Page 15

Lexa

The window was narrow, but it gave me just enough of a view to the courtyard below.

Snow clung to the stone in patches, melting slower in the shadows, and the wind carried that distinct northern chill—sharp and clean, like it had never known the soot and salt of the fishermen’s village I’d once called safety. But down in the yard, the cold didn’t seem to matter.

Dain was laughing. Wooden sword in hand, he moved in tight, awkward swings against another boy his size, both of them bundled in thick tunics, cheeks flushed from the cold and the thrill of pretend battle.

The others joined in, a loose circle of pups barely older than toddlers, swinging blunted blades under the careful, calm eyes of two trainers.

Just as Garrick had promised. Not brutality. Not chaos. Not blood. Play. Controlled, practised, watched.

They weren’t training killers. Not yet. They were letting them be children.

For now. And he looked… good. Healthier.

There was colour in his cheeks again—real colour, not the sickly flush of fever or cold, but the warm pink of a boy who had slept in a real bed and eaten every bite of his meals.

His skin had lost that pale, papery edge it used to carry, back when every night was a gamble against hunger and frostbite.

And the boots—gods, the boots.

One of the keep’s maids had brought them to him last week. Sturdy leather, lined with fur, barely used. He’d lit up like it was his name day, stomping around the room, laughing at the way the snow didn’t soak through anymore. He still looked small. Fragile. But less like a ghost.

I let my forehead rest against the stone.

My breath fogged the glass. I closed my eyes for a moment.

I could still see him—two years old, clinging to his mother’s body, lips blue from the cold, shaking with silence.

She had been dead for at least a day. He didn’t cry when I pulled him away. Didn’t scream. Just stared.

I remembered kneeling beside him in the mud, brushing his damp hair out of his eyes, and whispering the words I hadn’t dared say out loud before.

I’ll take care of you.

Even though he couldn’t understand. Even though I didn’t know how.And the moment I said it— The runes on my back had burned.Not the steady, simmering ache I was used to. This was a searing flash of agony, like the magic itself was warning me.

Like I was breaking the oath they carved into my spine. The promise of silence. Of isolation. Of never belonging to anyone. And I made a vow anyway.

I remember gritting my teeth through the pain and telling myself it was nothing. That I could handle it. That he was worth it.

He still is.

I opened my eyes and looked back down. Just in time to see them ride in. Wolves.

Covered in snow and blood and cold. Andros at the front.

His horse moved like it sensed its master’s fury—quiet, restrained, but ready to strike.

His cloak whipped behind him like a banner, boots dark with blood, eyes darker still.

His men followed close, Garrick among them, all worn from the hunt but alive.

They dismounted in the yard. A few pups stopped swinging their swords. Andros said something. I couldn’t hear the words. But I saw him crouch, eye-level with Dain, say something that made the boy nod eagerly, a grin stretching across his face.

Andros reached out—touched his shoulder. And that sight… That one gesture…Lit a fuse beneath my skin. I gripped the edge of the window ledge so hard my knuckles ached.

He had no right. No right to be near him. No right to look at him like that. To speak to him. To touch him.

And I didn’t care how many titles Andros wore. Alpha. Conqueror. Blood-soaked warlord. He would never take that from me.

When Andros turned his head, saying something low to Garrick, I caught it—the flick of the Beta’s gaze toward the citadel. Toward me.

They couldn’t hear the way my heart thundered in my chest, couldn’t feel the tension pulsing in every inch of me like a scream held just behind my teeth. But I knew they felt something. Wolves always did.

I didn’t step back from the window. I didn’t blink.

I simply stood there, arms crossed, cold air pressing against the glass, watching Dain laugh with the other pups like nothing in the world had shifted.

Like he hadn’t just been brushed by something venomous.

I stayed frozen—stone and silence—as minutes passed, every second coiling tighter inside my lungs.

Then came the knock. Firm. Precise. Without apology. I didn’t speak. Didn’t move. The door creaked open anyway.

Garrick stepped inside as if the room were his, as if he’d been here a hundred times before and would be again. His eyes moved over me—still barefoot, my hair an unbrushed mess, rage painted across my face like warpaint—and I didn’t bother to hide the storm churning inside me.

