Chapter 18 Pink Bitch

Chapter 18 Pink Bitch
The palace gates rise before her like the mouth of some ancient beast, carved with old sigils and metal worked lines that gleam beneath the sun. As Jon’s horse slows, two guards at the front signal, and the enormous doors begin to pull apart with slow, grinding force.

Amaris swallows hard.

Jon stops his horse just outside the threshold.

He doesn’t move to enter with her, Instead, he turns to her, expression composed and steady. “This is where I leave you.”

Her fingers tighten around the reins. “You’re not coming inside with me?”

“I’m not part of intake,” Jon replies. “My job ended once I brought you here.” He pauses, then lowers his voice slightly. “Listen carefully. When they ask for your details, introduce yourself exactly as this, Amaris Hanxton.”

Her heart stutters. “Like Rhea and Rosetta?”

“Yes,” he confirms. “Say you are mateless. Say you turned eighteen recently. Do not offer extra words unless they ask. They like things simple during registration and keeping things efficient, so do not stand out too much, you are in the palace, do as you are told, try to stay out of fights and whatever, it won’t bode well for you, especially as I have promised my mother to take care of you.”

A protest rises in her throat before she can stop it. Because at twelve… the very moment her wolf had awakened… something else had happened… A growl of her wolf, a pull, a name that wasn’t hers echoing in her bones.

Mate.

But Jon doesn’t know that.

And she will not be the one to tell him.

She clamps her mouth shut and nods instead.

Jon studies her for a moment longer. His gaze softens, not quite a smile, but something close enough to warm the cold air creeping under her skin.

“You’ll be fine,” he says. “Just do as instructed.”

She returns his nod, even if her stomach is twisting itself into complicated knots.

Then he adds quietly, “Good luck, Amaris.”

Before she can reply, the iron gates swing inward again with a deep rumble, leaving her standing entirely alone. Jon backs away with his horse, turning down the outer road without hesitation, duty calling him elsewhere.

The heavy doors close behind her with a resounding clang that echoes through her bones.

She is inside the palace again and just like before, she is alone but she is here because she is Amaris, not Rhea’s slave, and she has no idea what awaits her.

Amaris inhales slowly and walks toward the second set of guards stationed at the palace’s main entrance,  the same ones who had dragged her through yesterday while she was still disoriented from the letter’s scent.

They don’t look at her twice this time.

One simply holds a ledger, quill poised above the page.

“Name.”

“Amaris Hanxton.”

“Age.”

“Eighteen.”

“Mated?”

“No.”

He gives a curt nod. “Proceed through the doors.”

The tall doors swing open, and Amaris steps into a courtyard so wide it feels like half the kingdom is standing inside it.

Her breath catches sharply.

There are women everywhere.

Some tall, some short, some dressed as if the palace were hosting a royal gala, others looking as nervous as she feels. Their chatter swirls through the air, excited, anxious, curious. The sun glints off hairpins, jewelry, silk, and lace.

It is a chaos of colors and scents and shifting emotions.

Amaris stands frozen at the edge of it all, stunned.

But nothing, absolutely nothing stuns her as deeply as the sight near the glistening center fountain.

Rhea.

Rhea Hanxton.

Her golden curls perfectly pinned, her fanciest dress smoothed down her sides and her chin lifted as though she were royalty instead of a girl who had once thrown spoiled milk at Amaris for breathing too loudly next to her.

Rhea is standing among the eligible women.

Rhea is smiling at one of the other ladies who approach her, equally dressed to kill.

Rhea is here.

Amaris’s wolf growls low in her mind, bristling immediately. ‘Oh, you have GOT to be kidding me.’

Amaris can’t look away.

Rhea Hanxton… who had screamed this morning that Amaris was eighteen, who turned white as a sheet at the sight of the knowledge of her having a wolf, who helped shove her out of the house because of whatever reason there is… is now here in a palace summons meant for mate-less, eighteen year old girls.

Her stomach sinks.

Why is she here? Amaris whispers inwardly.

Her wolf’s answer is a sharp, irritated rumble.

Because she thinks she can take what is not hers.

The air around them suddenly feels too tight and she realizes that the relief she’d been feeling has been so rudely cut short by this pink bitch’s presence.

And Rhea hasn’t seen her yet.

But she will.

Oh, she will.