Chapter 2: The Dragon’s Kitchen

The carriage rattled to a stop, and the heavy iron door was yanked open before I could even gather my bearings. Cold air slapped my face, and I smelled it instantly—smoke, iron, and something sweetly rotten, like old blood buried under fresh earth. The Lycan King’s castle loomed above me, a jagged silhouette of black stone and bone-white spires that clawed at the bruised sky.

I stumbled out, my legs weak from the journey, and nearly fell into the mud. A guard—one of the scaled, reptilian creatures the King called his *Kith*—grabbed my arm with a grip like a vice. His eyes were slitted and gold, and he stared at me like I was a piece of meat he’d been ordered not to bite.

“Kitchen,” he grunted, shoving me toward a side door that hung crooked on its hinges. “Move.”

I didn’t move. I just stared at the castle’s main gate, where two enormous wolves carved from obsidian stood sentinel, their ruby eyes glinting in the fading light. A memory flickered—my grandmother’s voice, cracked and urgent, telling me stories of the Lycan King who’d once been a man, before the curse turned him into something that fed on moonlight and maiden’s tears.

“Move,” the guard repeated, and this time his claws pricked my shoulder. I stumbled forward, through the crooked door, into a world of heat and noise and chaos.

The kitchen was a cavernous pit beneath the castle, lit by roaring hearths and the sickly green glow of witch-lanterns swinging from the ceiling. Steam rose in thick clouds from cauldrons big enough to bathe a horse in. The air was thick with the scent of roasting game, burnt sugar, and sweat. Women and men—mostly humans, judging by the dullness in their eyes—scurried between long wooden tables, their hands raw and red, their faces blank as death.

I stood frozen in the doorway, my heart hammering against my ribs. This wasn’t a kitchen. It was a furnace. A prison inside a prison.

A tall, whip-thin woman with grey-streaked hair and a face like a hatchet stormed toward me, wiping her hands on a bloodstained apron. “You the new whelp?” she barked, not waiting for an answer. “I’m Mags. I run this pit. You breathe when I say, you sleep when I say, and you don’t look at the King’s table when the King’s bell rings. Understood?”

I nodded, my mouth dry. I tried to speak, to ask where I’d be sleeping, but she was already shoving a wooden spoon into my hands and pointing at a massive pot of bubbling stew.

“Stir. Don’t stop. If it burns, you’ll wish the wolves had gotten you.”

I grabbed the spoon. It was thicker than my arm, and the pot’s heat licked my face like a dragon’s breath. My muscles screamed, but I stirred. I stirred until my arms were rubber and my back burned, until my tears evaporated the moment they touched my cheeks.

But the whispers helped.

They started low, like the murmur of the wind through the pines back home. Women hunched over chopping blocks, their knives rhythmically thudding, their voices barely audible above the crackle of the fire.

“…third time this month he’s vanished…”

“…told you, the moon does something to him…”

“…they say he doesn’t come back the same…”

I strained to hear more, my spoon slowing for just a second. Mags’s voice lashed out like a whip. “Stir, girl, or I’ll have you scrubbing the beast pits.”

I stirred. But my ears stayed open.

A young woman—not much older than me, with hollow cheeks and a bruised eye—leaned close as she passed me a basket of potatoes. “Don’t ask about the King,” she whispered, her voice barely a breath. “The last one who did never came back from the east wing.”

“East wing?” I mouthed, but she was already gone, swallowed by the steam.

The night wore on. The bells chimed—one, two, three—and the kitchen emptied out, leaving only a skeleton crew. I was given a thin pallet in a cramped alcove that smelled of mildew and rat droppings. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, my body aching and my mind racing.

The golden eyes. The voice. *Finally. You’re coming home.*

But this wasn’t home. Home was a cottage with a crooked chimney and a garden full of wolfsbane. Home was my grandmother’s voice telling me to run, to never let them find me.

And yet.

There was something in that voice. Something that reached into my chest and wrapped around my heart like a fist. Not fear. Not longing. Something older. Something that whispered *you belong here, against every instinct that screams otherwise.*

I must have drifted off, because the next thing I knew, a hand was shaking my shoulder. I jolted awake, my heart leaping into my throat, and found the hollow-cheeked girl—Lily, I’d heard someone call her—crouched beside me, her face pale in the dim lantern light.

“Wake up,” she hissed. “Now. Quickly.”

“What is it?” I croaked, sitting up. The castle was silent. Too silent. Even the wind outside seemed to hold its breath.

Lily’s eyes were wild, darting toward the door. “The King’s bell rang. It never rings this late. He’s calling for a servant.”

“Why?” I asked, already dreading the answer.

Lily grabbed my wrist, her fingers cold. “Because he’s back. And everyone who’s seen him on nights like this—empty-eyed, covered in black blood—never lasts the week. You’re the newest. You’re the one he’s asking for.”

My blood turned to ice. The voice from the forest echoed in my skull, low and hungry.

*Finally. You’re coming home.*

Lily shoved a candle into my trembling hand and pointed toward a corridor that yawned like a throat, dark and endless. “Go,” she whispered. “And whatever you do—don’t look at him. Don’t look him in the eyes.”

I stumbled to my feet, my legs barely holding me. The corridor stretched before me, cold and silent, and somewhere at the end of it, I could feel him. Waiting. Watching.

I took a step. The candle flickered.

And then, from the darkness ahead, a voice—the same one that had haunted my dreams—rolled out like thunder.

“Come, little wolf. I’ve waited a hundred years for you.”