“Oh, what now?” I snapped, voice brittle, sharp. “Here to serenade me with another heroic tale about your precious Alpha?”

He didn’t bite. Didn’t smile.

He just closed the door behind him with a soft, deliberate click and said, calm and devoid of theatrics, “Andros wants dinner with you.”

“You’re joking.”

“His chambers. Tonight. Just the two of you.”

The laugh that tore out of me was jagged and humorless, cutting through the tension like broken glass. “And if I say no?”

Garrick’s face didn’t change, but the cold in his voice wrapped around the room like a noose. “Then I carry you there in chains. Those were his exact words. I may like you, Lexa, but don’t mistake me for the type who’ll hesitate.”

He didn’t linger. Didn’t wait to see if I’d hurl something at his back. He turned, walked out, and the door closed behind him with a soft click—final, echoing. I stood in the center of the room, staring at nothing, my hands clenched into fists at my sides.

Fury curling like smoke under my skin. Then it changed.

The smoke didn’t fade, it thickened, it became pressure.

Heat. Tension. I straightened, instinct prickling down my spine like static.

My breath hitched. My body tightened in places I didn’t expect—jaw, fingers, stomach—and something inside me tilted, shifted, like a coin flipping in the dark.

No.

A strange, crawling sensation swept across my skin. Weak and powerful. Hollow and sharp. My heartbeat stuttered, then pounded harder, like it was trying to force something back. My head swam—not dizzy, not sick. Awake .And then the first lash of pain struck.

Sharp. High. Intimate.It wasn’t like the dull ache of a worn rune. This was new. This was a wire pulled taut and snapping straight through bone.My knees buckled, and I caught myself against the wall with a hiss.

Another. A second rune on the verge of cracking. Breaking. Its power unraveling like smoke pulled from a dying fire.

“No…”

My voice was breathless, strangled. Not here.

Not now.I wasn’t ready. I needed more time.

I pressed my palm to my spine, as if I could hold the magic there through sheer will—but it was gone.

The strength that rune offered, the silence, the armor of nothingness that kept her caged—slipping away, thread by cursed thread.

I could feel her now. Faint. Weak. Defeated—but there. The wolf.

Buried for thirteen years, carved into silence by dark magic and blood, and yet… she stirred. Just a twitch in the back of my soul. A shadow unfurling its claws.

No. I needed the runes. I needed the silence. I needed that goddamned armor before the wolf inside me dragged me back to the thing I swore I’d never be again.

A beast.A slave.An Omega.

This couldn’t be happening. Not here. Not in his house .

But it was. And I knew I wouldn’t survive the next one.

The second rune was on the verge of cracking, I had minutes, hours at best. Unless I made it back to her.

The witch. The only one who could carve me whole again.

My pulse raced as a plan—awful, vile, brilliant—coiled through my mind like smoke turning to poison.

I pushed off the wall, legs shaking, face tight with pain. Then I stilled.

Breathed. Slipped back into the part of myself I thought I’d buried—Not the fighter.

Not the stray. The daughter. The trained one.

I dug deep into the back of my mind, to the lessons I’d sworn never to use.

The teachings whispered in candlelight by mothers and matrons with glass smiles and bloody hands.

If you can’t outrun the Alpha—make him drop his guard. If you can’t win the fight—seduce the war.

I crossed the room to the small armoire I had never once opened. It was filled with dresses—gifts, offerings, bribes. Most of them still wore the scent of perfumed silk and faintly of fear. I hadn’t looked at them twice before.

But now… Now I needed a weapon.

My hand moved through them like a surgeon choosing her blade. Velvet. Satin. Lace. Red. Black. Green.And then I found it. The one. Deep crimson, slit high on the thigh, bodice so tight it might as well be skin, the neckline cut low enough to be indecent.

I held it up to the firelight. The wolf in me stirred again. Not howling. Not clawing. Just… watching. And I whispered to her, in the quiet of my mind:

Let me play their game.

Let me win us time.

And then we run. Again.

I pulled the dress from its hanger. If Andros wanted a dinner guest— He’d get far more than he bargained for.