Anike August

I clasped my hands over my bare breast as the old emperor pressed on me, trying to rape me, a 14 year old girl. They called me the cursed concubine. “You killed your mother at birth,” they claim. Even my father sold me for a piece of dirt to the Emperor with an appetite for young girls like me.

And then, they blamed me for his illness. "Your presence here has only brought suffering and pain in the palace."

"A lowlife like you doesn't deserve any form of dignity!"

They stripped me, tied my thorn cloth around my neck like a leash and pulled me like a common dog.

"Now woof! woof! Like a sick dog you are!"

I was waiting to die.

Then the prince returned.

Fresh from a decade-long war with werewolves, drenched in blood and victory, he shattered the palace silence by defending me—the woman everyone else wanted erased.

All I wanted was gratitude.

What I got was a night in his chambers… and secrets powerful enough to bring an empire to its knees.

I thought I was a curse.

A liability.

A plague.

But the prince awakened something far more dangerous.

And this palace will learn—

I was never weak. I was only unclaimed