The heavy wooden door did not just open. It shattered inward off its iron hinges.
Kaelen filled the doorway.
"A thief," he repeated, his voice vibrating the glass vials on Thorne's shelves.
Before Lyra could sit up, a massive hand clamped around her throat.
He hoisted her off the cot in one brutal upward motion. Her boots dangled three feet above the wooden floorboards.
"Alpha, stop!" Thorne rushed forward.
Kaelen backhanded the old man without looking. Thorne crashed into the supply cabinet. Glass shattered across the floor, spilling dark liquids over the wood.
Lyra clawed at the thick fingers crushing her windpipe. Oxygen vanished. Dark spots swarmed her vision.
"Stealing from my pack," Kaelen snarled, bringing her face inches from his. Golden eyes pierced through her fading consciousness. "While I hunt the traitor who poisoned me, you raid the medical stores like a rat."
"She needed treatment," Thorne coughed from the floor, clutching his ribs. "She is bleeding."
"She needs a hanging," Kaelen corrected. His thumb pressed harder against her carotid artery. "Rogues do not get medicine. They get the rope."
Blackness crept into the edges of Lyra's sight. She stopped fighting his grip. Let him end it. Her arms dropped to her sides.
"Kaelen, wait." Selene placed a gentle hand on his forearm. "Blood will ruin the clinic. The elder still has to treat your guards."
He did not loosen his hold. "Thieves die, Selene. It is pack law."
"She is an Omega," Selene reasoned, her tone dripping with manufactured pity. "A pathetic creature driven by desperation. Death is too quick a punishment for offending you."
"What do you suggest?"
Selene circled Lyra's dangling body. She ran a manicured finger over the dirty hem of Lyra's dress. "I need a seamstress. My mating ceremony requires a gown worthy of the Luna title. The village tailors are too slow, and their hands are too rough."
Lyra kicked her legs weakly. Her lungs burned.
"You want a rat touching your wedding dress?" Kaelen scoffed.
"I want her to earn her miserable life," Selene said, stopping right beside Lyra's ear. "Let her stitch every pearl. Let her bleed over the needle to atone for her crimes. If she fails, you can execute her in front of the entire pack." Selene looked up at Kaelen, her voice sweetening. "It would be a fitting gift for your new Luna. A gown woven from the suffering of those who disrespect you."
Kaelen considered this. Then he opened his hand.
Lyra hit the floorboards with bone-rattling force.
She collapsed onto her side, gasping violently. Air tore down her raw throat. She curled her knees toward her chest, shielding her lower abdomen on instinct.
"Enforcers," Kaelen commanded.
Two guards stepped over the ruined door. One carried a massive roll of shimmering fabric. Kaelen gestured, and the guard tossed the bolt. It struck Lyra squarely in the face. The heavy cardboard core bruised her cheekbone as the material unspooled across the dirty floor.
Silver silk. Rare, imported, blindingly bright.
"Three months," Kaelen told her, staring down at her gasping form. "You have until the full moon. You will sew the most perfect gown this territory has ever seen."
Lyra pushed the heavy silk off her nose, her hands trembling. "I am a scullery maid. I clean floors. I do not know how to cut Luna garments."
"Now you are a seamstress," Kaelen replied coldly. "If there is a single frayed edge, a single dropped stitch, or a single drop of your filthy blood on this silk—" He leaned down and grabbed her chin, forcing her to look into his unfeeling eyes. "I will bring out the pliers and pull out every one of your fingernails myself. Do you understand?"
Lyra stared at the man who had promised to know her scent anywhere. The man whose pups were currently fighting to survive in her womb.
"I understand, Alpha," she rasped.
"Make the train ten feet long," Selene added. "I want it to sweep across the great hall, covering the very spots you scrubbed today. I want every wolf to see the devotion stitched into the fabric."
"Set her up in the drafty tower room," Kaelen told the guards. "Lock the door. She doesn't leave until the dress is finished."
"Thank you, my Alpha," Selene purred, wrapping her arms around his waist. "You are too merciful."
"Only for you," Kaelen murmured.
They turned and walked out into the blizzard, leaving the enforcers to handle the rest.
Lyra stayed on the floor. She pulled the spool of silver silk tightly against her chest. The smooth material felt like ice against her bruised skin. She squeezed the fabric until her knuckles turned white. This gown would catch the moonlight perfectly on the night Kaelen marked Selene. Nausea hit her. She swallowed it down.
She had to craft the very garment that would bind her mate to another woman. Every stitch would be a nail in her own coffin. But she had to stay alive. The two tiny pulses Thorne had found demanded it.
"Get up," the first guard barked, kicking her thigh.
Lyra clutched the silk and forced herself to stand.
The guards dragged her out of the clinic, pushed her through the howling wind, and shoved her up three flights of winding stone stairs. They reached a circular room at the top of the eastern tower. A single oil lamp burned on a wooden worktable. A pair of heavy iron shears sat next to a spool of silver thread. No fire burned in the hearth. The stone walls radiated absolute cold. Wind howled through the unsealed window, carrying flakes of snow that melted against the floorboards. There was no bed. Only a hard wooden chair and the worktable.
The guards pushed her inside. The heavy iron door slammed shut. The lock clicked.
Lyra dragged herself up from the cold stone floor. She hauled the heavy roll of silver silk onto the wooden table. Her hands shook as she unrolled the first yard. The fabric shimmered under the dim light, a mocking radiance.
She picked up the iron shears. The metal was freezing against her palms.
She aligned the blades against the edge of the silk.
The heavy iron door creaked open behind her.
Lyra froze. She did not turn around.
Heavy boots crossed the stone floor. The familiar, overwhelming scent of pine and rain flooded the small room.
Kaelen stopped directly behind her.
He did not speak. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating.
Lyra forced her hand to move. She squeezed the handles of the shears. The sharp blades sliced through the silver silk with a crisp hiss.
Kaelen bent down suddenly, his chest brushing her back. Warm breath fanned across the sensitive skin of her ear.
"Your eyes," Kaelen whispered, his voice dangerously low, "remind me of a dead person."
