The palace gates were never meant for people like me.

I pressed my back against the wet stone, rain sliding down my neck like cold fingers. The bottle of antibiotics was wrapped in my jacket, pressed tight against my ribs. Thirty dollars. That was all I had left after the clinic laughed in my face.

“Make her comfortable,” the doctor had said.

Lina had two days. Maybe less.

Blackwood Palace rose in front of me like something that had grown out of the earth instead of being built. Glass and bone and old power. The Alpha King’s home. The monster every human mother used to scare their children into obedience.

Humans weren’t allowed past the outer wall.

Tonight I didn’t care.

The servant entrance on the west side was exactly where the old market woman said it would be. The lock was rusted. My hands shook so hard I almost dropped the thin piece of metal I used as a pick. Third try. It gave.

Warm air hit me the second I stepped inside. Dry. Clean. The smell of iron and expensive soap and something deeper — wild, like snow and blood. Power. I had never smelled anything like it.

Moonlight cut through the tall windows and laid silver stripes across the marble. I could see my own reflection in the floor. Small. Human. Out of place.

Footsteps.

I ducked behind a statue of a howling wolf. Two guards passed, armor soft against their bodies, voices low.

“…Alpha’s been worse,” one muttered. “No sleep again. Snapped at the Beta yesterday.”

“Killed a man last week for looking at him too long,” the other answered.

I held my breath until their steps faded. My legs were trembling. This was suicide. Lina would hate me for it.

Then I saw her face in my mind — lips cracked, eyes glassy, whispering my name like she was already halfway gone.

I ran.

The infirmary was exactly where the old woman said. Third door past the garden corridor. Unlocked. Of course it was. Who would be stupid enough to steal from the Alpha King?

Me.

Shelves rose from floor to ceiling. Bottles with names I couldn’t pronounce. Jars of herbs. Machines that hummed like they were alive. I grabbed two more bottles — painkillers, fever reducers — and shoved them into my jacket with the first one.

“Got it,” I whispered. “Got it, Lina—”

“Drop it.”

The voice was ice. It cut through the room and froze every muscle in my body.

I turned slowly.

He stood in the doorway, blocking the only exit. Tall. Too tall. Rain still clung to his black coat and dripped onto the perfect floor. Dark hair wet and pushed back from his face. A thin scar cut through his left eyebrow and another traced his jaw.

But it was his eyes that stopped my heart.

Gold. Not human gold. Wolf gold. Glowing in the dim light like something burning behind them.

King Darius Blackwood.

Up close he looked worse than the stories. Exhausted. Dangerous. Like he hadn’t slept in years and had stopped caring what that did to the people around him.

He wasn’t looking at the bottles in my hands.

He was looking at me like I was already dead.

“Thief,” he said. One word. A verdict.

My mouth went dry. I did the only thing I could. I lied.

“I’m sorry, my lord. My sister is sick. I didn’t—”

“Save it.”

He stepped inside. The door clicked shut behind him, soft and final. The room shrank. I could smell him now — rain and cold metal and something wild underneath that made the hair on my arms rise.

He walked toward me slowly, the way a predator walks when it already knows the prey can’t run. He took the bottles from my hands. His fingers brushed mine. Freezing. He set them on the counter without looking at them.

Then he reached for my wrist.

I jerked back. “Don’t touch me—”

His hand closed around mine like iron. “You broke into my home. You stole from my stores. Do you know the punishment for that, human?”

I shook my head. Tears burned behind my eyes but I refused to let them fall. Not in front of him.

“Please. She’s only twelve. She has a fever and the clinic said—”

Something flickered in those gold eyes. Not pity. Something older. Exhaustion, maybe. Or recognition of a kind of desperation he understood too well.

“Two options,” he said. His voice never rose. “Death. Right now. Or something else.”

My breath caught. “What else?”

“One hundred years.”

I laughed. It came out broken. “What?”

“Servitude. To me. For one hundred years. You will be my servant. My shadow. You will not leave. You will not speak unless spoken to. You will obey. You will sleep when I sleep. You will eat when I allow it. One hundred years… and then you are free.”

“Or I die tonight,” I finished. My voice barely worked.

He nodded once. “Choose.”