LUCY
"Here, Your Highness…"
The royal guard's voice is low, deferential, and laced with a caution that grits against my nerves like sand under a fingernail. He stops ahead of me, gesturing with a gloved hand toward the towering double doors of polished oak, not quite meeting my eyes.
I know exactly what lies behind them. My chest tightens with a suffocating weight before I can even draw my next breath, my fingers curling instinctively into the folds of my cloak.
This wing of the Alpha's residence houses the sun-drenched tea room, which branches directly into my father's private study, and further back, into the expansive northern library holds. It is, basically, the sanctuary of my childhood.
A sudden, violent wave of nostalgia rises up in my throat, thick and uninvited, threatening to close it entirely.
Six years old, barefoot, sliding across these same floorboards in my socks while my father shouted at me to slow down before I split my skull open.
