The Little Princess

Silvermoon House had muddy boots beside the front door.

I had prepared myself for polished floors, armed guards, and the sort of silence that required a servant to apologize for a dropped spoon. There were guards, and the floors were polished, but someone had left a small yellow boot lying on its side beneath a coat rack.

Its partner sat on the first stair.

“She was a horse this morning,” the housekeeper explained when she caught me looking. “Horses apparently have no use for footwear.”

Her name was Ruth Bell, and she shook my hand with both of hers.

“The references from your nursery were excellent. Come through. Maisie is attempting to avoid a hairbrush.”

My heart stumbled over the name.

Maisie was not uncommon. I had met three in four years. I reminded myself of that while following Ruth down the hall.

A little girl stood behind a man’s leg in a sunlit sitting room. She wore blue overalls over a cream shirt, one sock inside out, and a crown made from green construction paper. Her hair was a tangle of warm brown curls.

She peered around his knee.

Something beneath my ribs lifted its head.

I forgot the answer I had rehearsed for introductions.

“Miss Reed?” the man said.

I looked up.

Dark hair. A broad mouth. A white shirt buttoned to the throat beneath a charcoal vest. His eyes were gray in the morning light.

For a second I was back in a hotel chair with a blanket around my shoulders.

Then Ruth said, “Alpha Vale,” and the impression broke beneath the weight of the name.

Ronan Vale had commanded Silvermoon for more than a decade. I knew the name from territorial news, though I had never found a useful photograph. The exhausted stranger I remembered existed in lamplight and rain, in fragments I had revisited so often I no longer trusted their edges.

This man was looking at me with the same unsettling concentration I must have shown him.

“Have we met?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.”

It came out too quickly.

He noticed. I saw it in the slight stillness of his expression.

“You’ve worked in Bellweather?”

“And several towns farther south. Mostly with young wolves who find shifting difficult.”

The girl’s fingers tightened around his trousers.

I lowered myself to the rug, leaving enough space between us.

“Is that your crown?” I asked her.

She nodded.

“Did you make it?”

Another nod.

“It’s much better than mine would have been. I always cut the points unevenly.”

“Ruth helped with the sharp scissors,” she said.

“A sensible arrangement.”

She looked at my hands. “Do you have sharp scissors?”

“Only for sewing. I don’t bring them to interviews.”

Her mouth twitched. After a moment she came forward and touched my sleeve.

My wolf moved again. Warmth spread into my throat, sudden and painful.

I had spent four years imagining my daughter at different ages. None of those imagined children had looked exactly like this one. This child was real enough to have a red mark on her cheek from a pillow and a crumb caught in her crown.

“You smell nice,” she said. “Can you sit with me?”

“I’m already sitting.”

“Closer.”

Ronan watched us without interrupting.

She settled beside my knee, then leaned far enough to inspect my bag.

“Do you have a book?”

“Two.”

The fox book emerged first. Her eyes widened at the cover.

“Daddy does the owl voice wrong.”

“There have been differing opinions about the owl,” Ronan said.

I smiled before I could stop myself.

His gaze caught on my face.

The interview continued while Maisie turned pages. He asked practical questions: how I handled fear, whether I used suppressants on children, what I would do if she refused to shift back in public.

“Find out why,” I said. “Give her somewhere private. Wait if it’s safe to wait.”

“And if she bites?”

“Move anyone else away. Keep my voice calm. Teeth usually mean the words have stopped working.”

Maisie glanced up. “I only bit Mr. Fen once.”

“Mr. Fen was trying to pull you from under a table,” Ronan said. “We discussed that.”

“He was very big.”

“So am I.”

She considered him. “You’re my daddy.”

Something in his face softened so openly I looked down to give him the privacy of it.

Later he asked about gaps in my employment history. I gave him truthful pieces with their dangerous names removed: illness, travel, family trouble.

“There is someone you don’t want finding you,” he said quietly.

Maisie was occupied with Ruth at the window.

I pressed my palms together. “Yes.”

“Are they likely to endanger my daughter?”

“I would leave before I allowed that.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

I met his eyes. “I don’t know. I’ve kept moving when I’ve needed to. I would tell you if I thought they had found me.”

He took time over the answer.

“You’ll have a room here. A trial fortnight. We’ll discuss the rest once you’re settled.”

It was more generosity than my incomplete answers deserved. I felt grateful and suspicious at once.

When Ruth took me upstairs, Maisie followed us to the bottom step.

“Will you be here tomorrow?”

I looked back at her little upturned face.

“Yes. I’ll have breakfast with you.”

“Before the eggs?”

“Before the eggs.”

She nodded, satisfied by the precision.

In my new room, I sat on the bed and pressed both hands against my chest until the strange ache there settled.

Then I placed my daughter’s blanket scrap inside the drawer and went downstairs to meet another woman’s child.

Ruth found me outside the nursery with a paper schedule in my hand.

“You look as though we’ve assigned you a military campaign.”

“It’s a very complete schedule.”

“Joan liked things written down. You can change what doesn’t suit you both.”

I hesitated, then asked whether Maisie had been born in the territory.

Ruth’s expression became careful.

“The Alpha keeps the early history private. There were security concerns.”

I nodded too quickly.

“Of course. I only wondered whether she was used to traveling.”

Ruth studied me for a moment, then softened.

“You’re allowed to ask what helps you care for her. If we can’t answer, we’ll say so. You needn’t be frightened of the question.”

I looked at the nursery door. Inside, Maisie was giving the cloth wolf a stern lecture about sitting properly for tea.

I wanted to ask everything at once. Where had she been born? Who had held her first? Had there been a white blanket with blue stitching?

Instead I folded the schedule. I had promised myself years ago not to put a child beneath the weight of an untested hope.

“Does she like milk before bed?” I asked.

“Warm. Never hot. She checks.”

It was a question Ruth could answer. For that afternoon, I let it be enough.