Chapter 113

The next morning, a junior steward knocked on my door to offer a tour. Her name was Leira, and she looked barely older than me, but her posture was rigid with training and her voice had that clipped efficiency of someone terrified of being seen as unprofessional. She kept her hands clasped tightly in front of her as she led me into the corridor, eyes darting forward with every step as if memorizing protocol and scanning for errors before they could happen.

“This way, Amelia,” she said. “You’re cleared for all zones except the Alpha-level vaults.”

The Haven was sprawling, more like a luxury compound than a war bunker. We passed two situation rooms, both currently empty but stocked with live map interfaces, satellite feeds, and communication consoles. A library built into the rock wall. A quiet wing of private quarters, some of which had been turned over to displaced council members, though many remained dark and unused. There were even exercise facilities and a recreation hall with a piano in the corner and a wall of dusty board games, some still shrink-wrapped. Everything gleamed under the soft lights. It felt surreal, like we’d traded rubble and reality for something just on the edge of illusion.

“They call it the war hotel,” Leira added, glancing over her shoulder. “Jenny said she wanted a space that didn’t feel like hiding back when she had it remodeled.”

There was pride in her voice, but also something edged beneath it. Maybe discomfort. Maybe disbelief that she was showing it off in the middle of a war. That we were standing in silence on imported stone while refugees slept on concrete.

I wasn’t sure what I felt. Gratitude for the safety, maybe. Guilt that I had it when others didn’t. A sinking unease that this place would turn on itself if we weren’t careful. I thanked Leira anyway and dismissed her once we reached the second floor, promising I could find my way from there.

But instead of retreating to my room, I went looking for work.

Most of the Haven’s outer staff, kitchen crews, sanitation workers, technicians, had been folded in from the surrounding civilian bunkers. Some were floundering, others were cracking under pressure. I found a group trying to inventory incoming supplies and stepped in when the shouting started. Two assistants were red in the face, arguing about a mislabeled shipment, their voices echoing too loud in a place that prized appearances.

“Let me,” I said, pulling the clipboard from one of their hands and kneeling beside the boxes. “Let’s start over. Just breathe.”

I coordinated with guards to settle a housing request from a pregnant teacher who’d been placed with a loud soldier unit. I helped an elderly nurse organize a mobile triage list and reassign staff to shifts that made sense. I rewrote part of a rota on the floor of the hallway while two teens from Records gave me their half-broken laptop and a pen that bled ink over my fingers. I sat with a pair of frightened interns and listened to them cry about a friend who hadn’t arrived with the last transport. They told me she was wearing yellow and had a chipped tooth and a laugh that made everyone else in the room laugh too.

Word started to spread that I was helping. Not as the King’s future mate, not as a council figurehead. Just as someone willing to do the work that mattered. And in a place like this, word moved faster than fact.

But not all the whispers were kind.

By midafternoon, the gossip had sharpened like a blade. The contrast between our bunker and the outer shelters had reached a boil. People whispered about the luxury of the Haven compared to the overcrowded sprawl of the outer camps. No air circulation. Barely enough water. Children sleeping three to a cot while I moved between wings with polished tile beneath my boots.

David’s mother had been seen washing her hair with bottled water in a parking lot, someone said. Another woman whispered that a teenage boy in the refugee camps had passed out from heatstroke. People clung to stories like that, because it made the injustice feel real, concrete, and personal.

And me, I was becoming the face of that contrast, no matter how many storage rooms I reorganized.

It didn’t matter that I was working. The optics were already a battle we were losing.

I found Richard in the council room that evening. The table was cluttered with drone surveillance reports, intercepted communications, scribbled supply manifests, and territory maps. Three elders sat around him, all sharp-eyed and combative. Monroe was arguing for increased outer patrols. Ramos wanted to shift resources back toward the Pack House and use this time to retake it.

“We look weak,” Ramos said. “We lost our seat of power and what do we have to show for it? Tabloid photos of Amelia in a silk coat while our citizens share bunks.”

“She’s been working non-stop to manage your staff’s failings,” Richard said without hesitation.

“She’s not the Alpha,” Ramos countered. “She doesn’t make decisions without consequence. You do.”

“I stand by her choice,” Richard replied. “And if you think I’ll throw her under the bus for your convenience, you can find another king.”

The room went dead quiet. I stood just outside the door and didn’t wait to be seen. I left.

Later, I walked to the outer bunkers.

I left my coat behind. Wore plain clothes. No security detail. I needed to see for myself what they were talking about. I needed to feel it.

The difference was staggering. The air was tighter, more humid, the smell of unwashed bodies and campfire smoke clung to everything. Cots pressed edge to edge in long converted storage halls, divided only by hanging sheets and the occasional makeshift curtain. Children huddled around small battery-powered lanterns. People looked exhausted and restless. Some looked suspicious. Others grateful. I helped carry two buckets of water into the medical tent and stayed to sweep up shattered glass when a lantern slipped from a child’s hands. I offered to translate for an older woman who didn’t speak the guards’ language. I held a baby so a mother could use the bathroom.

An old man watched me from a plastic stool just outside the entrance. His hands trembled slightly where they rested on his knees. His eyes were clouded but focused. He didn’t blink as I approached.

“You look familiar,” he said.

I paused. “I’ve been on the news a lot lately.”

“No,” he said. “Not like that. You’ve got the nose. And the eyes. You’re someone’s blood. I knew a girl once in the vampire wars who looked just like you. Same way she held her shoulders. Like she knew where the fight was, even when no one else did.”

I crouched beside him. “Do you remember her name?”

He shook his head slowly. “No. She died. I think. She went missing on a mission near the outer wall. But you... you look like you could be her daughter.”

I helped him back inside when the air got too cold for him to sit. Then I went back to the Haven in silence.

That night, I dreamed of a wolf.

I stood at the edge of a field, surrounded by fog. A shape moved in the distance. It padded closer, silent, massive, smoke-gray. I held my breath. It circled me once. Then stopped. Its eyes met mine.

Not gold.

Red.

A flash of teeth. A growl I felt in my own ribs.

I woke with a gasp, sweat chilling on my back. I stared at the ceiling and tried to slow my breathing, but the knot in my stomach refused to ease. I didn’t tell anyone.

Richard

I walked the halls of the Haven in silence. My halls. Or at least, they had been. Now they felt like something I was borrowing, a stage set for a role I wasn’t sure I could keep playing. I passed darkened conference rooms, empty mess halls, closed doors where families tried to sleep. I didn’t try to rest. My footsteps were even, steady, but every turn of a corner seemed to draw more tension into my spine.

I thought about Amelia. About the way she had stood in that council room, not just alone but unshaken. About the way she moved through chaos with a kind of quiet certainty I hadn’t had in weeks. She hadn’t just voted to relocate the Pack House, she had carried it in her hands when I couldn’t. And the kingdom saw it. And now they looked to her with a new kind of loyalty. A dangerous kind. The kind that could shift power without anyone meaning to.

I didn’t know when it had happened. When I had started trusting her instincts more than my own. When her voice had begun to sound like reason instead of risk.

But I did.

And that terrified me more than anything else I had faced in a long, long time.