Page 10

Lexa

The dungeon stench still clung to my skin, like rot soaked into the bone, but now there were silks on the bed and a fire in the hearth.

The guards moved us at dusk, silent and grim, as if they were handling something fragile—or dangerous. We were brought through winding halls and up narrow stairs, the cold stone giving way to carved wood and iron sconces that burned clean oil, not soot.

And then they opened the door.

The room wasn’t extravagant. But it was… soft .

Thick wool rugs over cold stone. A modest bed with real feather-stuffed pillows and a wool quilt that smelled of cedar. A washbasin. A window—small, barred, but real. To Dain, it was a palace.

His eyes had lit up like lanterns, darting from the fire to the bed to the tiny shelf with a few worn books. He ran his hands over the quilt, grinning as he sank into the mattress with a groan of delight.

“This is the best bed I’ve ever seen, Lexi,” he said, half-laughing as he flopped back, arms wide. “You think they made this just for kings?”

I smiled for him. I even let my fingers brush the edge of the mattress.

But my stomach turned. Because I had known better. Once.

Before the sea wind, before the hunger, before the knives and the runes and the long, cold nights praying the next full moon didn’t tear me in half.

I’d known luxury —back when I was still a daughter of the South. Before I chose exile over obedience.

Back when I lived in my family’s estate, where everything was curated and pristine—where the air always smelled faintly of rose oil and something too sweet, like decay hiding under perfume.

Where the windows had bars not for safety, but for training. The memories came clawing through me in the dark, long after Dain had drifted to sleep. I sat by the fire, staring at the flames, and let the past creep in through the cracks in my silence.

I remembered the heat of summer trapped inside the training house. My sisters and I sitting in a line, draped in pale silks, wrists tied gently with red cord so we wouldn’t fidget. So we wouldn’t forget.

And the voice of Mistress Halra, sharp and honeyed, circling us like a serpent.

“A good Omega never lifts her gaze unless told.”

“A good Omega does not challenge. She invites.”

“A good Omega’s body is not hers. It is a gift to be given when the Alpha is ready.”

I was thirteen the first time I heard her describe—in clinical, disgusting detail—how to breathe, arch, moan on command.

My stomach had roiled. I’d bit my tongue until it bled. And Halra had smiled. “You’ll thank me when your Alpha knows your worth. When he chooses you.”

I had wanted to scream.

Instead, I waited until nightfall, crept into the washroom, and vomited until my knees gave out. That was the day I decided. I wouldn’t be what they wanted.

Not then. Not ever. And now, years later, here I was. In another gilded cage. Another locked room built by wolves who thought obedience was carved, not earned.

I fell asleep as the first rays of sun crawled across the floor like fingers trying to reach me.It wasn’t rest. It was collapse. The kind of sleep that drags you under like a tide and leaves your limbs heavy, your chest burning, your mind too fractured to dream.

But it didn’t last.I woke to cold air and emptiness. The bed beside me was already cooling. Dain’s warmth—gone. His voice wasn’t in the room. His footsteps hadn’t stirred the rug. He was gone.

I was on my feet before I could think, the blanket falling from my shoulders, the soft cotton shift clinging to my skin as I rushed to the door.

“Open it!” I slammed my fist against the wood. “Where is he?”

Two guards stood on the other side, unmoved, stone-eyed. The same bastards who’d dragged me through these halls like a corpse that refused to die.

“Let me out!” I screamed, pounding harder.

They didn’t move. I didn’t care. My fists hit harder. I kicked the door. I slammed my shoulder against it again and again until pain bloomed bright and sharp in my bones.

“Where is he? Where’s my son?”

The guards exchanged a glance—just a flicker of unease—then stepped back when I launched at them, wild and thrashing. They grabbed my arms, struggling to hold me down, and even tied, I made them work for every second.

“I’ll kill you if anything’s happened to him,” I snarled. “I’ll gut you—”

“Enough.”

The voice came from the corridor. Calm. Measured.

That Beta . Garrick stepped into view, hands raised slightly, as if trying to placate a rabid animal.

His eyes swept over me—hair tangled, face flushed, arms bruised from the struggle—and something like amusement flickered at the corner of his mouth.

“Let her go,” he told the guards.

They hesitated, then obeyed.

I ripped away from them and faced him, chest heaving, my wrists burning from the iron cuffs.

“Where is my son?”

