Ophelia locked herself in her quarters and dismissed every servant who knocked.
She sat at her vanity and stared at the mirror. Her eyes were red. Her hands were shaking. The torn training top lay in a heap on the floor.
A Gamma’s daughter. A low-ranking nobody from a border pack had humiliated her in front of the entire training yard.
She’d underestimated the girl. She wouldn’t make that mistake twice.
Whatever Lillian was hiding under that quiet, obedient act – whatever made the Prince’s wolf lie down for her when it shattered the bones of everyone else – was stronger than Ophelia had realized.
She picked up her phone and dialed.
She wasn’t going to outfight the girl. She was going to destroy her.
Lulian’s POV
The medical wing smelled like disinfectant and cold metal. I sat on the examination table in a paper gown, my legs dangling off the edge, waiting for the weekly check that the Queen had ordered.
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