Chapter 6
My door bangs open at seven and I come awake in a panic.
I don't even register what the sound is—just loud, sudden, danger—and my body's moving before my eyes are open, scrambling back from it, and I go right off the edge of the bed and hit the floor in a tangle of blanket.
Killian's laugh fills the room. "Christ. I haven't even done anything yet."
I get my spine against the side of the bed, chest heaving, and blink him into focus as he comes into view. Dressed, grinning, a wad of rags in one fist. He lobs them at me and they bounce off my chest.
"Morning, sweetheart." He squats down over me where I've landed—forearms on his knees, close, that copper-and-smoke heat rolling off him. "Jumpy little thing. I like it. Makes this more fun."
Then he closes a fist in the front of my shirt and hauls me up onto my feet like I weigh nothing.
He doesn't let go right away. Holds me up close, taking his time looking me over.
"There's nothing to you, kid." he says, almost thoughtful, weighing me like a thing he might buy.
"Half a person. Barely worth the trouble.
" He lets go, and I stumble to catch my own weight.
"Come on. Big day. Turns out the tab you're working off comes with a mop. "
He starts me on the floors downstairs—drops into a chair in the front hall, boots up on an antique table that probably cost more than my life, and thumbs his phone while I mop my way across what feels like an acre of pale marble.
"Nope." He doesn't even look up properly. "That whole corner again. You're leaving streaks."
I huff. "I already—"
"Again." He smiles, still not looking up. "You act like your time's worth something to somebody. It isn't." He nods at the floor. "Slower this time. It's not like you've got anywhere better to be. This is it for you now."
My grip tightens on the wooden handle until my knuckles go white. Asshole.
So I do it again. There are no streaks—there weren't any the first time either—but arguing costs more than the corner does, so I redo the work that didn't need redoing.
And I let myself be quietly, uselessly furious about it the whole time, because that's the only defiance I've got: doing exactly what he says and hating him for every second of it.
When the floors are done he finds the next thing, and the next.
Dishes that are already clean. The silver, every piece of it.
Dusting the high shelves I need the ladder for.
The morning goes like that, and so does the afternoon—Killian trailing me through his father's enormous house, inventing work and undoing mine.
He puts me on my hands and knees on the kitchen floor that was already clean. "Grout's filthy. There's a toothbrush under the sink."
He sits up on the counter eating an apple while I do the whole floor by hand, and when I finish he glances at it and says, "Missed a spot," and points at nothing.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I grit out.
Killian pauses mid-bite, delighted I've said anything at all. "Immensely." He grins around the apple. "That supposed to shame me? Not landing."
"There's no spot." It comes out before I can stop it—the last of the fight I woke up with. "The floor was clean. The dishes were clean. None of it needed doing and you know it."
"Course I know it." Like I'm slow. "If it needed doing, it'd be a chore. This—" he gestures at me down on the tile with the apple core, "—is a hobby." He lobs the core into the sink I just scrubbed. "Now there's a spot. Off you go."
I stare at the core sitting in the clean basin. I don't move.
He slides down off the counter, unhurried, and crouches in front of me. "The mouth's new," he says, quiet, almost interested. "I'd lose it, if I were you. Do. The. Sink."
I don't move fast enough, I guess.
Killian closes a hand around my arm and hauls me up and marches me over to the sink himself—and then he's got me crowded against the edge of the counter, his chest at my back, a hand braced on either side of me, boxing me in. "There," he says, low, at my ear. "Not complicated."
And my body reacts exactly how I don’t want it to.
It goes hot and stupid at the press of him, all that heat and copper down my spine, and for one horrifying second I'm not scared—I'm flushed and flustered and leaning into it—
Then I twist and shove him off. Both hands, hard.
It barely moves him. But it surprises us both, and the kitchen goes dead still. Then Killian tips his head and smiles, slow and delighted. "Mm." Soft. "There’s some fight in you."
The slap comes out of nowhere—open-handed, sharp, snapping my head to the side, my cheek instantly on fire.
I’m dazed.
"See, that's the problem." He catches my chin and turns my face back to his, unbothered, almost fond. "I like fight. Gives me a reason." The grin spreads. "You want to be mouthy? Shove me around my own kitchen?" He fists a hand in my collar. "Great. Let's go make your day a whole lot harder."
