Page 9 of The Cursed Wolf King

“She barely even looked at me when I saw her,” he continued, his tone light, as if recalling a distant memory. “Just a shadow of a woman, worn to the bone. I suppose she didn’t have much choice, though. She must’ve realized how much easier life would be without a dead weight of an oracle child dragging her down.”

I clenched my teeth, focusing on my breaths, counting each one to steady myself. I wouldn’t let him see the doubt creeping in, the splintering pain his words brought. But he noticed. He always did.

“You know what she said to me, Eve?” he whispered, leaning close, his hot, acrid breath on my neck. “She said, ‘She’s better off staying with you.’” He laughed softly, as if sharing a private joke. “And she turned to the human world. Last I heard, she was offering her saggy tits on a streetcorner near Seattle. Rumor was she tried to take her own life. Such a waste, in the end.”

Bile rose in my throat. I forced myself to stay silent. He wanted a reaction, a flicker of pain he could sink his teeth into, and I wouldn’t give him that.

As if sensing my resistance, he tightened his grip around my waist and hissed. “No one’s ever coming back for you, Eve. And the pack?” His smirk sharpened. “They keep you because they have to. Because my father has some twisted notion of your usefulness. Nothing more. You’re alone here. I’m all you’ve got, and you’remine. Don’t you forget it.”

Each word wrapped around my thoughts, suffocating, insidious. I bit down and locked the hurt away, burying it somewhere deep.

I swallowed hard, refusing to let him see how the words pierced through me, each one like a needle burrowing deep. “You don’t know anything about my mother,” I said, barely more than a whisper.

“I know if she cared, she’d have come back by now.”

He said it so matter-of-factly that my heart plummeted. Every reminder of my mother was a barb, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake the image he’d planted. The woman who had brought me to this pack so young I could barely remember, claiming it was our only chance at survival, a refuge from a world that didn’t understand us.

She’d convinced me. And back then, I’d believed her every word. Why wouldn’t I? She was all I had. At least we were together. Until we weren’t.

Grayson and Damian were the only ones who met my mother. They were my only connection to her now, the people who’d heard the promises she made for me and thedeal that sealed my fate. I remember standing by her side, gripping her hand and feeling fear pulse from her like a second heartbeat. She’d spoken with such conviction, so sure that joining the Heraclid pack was our only path to safety. She had looked me in the eye and told me this pack was home.

I’d believed her, right up until the moment she left.

I remembered the day she walked away, clear as if it were yesterday. We’d only been in the Heraclid pack for two days when she woke up and walked out of our small quarters. I’d watched her back, feeling a coldness settle in the pit of my stomach as she hadn’t said goodbye. She’dalwayssaid goodbye, whether she was leaving for an errand or for a two-day run. I told myself she’d be back, that she couldn’t possibly leave me here with strangers who barely looked at me, let alone treated me as if I were one of them.

Days turned into weeks, then months, and I’d finally understood the truth of my situation.

My mother wasn’t coming back.

I wasn’t family to the Heraclids. I was a resource handed over like a rare specimen. The pack wouldn’t accept me, and Grayson didn’t need them to—not as long as I served his purpose.

Worse than anything was the thought that Damian’s words might hold some truth. That no matter what I did, I would always be left in the dust, the cast-off my mother had made me.

Once Damian finished parading me across the city to the estate where the alpha family lived, he dropped his hand from my back and picked up his pace. I ran to keep up with him, knowing that any other response would haveconsequences. I could feel his anger growing; the bitterness he had for me was beyond understanding. He yanked me to an unused servants’ quarters, shoving me through the door.

“You’ll stay here until father’s call for dinner. I don’t want to see or hear of you around town until then.” He moved to close the door behind him.

“Damian!” I called, surprising myself.

He closed his eyes, annoyed. “What do you want?”

“I don’t get it.”

“Getwhat?”

I prayed to the Shadow Moon Goddess I wouldn’t regret this. “Ever since I came here, ever since I was promised to you, you’ve tried to undo me.”

He sneered. “I haven’t succeeded, have I?”

I blinked back my bitterness. “Butwhy?”

He moved in close, standing in front of me. I only reached the middle of his chest, and he looked down at me with disgust. “I never wanted you. I can’tstandyou. Youreekof a power-hungry, gold-digging witch wolf. My father should have swatted you down, strung you up at the first sign you wouldn’t utter the curses he demanded of you. But he didn’t. And I can’t. I must remain my father’s son. But that doesn’t mean I won’t do everything in my power so that you suffer like the undeserving street bitch you are.”

He stepped back and I didn’t have a word left in my body.

“Now shut up and wait for dearest dad to call for you.” He slammed the door and I heard the lock turn. This wasn’t the first time he’d put me in here.

I slumped against the door, the cold seeping into my bones as Damian’s words echoed in my mind. So muchhatred, and all because of his father. It had nothing to do with me. But that didn’t help my situation. It was a matter of time before he found a way to end me. I knew it. It wasn’t a question of if, but when.

---