"Privacy is often a shroud for poverty, or worse—scandal. But no matter. The Luna Training School will strip away any… inadequacies. It has a way of revealing one's true nature." Lynn remarked, delicately dabbing her mouth with a silk napkin.
"Where are Jake and Cora?" Uncle Davis asked suddenly.
He looked at the empty chairs at the far end of the table, his brow furrowed.
"I haven't seen them since last night, sir," a maid whispered, stepping forward with a fresh pot of coffee. "They weren't in their rooms this morning."
Davis grunted, clearly annoyed. "Jake is likely sleeping off another binge, but Cora is usually punctual. Send someone to find them. They need to be present for the enrollment briefing."
I kept my head down, struggling to cut a piece of sausage that felt like it was made of rubber. Every time I looked up, Lynn's eyes were on me, waiting for another sign that I was exactly what I was—a fraud.
I stared at my lap, focusing entirely on my grip. If I dropped that knife one more time, the silence would shatter, and I'd be the one in the crosshairs.
The tension was overwhelming. It was a layer of mutual hate masked by expensive perfume. They were all just waiting for Kaeren to mess up… even I could tell that much.
"Doesn't that paint a target on our backs?" Pia shuddered and I hated to agree with her.
.
After what felt like a decade, the Alpha rose, signaling the end of the ordeal. Rose squeezed my hand one last time before hurrying off to an appointment with the palace couturier. Kaeren didn't even look at me as he stood.
"I have a meeting with the Council. Stay in the suite, Waverly. Don't wander, and for the love of the Goddess, don't talk to anyone. Ring the bell if you need anything."
He strode out without waiting for a reply.
I hurried back to the room. Once the door was shut, I leaned against it, gasping for air.
"We can't do this, Pia," I whispered, sliding down to the floor. "One year? I couldn't even make it through breakfast without them smelling the 'shack rat' on me. Did you see Sloane? She looked at me like I was a bug she wanted to squash."
"But we're in the palace, Wave. Look at this room! Look at that bed! We're in the Alpha's estate. We're actually here!" Pia's voice was uncharacteristically giddy.
The giddiness was infectious. I stood up, my curiosity finally winning over my fear. If I were going to be executed in a year, I might as well see how the 'gods' lived.
I stepped out of the room with a heart, completely forgoing Kaeren's instruction.
"Well, he's not the boss of me." I hissed, scoffing.
I wandered past hallways that felt miles long, through galleries filled with statues and paintings that cost more than my entire district. The opulence was sickeningly beautiful.
I drifted toward a secluded wing where the air grew strangely heavy and still. I was looking for a balcony, somewhere to breathe without the scent of expensive perfume choking me.
I pushed open a set of heavy double doors leading into a private lounge.
"Hello?" I called out, my voice echoing off the high ceilings.
However, a smell hit me first. It was the thick, metallic tang of blood—so much of it that the air felt wet. I froze, my breath hitching in my throat.
In the center of the room, sprawled across a white fur rug that was now a horrific, matted crimson, were two bodies.
Two wolves.
I didn't know their names. I didn't know who they were to this family. All I knew was that one was a man with blonde hair, and the other was a girl whose hand was frozen in a final, reaching gesture.
The silence of the room wasn't helping. It amplified my own broken, jagged, terrified breathing.
Then, the scream tore out of me.
It wasn't the gracious, "Spanish noblewoman" voice Kaeren had tried to teach me. It was a raw, Outer District howl of pure, unadulterated horror. It echoed off the marble walls, shattering the deathly quiet of the wing.
"Run, Wave! We have to get out of here!" Pia was screaming in my head, her terror vibrating through every nerve ending in my body.
But I couldn't move. My feet were rooted to the floor as the sound of footsteps began to thunder down the hallway.
"What is it? What happened?" Sloane's voice was the first to reach the door.
She skidded to a halt beside me, her perfectly made-up face contorted into confusion that rapidly dissolved into a ghostly pallor.
Behind her came Lynn, her heels clicking like a death march until she saw the scene. She stopped dead. Her hand flew to her throat, her eyes widening until the whites showed all the way around.
"No," Lynn whispered, the word barely a breath. "No, no, no..."
Servants began to crowd the doorway, their gasps and cries creating a wall of noise behind me. One of the maids collapsed, her silver tray clattering to the floor with a deafening bang that sounded like a gunshot in the small space.
"Jake?" Sloane's voice was a high-pitched, broken reed.
She took a staggering step forward toward the blonde man on the rug. "Jake! Get up! This isn't funny!"
I backed away, my heart thudding so hard it felt like it would crack my ribs. I bumped into Lynn, who didn't even seem to notice me. She was staring at the bodies with a look of such raw, jagged grief and burgeoning fury that it terrified me more than the corpses themselves.
Crap.
The Golden Cage had just turned into a tomb.
I looked at my own hands, half-expecting to see blood on them just for being in the room. I was the stray. I was the outsider.
And in a house full of gods, a dead body wasn't just a tragedy… it was an invitation for a scapegoat.