He hauls me toward the back door.
Outside the afternoon's gone cold and bright, the grounds rolling away green to the tree line, and the temperature change from the warm kitchen makes my lungs seize. Killian marches me across the grass by the collar toward the stone shed and the heap of wood beside it.
Not this again.
Calder's out here—sleeves shoved up, crouched at the open hood of a truck with a wrench in his hand. He looks up as we come, and takes it in: the grip on my collar, the red mark on my face, the way I’m dragging behind him. His jaw sets.
"Kill. Ease up." Flat, even. "He's not gonna make it to dinner if you keep at him like this."
"He's mine today." Killian doesn't slow. "Back off, brother. You'll get your turn."
Calder holds his stare a second longer, something working behind it, then goes back to the engine without another word—but I feel that cool green attention stay on me the whole way to the pile.
Killian dumps me in front of it—except it's not a heap this time. It's the woodpile I stacked two days ago, still neat, still squared exactly the way I was told to leave it. For a second I don't get what he wants. It's already done.
"Move it," he says, and jerks his chin at the bare patch of ground a few yards off. "All of it. Back over there."
"It's already—"
"Stacked. Yeah." He grins. "That's what makes it good. Take it apart. Every log, back in a pile where it started." He drops onto an overturned crate to watch. "And who knows—when you're done, maybe I'll decide I want it back over here again."
Jesus Christ. He can’t be serious.
But my cheek is still a little tingly from where he hit me and it obviously wouldn’t bother him to do it again. Killian doesn’t give a shit about me, he’s made that clear, so the only true self-preservation option is just to keep my head down and do what he says.
With a clenched jaw, I take my own work apart log by log, haul it across the grass, drop it in a heap—undoing two days ago one armful at a time.
It takes hours.
The sun crawls across the sky and I keep moving wood.
My arms become noodles sometime around the second hour, so I switch to my chest and my whole body, hugging each log and staggering it across the grass.
My shirt soaks through and dries cold on me.
My hands stop closing all the way from the chill.
Every time I straighten up the yard tips and grays a little at the edges, so I quit straightening up—stay bent, keep my eyes down, turn each near-blackout into just resting a second against the pile.
"You move like an old man," Killian says from his crate, not looking up from his phone. And, later: "Losing the light. Better hustle."
Somewhere in there the last of my fight slips away with the last of my strength.
I stop hating him and just obey—lift, carry, drop, lift—my body doing what it's told the second it's told, nothing left in me to argue with. I’m either too tired to think about the consequences or my biology is simply taking over.
When an alpha says jump…
By the time the sun's dropping low and orange behind the trees, the wood's a heap again and I'm swaying where I stand. Calder crosses over from the truck, wiping his hands on a rag.
"That's enough, Kill." He looks at me, then at the pointless heap, then at his brother. "Let him go eat something. He's done."
"He's not done." Killian stands, stretches, pockets the phone. "Library needs a good dusting. Top to bottom." He grins at me. "Then he can eat."
Calder's jaw works, but he lets it go—just gives me that cool green look and turns back to the truck.
By now I've been on my feet since seven—ten hours, maybe eleven. My heart hasn't settled once all day, my hands won't fully quit shaking, and I'm running on nothing: no food, no water, and nothing left to steady any of it.
Killian watches me sway where I stand, and something nasty and pleased crosses his face. "What, that's it? You gonna quit on me?" He tips his head. "You're not done. Tell me you're not done."
"I'm not done." It comes out automatic. It's a lie—I'm so far past done I can't see it from here—but admitting it is more dangerous than the work, so I give him what he wants. "I can keep going."
"Course you can." He crosses to me and takes me by the arm to haul me along with him—
—and stops.
Just for a second. His hand tightens and his head tips a fraction toward me and his whole body goes still, the way an animal goes still when it catches something on the wind.
He's close. And whatever he's getting off me now, this near, at the tail end of a day that's burned through every defense I've got, it snags him hard.
Oh, no. For one stretched-out second I'm certain he's about to figure it out.
He doesn't. He's got no reason to guess at a thing that rare. But whatever it is, he doesn't like it—his jaw goes tight, his grip closes down to a bruise, and when he talks his voice has dropped rougher than before.
"Move." He hauls me toward the house, fast, not looking at me. "Library. Now."