Chapter 5 - Charlize
The blood is warm and thick against my skin. My hands are shaking, my breathing is jagged, and my eyes are wide with the kind of fear that makes your legs tremble.
They’d begged for mercy, but the execution was so swift I didn’t even have time to flinch. Now, I’m standing here, shaking like a leaf, unable to take my eyes off the grotesque sight in front of me.
Bodies lay sprawled at my feet, heads rolling across the floor so polished that it catches my reflection and the horror etched on my face.
Blood is still gushing out of the victims’ necks, and the legs of one of them are still twitching violently. That’s the part I can’t get past, the part that makes me sick in my stomach.
I feel nauseous, and my hands instinctively fly to my mouth before I mess up the floor with my vomit. I gulp, forcing it down my throat with quivering lips. The effects of the drugs are already bad enough, but this execution has somehow managed to shut down my ability to think.
My brain is blank, and I can’t move. It’s like my feet are glued to the floor. My heart is pounding against my ribs, threatening to explode out of my heaving chest. My legs suddenly feel too weak to carry my weight, and because of that, I drop to my knees with a hard thud.
It should hurt, but I’m too numb to feel the pain right now. I can smell the blood around me—the iron stench of it that fills my nostrils. Tears sting my eyes, and in my mind, this is the end. This is how I die.
The spray of blood that landed on my cheek hasn’t cooled yet, and I’m still processing what’s happening when one of the guards accidentally brushes past me. The impact knocks my left shoulder, forcing me to bend over.
My hands reflexively reach out for support and end up landing in a pool of blood. Now my palms are crimson red and soaked in the warmth of the traders’ blood.
Helpless, I slowly raise my hands, absently staring at the thick red liquid dripping and trickling down my wrists. The stink is so strong that I can almost taste it at the back of my throat.
I know what comes next. I’ve watched it happen. Three men fooled and dead within a minute of being called liars, and I am the reason they were fooled.
I think of the trader who first inspected me back at my father’s cart, the way he sniffed the air near my throat and nodded, satisfied, already counting his coin. He believed it. All three of them believed it, right up until the moment belief cost them their heads.
I feel sick about it in a way I don’t have room for right now, and hate myself a little for feeling it at all.
They were still the ones who bought me. Still the ones who dragged me here, tied and disoriented, treating me like cargo the whole way. But they didn’t know.
Whatever else they were, they weren’t liars—not about this. My family made liars of them without their consent, the same way my family made a lie out of me.
And now they’re dead for it, and I’m still here, waiting to find out if I’ll join them.
I can feel my own pulse in my throat, fast and thin, my breath coming shallow because every full one drags in more of that copper smell.
My skin is still burning from what’s left of the drugs in my blood, sweat gathering at my hairline despite how cold this room is.
I almost lost my pouch during the wash.
The memory surfaces sideways, useless and intrusive, but it won’t let go of me. Hands stripping my clothes, dragging me under freezing water, and for one heart-stopping second I felt it slip.
I felt the fabric of my skirt come away, and the small weight against my hip go with it—gone, swept toward the drain with everything else they were rinsing off me.
I lunged for it before I even decided to, caught it half-submerged, fingers numb, and shoved it into the folds of the new tunic before anyone thought to look closely at what a slave girl was clutching so desperately.
It’s still there now. Pressed against my side under the thin fabric. The only thing in this entire building that’s mine.
I don’t know why that matters right now, with three heads still rolling on the floor a few feet away and my own fate hanging somewhere in the space between three Kings’ next words. But it does. It’s the only thing keeping my hands from shaking apart entirely.
“What should we do with the girl?” a guard’s voice snaps me back to reality.
My heart stops.
“Should she die as well, my lord?”
My breath ceases.
“Yes.”
The grumpy King—the one with the white-blond hair and the cold stare doesn’t even look at me when he says it.
That’s almost the worst part—that my death, when it comes, apparently doesn’t require his eyes. Just the one flat syllable, cold enough to match everything else about him.
I raise my head, meeting the guard’s dark expression as his hand reaches for the hilt of his sword. In that moment, my life flashes before me like I’m staring death right in the face.
