POV: Wren
The door shook in its frame.
Alaric set me down only to catch my wrist and pull me through his chambers. The rooms were colder than I expected. A black four-poster bed stood beneath carved beams. Maps covered one wall. Reports, sealed letters, and patrol records crowded a redwood desk.
No softness. No comfort. Nothing that suggested the most powerful Alpha in the territory ever rested.
He dragged me into the adjoining washroom and opened the cold tap.
“What are you doing?”
“Removing his scent.”
He thrust my hand beneath the water. His palm scrubbed over the place Jacob had touched. The motion was rough enough to redden my skin, but he avoided the sacred burn with maddening care.
“You think this is funny?” he asked.
“It got your attention.”
“You have always had my attention.”
The confession escaped before he could stop it.
His hands went still.
I met his eyes in the mirror. “Then stop pretending I don’t.”
For one second, the mask cracked.
He looked tired. Not weak. Never that. But tired in a way that had nothing to do with the sleepless night. The scars on his back were not the only wounds I had failed to see.
Then he lifted me onto the edge of the desk.
Papers scattered. An ink bottle rolled, struck the floor, and spilled black across the stone.
Alaric planted his hands beside my hips. His body pressed between my knees. The hard line of him pushed against the thin silk between us, and my breath left in a broken sound.
“Say my name,” he said.
“Alaric.”
His mouth touched the curve below my ear. Not a kiss. A warning breathed against my skin.
“The next Alpha who puts his hands on you loses them.”
“You have no right to be jealous.”
“I know.”
“Sarah came here to become your Luna.”
“She came because the Council ordered her family to send a candidate.”
“And will you accept?”
His silence cut deeper than an answer.
I caught the front of his coat and tore it open. Fastenings struck the desk. Beneath the uniform, scars crossed his chest and disappeared around his ribs.
“Marry her,” I said. “Stand before the pack and promise yourself to a woman you do not want. Then spend every night knowing I can smell the lie.”
His growl shook the desk.
His teeth closed on the place where my neck met my shoulder.
Pain flashed white.
He did not bite deeply enough to form a mating bond, but he broke the skin. Heat followed the sting, spreading through me until my fingers clenched in his hair.
He pulled back with my blood on his mouth.
“Every wolf in this castle will see that mark,” he said. “They will know to stay away.”
“You mark me without claiming me.”
“I mark you so they do not kill you before I find another way.”
“Then tell me the truth.”
His eyes dropped to the burn on my arm.
“The truth is older than you remember.”
A shiver moved through me.
“What does that mean?”
Three deliberate knocks struck the outer door.
“High Alpha,” Marrok called. “The Council has convened. Your presence is required.”
Alaric closed his eyes.
The moment ended. Command returned to his face as he stepped away and refastened what remained of his coat.
“Stay here.”
“No.”
He turned on me. “Wren.”
“You keep saying the Council wants me dead, then you leave me ignorant. I will not wait in another locked room while they decide my life.”
“You will if it keeps you breathing.”
He crossed the chamber and opened the door. Marrok stood beyond it with two guards.
The Elder saw the blood on my neck.
His thin mouth curved.
Alaric shifted between us. “Lead the way.”
They left.
The door remained unlocked.
I waited until their footsteps faded, then followed.
A narrow service passage ran behind the council chamber. As a child, I had used it to spy on ceremonies I was forbidden to attend. I slipped behind a carved screen above the great hall and looked down.
The Elder Council sat around an obsidian table. Marrok stood at its head. A silver goblet steamed in his hand.
Even from the gallery, I smelled wolfsbane.
“High Alpha,” Marrok said, “the Blood Pool boiled after midnight. Your ward carries a forbidden brand. Witnesses saw you drag her from the rose garden in front of the Northern delegation. The Council requires proof that your judgment remains uncorrupted.”
“What proof?”
“Drink.”
Marrok extended the goblet.
“If your heart is free of illicit attachment, your Alpha blood will resist the poison. If your will has been compromised, it will expose the weakness.”
It was nonsense dressed as ritual. Wolfsbane poisoned every wolf. The Council did not want truth. They wanted submission.
Alaric knew it too.
He took the goblet.
“The girl is nothing to me,” he said, each word clear enough to reach the gallery. “A responsibility I accepted out of pity. If this is the Council’s price for ending the accusation, consider it paid.”
He drank.
Black spread beneath the skin of his throat.
His shoulders locked. One hand closed around the edge of the table, but his face revealed nothing.
Marrok’s smile faltered.
“Enough?” Alaric asked.
The Elder glanced at the others. No one challenged him.
“For now.”
The Council filed out.
Alaric remained beside the table until the doors closed. Then his knees gave way.
I ran from the passage.
By the time I reached the hall, he lay on the stone floor. Dark veins climbed his neck. Blood touched his lips.
His eyes found me.
“I told you,” he rasped, “to stay in the room.”
I dropped beside him and pulled his head into my lap.
“And I told you to stop deciding everything alone.”
His pulse stuttered beneath my fingers.
Outside, the moon rose red above the castle.
The Devourer woke inside me and turned toward the poison in his blood. It lifted its head, hungry for the thing killing him.
