Chapter 3

Kimberley Oliver POV:

Sadie's thick fingers gripped my shoulder, her heavy nails digging through the torn fabric of my tunic.

No doubt she expected a sobbing, paralyzed girl who would collapse into the dirt.

The moment her weight shifted forward, my body coiled like a steel spring.

I didn't pull away. I stepped into her reach, seized her thick wrist with my left hand, and drove the heel of my right palm directly upward into the back of her extended elbow.

Crack.

The dry, sickening snap of the joint breaking echoed louder than the torchlight crackling against the stone.

Sadie threw her head back, letting out a shriek so raw it rattled the window panes. Her massive bulk buckled under the shock of the compound fracture, her twisted arm dangling uselessly as she collapsed toward the floorboards.

Beside her, Ruby's sneer vanished into stunned shock, but her brawler instincts kicked in. She raised a thick hemp noose, aiming to whip it around my throat.

"You wolfless rat—!"

I didn't let her finish the curse.

Before Sadie even hit the stones, I pivoted on my left heel, driving a front kick with the steel-toed tip of my worn leather boot straight into the lateral side of Ruby's right kneecap.

A wet popping sound tore through the air.

"Impossible!" Martha shrieked from the doorway, her manicured fingers clawing at her throat. "She has no beast! How can she move like that?"

Ruby's leg folded sideways at an impossible angle. She crashed onto one knee with a choked gasp of agony.

I grabbed a handful of her greasy hair, yanked her head down, and brought my knee smashing up into the center of her face.

Her nose exploded in a spray of dark blood.

Ruby's eyes rolled back into her skull, and she dropped face-first onto the stones beside Sadie, completely unconscious.

The room fell dead silent.

The guards stood frozen in the doorway, their hands hovering over the hilts of their iron broadswords, their eyes wide with sheer terror. None of them dared take a step across the threshold.

I rose to my full height, rolling my shoulders to work out the stiffness.

The cold, lethal pressure radiating from my stance was not the invisible dominance of an Alpha wolf—it was the pure, concentrated killing intent of an operative who had ended dozens of lives in close-quarters combat.

Gertrude stumbled backward, her heavy velvet skirt catching on the door sill. Her round face had turned the color of curdled milk.

"What... what kind of demon are you?" she stammered, raising her trembling hands to shield her flabby throat.

I walked toward her, step by deliberate step.

Each footfall was entirely soundless against the dusty stone.

"Aunt Gertrude," I whispered, my voice flat and hollow, carrying a chill that made the hair on the guards' arms stand on end. "Did you bring the entire household here at midnight just to admire your loyal servants rutting like beasts?"

"Don't... don't you dare touch me!" she squealed, pressing her back flat against the doorframe. "The Crown Prince is already entering the gates! When His Highness sees your depravity, you will be executed on the royal block!"

"The Crown Prince?" I tilted my head, letting a ghost of a smile touch my lips.

Right on cue, the synchronized, heavy thunder of iron-shod boots echoed from the paved courtyard outside, accompanied by the sharp clinking of royal cavalry plate.

"Make way for His Highness, Crown Prince Jovanni Burnett!" a herald's voice boomed through the damp night air.

A burst of feverish triumph flashed across Gertrude's sweating face. She looked at me like I was already on the execution scaffold.

"You're dead, you little monster!" she hissed under her breath, hastily rearranging her shawl to look like an abused, grieving matron.

I didn't waste a second.

The lethal aura vanished from my posture like smoke in a gale.

I dropped my center of gravity, stumbled back toward the cold stone corner, and let my knees hit the floor with a painful smack. I buried my face in my trembling hands, forcing ragged, suffocating sobs to tear from my chest as fresh tears flooded my cheeks.

Sadie, who was still conscious and clutching her ruined wrist on the floor, stared at my sudden transformation with absolute horror, as if watching a ghost put on human skin.

A tall, broad-shouldered figure stepped across the threshold, flanked by six silver-armored royal knights.

He had golden hair that caught the torchlight, an impeccably tailored crimson doublet, and amber eyes filled with supreme, unyielding arrogance.

Jovanni Burnett.

The Alpha heir to the Silvermoon throne, and the man who had treated my predecessor like dirt beneath his gilded boots for seven long years.

Behind him trotted Frances Oliver, my younger cousin from the second branch, dressed in an extravagant silk gown, her pretty face barely hiding a gloating sneer.

"Madam Gertrude," Jovanni spoke, his deep voice laced with the heavy, suffocating pressure of a royal Alpha command. "You sent word that my honor was being dragged through the mud here. Where is the filthy spectacle you promised?"