He draws his sword, his boots stomping on the floor while he approaches me with menacing footsteps.
I see the fine blade glinting in the light. Any second from now, that clean, cold steel will take off my head with a single swing.
The guard’s eyes are as icy as those of the King who gave the order. Dark and devoid of any kind of emotion. He’s going to end my life, and he won’t feel a thing. Because to him, killing me is nothing but a job he probably does on a daily basis.
It’s not fair that I have to go out like this. After all I’ve been through. After all the pain, the shame, the disgrace, and the ill treatment I’ve had to endure for 24 years, I thought I would eventually find peace, away from this cursed island.
I guess my peace awaits me on the other side. What a wasted life I’ve lived. I spent all my days as a slave. And now, I’m dying as not just a slave, but also a fraudulent person. How ironic considering that all my life, I’ve never defrauded anyone. Not once.
Tears stream down my cheeks as I close my eyes and lower my head, ready to have it chopped off.
Then I hear it, that bold, authoritative voice.
“Wait.”
I slowly reopen my tightly squeezed eyes to find the guard stepping away from me.
“What’s the meaning of this?” the previous King growls.
“Can you not see?” the other voice asks.
I raise my head. It’s the youngest of the Kings. He’s the one who stopped my execution, and he’s already standing next to one with the white-blond hair.
“She’s a slave,” he states simply, “Look at her. Bound, drugged, dragged in against her will. Whatever scheme those traders ran, I doubt she had much say in it.”
Something lurches in my chest—not relief yet, I don’t trust it enough for that—but something close to it. A door left open a crack.
“Careful, Sinth,” the King with the black hair says, his tone dripping with sarcasm and something that resembles mockery. “The supreme leader doesn’t like it when his decision is questioned.”
The mean King shoots a stern glare at the previous speaker, who doesn’t seem to care. Instead, he has a weird grin perched on his face like he’s trying to get under the mean King’s skin.
“So you agree with me then?” the one called Sinth asks the sarcastic King.
He exhales. “Well, yes. But not completely.” He tilts his head at me, green eyes assessing in a way that makes my skin crawl. “I mean, she might be a slave and all, but she could’ve spoken up.”
I swallow hard.
“She could’ve told us the truth the second we asked instead of standing there playing along.”
I’m tempted to defend myself and explain that I was just too afraid of the outcome. But at the last second, I end up not speaking at all.
He continues, “That would’ve been the braver move. Would’ve probably gotten her killed either way, but at least she’d have done something instead of just going along with it.”
I want to scream at him. I want to ask what exactly he thinks I could have said, bound and drugged and half out of my mind, surrounded by three men who’d already decided the traders were guilty of something.
But my throat’s too tight, and some old, worn-in instinct keeps my mouth shut. The last thing I want is to speed up my own execution if there’s even the slightest chance of surviving this.
“She’s shiftless,” the mean King says, voice flat. “I sense no wolf in her at all. Whatever she is, she’s of no use to us. Kill her and be done with it.”
“She’s of no use to us.”
That’s an anthem I’ve heard my whole life. From my father. From Elena. From that spoiled brat, Ricky. From half my village, muttered just quiet enough that they could pretend I hadn’t heard.
But there’s something about hearing it here, from a King who has never met me, who decided it within seconds of looking at me, that lands differently. Harder. Like it’s not really about me at all, like I’m just the latest surface he’s bounced the same old verdict off of.
And something in me, something that’s been swallowing insults for two and a half decades, finally cracks.
“I didn’t ask for any of this!”
The words are out before I fully decide to say them, hoarse and shaking but clear enough to cut through the room.
Every eye turns to me. I feel the mistake the second I’ve made it; I feel it land in my stomach like a stone dropped in still water, but it’s already loose in the air, and I can’t take it back.
“You—” The mean King’s head turns, slowly, and the temperature in the room seems to drop several degrees along with it. “A slave dare speak in front of her Kings without leave?”
I’m about to apologize when his pheromones hit before I even register what’s happening.
Pheromones? But I’ve never felt pheromones before…
A wave of something so cold and dense it feels physical, pressing against my skin. I stumble, catch myself against nothing, my whole body flinching from the sheer weight of it.
