The Lycan King’s Broken Obsession.

Aria’s POV

I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking.

Following the other servants down the stone corridor, I kept my eyes fixed on the floor and tried to make sense of what had just happened. The Lycan King had stared at me. He even talked to me.

He was beautiful .With his Midnight black hair and golden eyes he looked like an art work.

Why had he done that, and what was that feeling when he looked at me?

My stomach twisted with anxiety.

“Keep up, new girl,” snapped the maid walking ahead of me. She had the kind of posture that screamed authority. “We don’t have all day to wait for you.”

I stumbled forward, my legs still felt unsteady. Everything felt unsteady since the market…like the ground might disappear beneath my feet at any moment and send me tumbling into another nightmare.

The servants’ quarters smelled like soap and cooking fires, better than the experience at the cell.. but it was nothing like the lavender and rose oil that used to scent my chambers at Silverwood. I pushed that thought away quickly. Comparing this to my old life would drive me insane.

“This is yours,” the stern maid said, gesturing to a room barely large enough for the single bed and washstand crammed inside. “I’m Helen, the head of household staff. You answer to me now.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

“Well? Can you speak, or are we supposed to guess what you are thinking?”

“I can speak,” I whispered.

Helen’s eyebrows rose. “Barely. What happened to your voice?”

Because I screamed until I had nothing left. Because I watched my mate murder our children and my throat gave out from the sound of my own breaking.

“I don’t know,” I lied.

“Well, whatever it was, it sounds awful.” A younger maid peered around Helen’s shoulder, she was blonde and very pretty. “Like you’ve been gargling rocks.”

“Beth,” warned an older woman with kind eyes. “Leave her be. We were all new here once.”

“Not all of us made His Majesty look like he had seen a ghost during introductions,” Helen said dryly. “What was that about, anyway?”

My chest tightened. So I hadn’t imagined it…everyone had noticed. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know much, do you?” Beth laughed, but it didn’t sound friendly. “Maybe that’s why you ended up here instead of somewhere better.”

Helen shot her a look that said to back off, but I caught the calculating expression in her eyes. Like she was trying to decide if I was going to be a problem.

“You’ll start in the kitchens tomorrow at dawn,” Helen continued. “Don’t be late, and try not to draw any more attention to yourself. We run a proper household here.”

She walked away, taking Beth and the others with her. Only the older woman stayed behind to talk to me.

“Don’t mind them,” she said gently. “I’m Margaret. Helen’s protective of how things work here, but she’s fair if you do your job well.”

I wanted to ask what happened if you couldn’t do your job well, but Margaret was already walking away.

I sat on the narrow bed and stared at the stone wall, trying not to think about anything at all. Thinking hurts me too much.

Every memory brought fresh pain.. I can’t forget the way he laughed as he destroyed our bond, or Sera’s smile as she took my mate from me… my crown, my parents’ cruelty as they sold me like livestock to the highest bidder.

The weird moment with the King didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except figuring out how to survive this new reality without completely falling apart.

I am a servant now. I needed to learn how to be a good one.

Morning felt like a punishment.

I had barely slept on the thin mattress, and every sound in the castle had made me flinch awake.

The kitchen was already chaotic when I arrived.

Massive hearths blazed with fires hot enough to roast entire animals, and people moved everywhere with efficiency. The smell of baking bread made my stomach clench painfully…I haven't eaten a proper meal since my coronation.

“You’re the new girl,” said someone behind me.

I turned to find a round-faced woman with flour-dusted hands and kind eyes.

“I’m Sarah,” she continued. “The head cook. Margaret says you’ll be helping with breakfast preparation.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice yet.

“Ever worked in a kitchen before?”

I shook my head. As Luna, I had helped with planning menus and managing household budgets, but I had never actually cooked anything. That was what servants were for.

But I was that servant now.

“Right then. We’ll start simple.” Sarah handed me a knife that felt heavier than it looked. “Peel these turnips and cut them into chunks. Nothing fancy.”

How hard could peeling vegetables be?

Incredibly hard, as it turned out.

My first attempt ended up with me removing most of the turnip along with the peel.

“Christ,” muttered a kitchen boy, glancing at my mangled vegetable. “Did you declare war on that thing?”

Heat flooded my cheeks. “Sorry, I…”

“Here, let me show you.” Sarah appeared at my elbow with the patience of someone who had trained many hopeless beginners. “Hold it like this, see? Let the knife do the work.”