“He’s not your son ,” Garrick said simply. “But if you mean the boy , he’s fine. He woke early. Said he was hungry. He’s downstairs having breakfast with some of the others. One of the servants is bringing something up for you too—”

“I don’t want your food!” I roared, voice raw. “I want him! I want to see that he’s safe, not hear it from the mouths of wolves who would rip us apart if your Alpha said the word!”

Garrick’s eyes darkened, but before he could speak—A laugh. Low. Cruel. Silken like oil, and twice as filthy. It drifted down the corridor behind him, sweet as rot. Familiar. I turned toward it just as she stepped into view.

Her. That Omega .

The polished one. The one I’d seen that first day. The one with the silk dress and perfect skin and eyes like poisoned glass. She leaned against the stone archway like she was posing for a portrait, smiling like a cat that had already eaten the canary.

“Oh, how the mighty crumble,” she purred, her voice thick with venomous delight. “You’re far louder than you were in the dungeon. Is that what motherhood looks like on a stray?”

“Tanya,” Garrick said, warning in his voice. “Not now.”

But the woman wasn’t done.

She stepped closer, gaze sliding over me with distaste. “I expected something more… threatening. You were quite the little terror when you arrived. I heard you even bit one of our men. How uncivilized.”

I didn’t speak. I stared. My silence made her grin.

“I suppose the only thing more pathetic than a feral Omega is one pretending to be human.” She laughed, delicate and cruel. “You should see yourself. Hair like a nest. Clothes wrinkled. Eyes wild. It’s almost quaint.”

I didn’t move. But gods—I wanted to.

Creatures like her never stopped when they tasted blood. And right now, she thought I was bleeding. She stepped forward, each movement deliberate—hips swaying, chin lifted, voice dripping with courtly sweetness and barely veiled scorn.

“You know,” she said, looking me up and down as though I were something clinging to the bottom of her shoe, “in the courts down south, they would’ve stripped you bare and paraded you through the halls for what you did. Fighting guards. Snarling like a beast.”

I didn’t flinch.

“I suppose you never learned how to be chosen.” She smiled, slow and wicked. “Alphas don’t want broken things, little stray. They want silk. Grace. Loyalty.”

I laughed. Quiet, low, humourless.

“Oh, spare me your shitty games,” I said.

“I was raised in a house where girls were trained to smile with their mouths closed and bleed with their thighs open.” I took a slow step toward her, savouring the flicker in her eyes.

“You don’t scare me, Tanya. You’re not dangerous. You’re just decorative .”

Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t strike back with her hands—no, she wasn’t that kind of wolf. Tanya used words like daggers dipped in perfume.

I turned and walked away, back toward the room that had been transformed into my cage. The guards watched every step I took, eyes following me like I might explode again—and maybe I would.

My fingertips trembled. Not with rage. With something worse. It slithered down my spine like smoke curling under locked doors.

I touched the wall as I passed it, steadying myself. Something was wrong. Behind me, Tanya scoffed, voice lifting again—loud enough that she wanted me to hear.

“You should keep her locked down tighter,” she said to Garrick. “She looks like a bitch in heat already. Maybe your Alpha should’ve let me handle her.”

I stopped. Dead in my tracks.

Garrick’s voice followed, tense and sharp. “You shouldn’t be here, Tanya.”

Her tone turned syrupy. “And you should be careful how you speak to me, Beta . Considering how many times I’ve warmed the Alpha’s bed, you might be looking at your future Luna .”

The word hit me like a fist to the chest. Something in my body snapped.

I gasped—sharp and involuntary—as the first rune cracked.

Not physically, but inside. The magic it held unravelling in a pulse of pain that stole the air from my lungs.

My knees nearly buckled. Heat surged down my spine, real now. Alive.

No. No, not now—

I turned, vision blurring. Tanya was still smirking. Still looking at me like I was less than dirt.

And I lunged.

I don’t remember crossing the space between us. One heartbeat I was at the threshold, the next I had my hands tangled in her perfect hair, dragging her down, slamming her back against the stone wall.

She shrieked. I hit her again. And again. Fists like fury. Her lip split. Her head cracked against stone. She tried to claw me, but she wasn’t trained for this. She was bred for seduction, not survival.

It wasn’t until I heard Garrick shouting—felt his arms around me, dragging me off—that I realized how close I’d come to tearing her throat out.

“Lexa!” he roared, barely holding me back. “Stop!”

I thrashed against him, eyes wild, teeth bared, my entire body burning. He forced me back, step by step, into my room. I fought him, limbs shaking, the taste of blood still on my tongue. He slammed the door shut behind me and locked it, panting.

I collapsed to the floor.