And then the sarcastic King answers it, hot where the other’s was cold, a rolling burn that fills the space behind my ribs and makes my knees threaten to give out entirely.
Sinth’s follows a half-second later—at least I know his name now—more controlled but no less overwhelming.
All their pheromones collide in the air until I can barely tell where one ends and the next begins.
The Kings start arguing amongst themselves; however, at this point, I’m too disoriented to focus.
I should be terrified. I am terrified. But underneath the fear, something else is happening, something worse, something I don’t have a name for yet.
My skin is on fire.
Not the sick, chemical burn of the drugs anymore. Something else, something that starts low in my belly and spreads outward fast, curling through my blood.
I can almost swear that it’s been waiting for exactly this moment to wake up. My breath goes ragged. My bloodied hands find the fabric of my tunic and grip it, knuckles white, because I need something to hold onto and there’s nothing else in this room that will have me.
The arguing stops.
All three of them go still at once, as though something’s reached out and grabbed hold of their attention mid-sentence. By the time I manage to lift my head and look at them properly, they’re already staring at me.
Not the way they were before. This isn’t assessment or disgust. No. It’s something else. Something raw and startled, cracking through all three of their expressions at once.
And I feel it too. Goodness me, I feel it. A pull. Strong, deep and instant. Terrifying. My whole body turns toward them, my heart racing with what feels an awful lot like an insatiable need.
I know what this is. I’ve heard the stories, whispered by girls in my village, giggled about like it’s the height of romance.
It’s the scent-match. A rare, cruel thing that happens between an Alpha and an Omega whose bodies recognize each other before their minds get any say in the matter.
My heart stops as the realization hits me hard.
These three are my fated mates.
But I’m not an Omega.
The horror of it lands somewhere underneath my ribs, sharp enough to steal what little breath I have left.
For one suspended moment, none of us move. None of us speak. The silence is deafening, and I can almost hear the sound of my heart hammering in my chest.
It’s clear as day. They know. They know I’m their fated mate—the reason for this whole selection ceremony.
Me? A slave girl? How?
Will they even accept me?
What kind of sick joke is nature playing with me?
“It’s her,” Sinth says, his voice tinged with mild amusement even though his expression doesn’t change. “She’s our…”
“Don’t.” The mean King shuts him down in an instant.
I watch it happen in real time—watch whatever briefly cracked open behind those ice-pale eyes seal itself shut again, fast and total.
“Don’t you dare finish that statement.” His voice is quieter than before.
“What?” The sarcastic King folds his arms across his broad chest. “Too afraid to face the truth that’s right in front of you?”
“I hate it when you make jokes about serious things, Wayne.”
Sinth. Wayne. Their names are now registered at the back of my mind.
“Don’t blame me. Fate’s the one with the cruel sense of humor,” he replies, a small grin tugging at his lips.
A brief pause.
“A King’s mate,” the mean King says, each word measured, deliberate, aimed at me like a blade, “could never be a shiftless, wolfless human. I refuse to be bound to something so weak.”
The silence that follows is the loudest thing I’ve ever heard.
I wait—some small, stupid, hopeful part of me waits—for Sinth to object. For Wayne to laugh it off, to say something reckless and contrary to these hurtful words.
Unfortunately, neither of them does. They stand there, both of them, saying nothing, and their silence is its own kind of verdict.
I have been despised my whole life. My father’s disgust, my stepmother’s cruelty, my brother’s contempt, an entire village that sneered behind my back. I thought I understood what it felt like to be worthless.
I didn’t. Not until this moment.
Because this is different; these are my own fated mates—the three people my body apparently recognized before my mind had any say in the matter.
They looked straight at me and decided, in front of soldiers and corpses, that I am not worth the trouble of wanting.
Something in my chest goes very quiet. Very still.
I feel the last soft, breakable part of myself curl up small and go cold.
Maybe I’m the problem.
Maybe I’m cursed, and that’s why nobody wants me. Not even my own fated mates.
That stings more than anything else in the world, and before I can stop myself, I’m already in tears.