But even with instruction, I was terrible. My cuts were uneven chunks that looked nothing like what everyone else produced. I was so slow that people had to work around me to keep up with breakfast demands.

“Move faster,” Helen appeared beside me like a sharp-voiced storm cloud. “We’re behind schedule because of you.”

I tried to speed up and immediately sliced my thumb instead of the carrot.

“Bloody hell,” someone said as I stood there dripping blood onto the cutting board. “Get her away from the food before she contaminates everything.”

Sarah bandaged my thumb while I blinked back tears of frustration. This looked so easy when other people did it. Why couldn’t I manage something as simple as cutting vegetables?

“Don’t worry,” Sarah said quietly. “Everyone struggles at first.”

But when I glanced around, I saw the looks of impatience, annoyance on everyone's face , like I was exactly the kind of problem they didn’t need.

The rest of the morning was a disaster.

I burned the porridge I was supposed to be stirring. Dropped a tray of fresh bread that scattered across the kitchen floor. Spilled soup on myself and two other people while trying to carry bowls to the servants’ hall.

“For fuck’s sake,” the head cook finally exploded after I knocked over a pot of stew. “What is wrong with you?”

I stood there covered in brown gravy, fighting back tears, unable to explain that I never had to do any of this before. That just three weeks ago, I had been planning state dinners instead of serving them.

“Maybe she’s better suited for something else,” Sarah suggested.

Helen’s smile was sharp as a blade. “Oh, I know exactly what she’s suited for.”

And that is how I ended up on chamber pot duty.

“The new girl’s completely hopeless,” I heard Beth whisper to another maid as I hauled a bucket of waste down the corridor.

“Did you see her in the kitchen? She looked like she had never held a knife before.”

“And that voice when she tries to apologize. Makes my skin crawl.”

“Helen thinks she’s putting on airs. Acting helpless to get attention.”

I kept walking, pretending their words didn’t hit like physical blows. But they did.

I really was useless.

At Silverwood, I had managed an entire pack’s domestic affairs. Planned ceremonies, negotiated with other territories, made decisions that affected hundreds of lives. But apparently, none of that translated to actual useful skills.

I couldn’t cook. I couldn't even clean properly.

Maybe Marcus had been right. Maybe I really was pathetically weak.

“Tough day?”

I looked up from the chamber pot I was scrubbing to find a young man with sandy brown hair leaning against the doorframe. He wore kitchen clothes but held himself with the easy confidence of someone who knew his place in the world.

“I’m James,” he said when I didn’t respond. “I work in the kitchens. Well, I’m supposed to work in the kitchens. Mostly I flirt with the female staff until they do my job for me.”

I blinked at him, unsure how to respond to such honesty.

“You are not much of a talker, are you?” He stepped into the small room, covering his nose at the awful smell. “Fuck, Helen really stuck you with the worst job in the castle. What did you do to piss her off so badly?”

“I don’t know,” I said quietly, and meant it.

“Sure you do. You caught His Majesty’s attention yesterday. Helen’s been here fifteen years, and she had never seen the King react to anyone like that. That got her all twisted up about proper boundaries and knowing your place.”

My stomach sank. “I didn’t do anything.”

“I believe you. You don’t strike me as the scheming type.” James studied my face with sharp eyes. “More like someone who’s had the fight beaten out of them. What happened to you?”

The question was gentle, but I couldn’t answer it.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fair enough.” He stole a rag from my supplies and started helping with the cleaning without being asked. “But here’s some free advice…keep your head down for a while. Let the gossip die down. Helen and her crowd don’t like anything that disrupts their little kingdom.”

“I’m not trying to disrupt anything,” I said desperately. “I just want to do my job.”

“I know. But intention doesn’t matter much when people have already decided you’re trouble.” He finished the pot he’d been scrubbing and handed it back to me. “Just… be careful. This place can chew people up.”

He left me alone with my thoughts and the remaining chamber pots, with his warning echoing in my head.

That night, I lay on my narrow bed staring at the ceiling and tried to figure out how everything had gone so wrong so quickly.

I pressed my face into the thin pillow and tried to forget those golden eyes, because the last thing I needed was to start imagining meaning where none existed.

I had learned that lesson already, and the cost had been everything I ever loved.

But as I finally drifted off to sleep, some stubborn part of my mind kept replaying that moment in the great hall. The careful gentleness in his voice when he’d said I was safe.

It probably meant nothing.

It had to mean nothing.

Because I couldn’t survive being wrong about something like that again.