Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
THISTLE
I had to find Rogue.
Knox was toying with me, and I’d failed at my mission of making sure he knew I hated him, so finding my mate was crucial. Once I’d met him, it would be easier to keep everything straight.
So, when I fumbled my way out of my makeshift, completely unsatisfactory nest of pillows the next morning, it was with renewed determination.
I gathered up Bunny, the loose paper and pen I’d found in a drawer, and tugged on a pair of socks.
We were gonna find Rogue.
Screw Knox and his stupid rules.
Bastard hadn’t cuddled me last night, anyway.
What had he said— he’d cuddle me as much as he was capable?
And he couldn’t manage two nights in a row?
“Does he think we’re going to settle for a cuddle-stunted Alpha who isn’t even our scent match?” I drew up in the hallway, glancing down at Bunny, a thought suddenly striking me.
You think…?
Well… it would make sense, and I’d never met an Alpha so determined to prove he was cuddle-capable before.
And he hated Rogue.
And he kept trying to outdo him.
You think Rogue is like… a cuddle champion?
Oh—he had to be.
And that prick is trying to get ahead before we find out, Bunny.
I was fucking onto him.
With renewed excitement, I hurried down the hall, careful to be quiet as I passed Knox’s bedroom door.
The south wing was where the main ball was hosted, and last night Knox had told me the east wing was where the staff lived.
I wandered through the exit at the end of the hallway and into a huge room with four sets of double doors leading in different directions. We’d entered through here on the way in, and I knew they led to the other wings.
Where was Rogue, though?
Was he in the east wing with the staff?
I didn’t think so, Knox had told me Rogue was different. More likely he was in a horrible dungeon somewhere.
Still, I tried the east wing door and found it locked.
That was okay.
I had a plan.
So, I scratched out a note with the pen and paper I’d found in my bedroom desk drawer.
Help.
Lost my key to Rogue’s room, need another one. Please leave it under my pillow. Don’t tell Knox I lost it, or I’ll be in trouble and I need cuddles really badly.
Thistle and Bunny
I re-read it, sucking on the pen tip, then scribbled out ‘room’ and replaced it with ‘cell’.
Sounded more legit.
Then, I slipped it under the door and got to my feet. Maybe that would get me somewhere, but I’d have to wait.
In the mean time, I could try to explore.
“South’s the ballroom, north we just came from, and east is locked,” I muttered, turning around and looking at each.
Only one left.
I tried the huge, oak door to the west, and to my delight, it creaked open.
A grin spread across my face, and I glanced back at the north exit I’d just come through, giddy excitement bubbling in my tummy.
Was he in here?
Oh my god .
I yanked on the door, letting out a grunt at how heavy it was, then staggered into the dim hall lit only by the afternoon sun filtering in from a few tall windows.
I hurried down it, opening door after door, frustrated when I saw nothing but dusty old, unused offices, storage closets, and a spare bedroom.
Dammit.
I was just starting to lose hope, the end of the huge, high-ceilinged hallway stretching ahead of me, when I stumbled upon a place that changed the whole world.
I opened the door to darkness but stayed for the scent within.
It was comforting.
I’d gone to elementary school, like most kids. But when I reached high school, my father was sick of dealing with the headache. We’d never done well for money, always had foster kids in and out, and he didn’t want to risk social services being called when I was constantly getting in trouble with other students. I didn’t understand the kids and the code, and the way everyone was supposed to talk and get along, and I got into fights a lot.
But before he’d pulled me out (claiming to home school me) the art room had been my favourite.
The earthy, crafty scent stuck with me, and something about this room felt the same. I poked around the wall for a light switch with no luck, and instead made for the windows. I tugged a set of massive curtains apart, and light streamed into the room of my dreams.
There were canvases everywhere, a broad wooden table that was all scratched up, and shelves spanning a whole wall with dozens of different sorts of paper in huge sheets or rolls. Scattered about on ledges of easels, and upon the table were pencils, sticks of charcoal, and more.
I stared for an age before realising my mouth had dropped open.
I drew bunny tight, rubbing my eyes like it might all vanish. “A real life art room ?”
This was a dream.
I glanced back at the door, realising it was still open in panic. I crossed toward it and shut it quickly, knowing I wasn’t allowed in here. I couldn’t get caught—not when I hadn’t had a chance to look around.
This room was magic .
Sometimes I found places that meant so much to me that time could just… slip away.
This was one of them.
I could just be … right now. Made of feelings and dreams with no past or future.
I set Bunny down gently on the windowsill and circled back to the easels, peering at them curiously.
Oddly, they were all black—in fact, every piece of art paper on display in the room was. I tugged a few from a rack, laying them out on the massive table, and sure enough, they were pitch black, too.
Only… I glanced down at my hands to see they were covered in smudges.
“Oh…”
I frowned.
I’d only ever had crappy pencils to draw with myself, but there’d been a few different mediums in those old art rooms in my run-down school. I reached for a little object on the table, small and sorta pencil shaped.
I rubbed it between my fingers watching as it stained my skin the same black of the paper.
It wasn’t dark paper at all.
Delicately, I picked one up and crossed toward the window, squinting at the darkness.
I held it up to the sunlight since it was the size of a poster and wouldn’t fit on the sill. And sure enough, in the light, I could see the ridges on the piece.
The paper wasn’t black—it had been turned black with a thousand strokes, each leaving a dent in the texture.
Someone had taken time to turn a white canvas black.
I turned, then dragged the piece over a stool, balancing the paper across both it and the oak windowsill so I could step back.
There. I looked at it again.
Each inhale filled my lungs with a tide of dust and art, ink and graphite, paper and wood. In my vision, the piece blurred, black grooves coming to life the longer I stared until finally, I saw it.
There was art below the blackout.
It seemed to be sideways, so I turned it, stepped back once more—and there it was.
When the light hit just right, there were details upon the paper, etches that even the noir of the charcoal couldn’t quite hide in the right light.
I backed up to the others, finding it easier to see beneath now I’d seen it once, and lined them up, one by one.
It was, I realised, a snapshot into something darker than the charcoal that covered them.
I saw the same setting, same figure, all with slightly different variations.
It took me a long time to truly understand what I was looking at, but the art, even hidden, had been made with few strokes.
The image itself was simple, and yet each choice, each heavy-handed line was deliberate, skilled, and each evoked the same thing.
Upon every canvas was a depiction of pain.
A man lay chained among trees, his form tense and taut with agony.
In a world where I struggled to connect with others, where normal reaction and empathy were eroded, I think they were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.
But they were all the same.
The shadowed man tumbled through every depiction of tragedy. From hands and knees, body hunched, to screaming, then back to the ground, arching and agonised, or curled up and frightened.
Fear to desperation, to despair, until he was a husk.
My stomach turned, as I looked back over them again and again, as if the story might change.
There was so much pain in each, I could feel it in a way I never had.
But why would someone do this over and over?
If there was no end?
I chewed on my lip, looking around to find there was one last piece left on the easel beside the door.
I slid onto the seat, tilting it toward the light and trying to see past the charcoal smudges trying to obscure it.
Would this one be different?
He’d suffered enough.
The chains had to be gone.
Something got stuck in my throat as the final image took shape.
The chains were gone, but the man wasn’t free. He lay, no longer tense, or doubled over, or agonised.
He was dead.
And when he died, he was in pieces, his body glitching across the page like a bad recording of an old movie.
There was no room for expression or detail, but the sadness of his last gesture was so stark it made my chest tight, and I realised I hadn’t breathed since the moment I’d sat down.
He was reaching out, begging for help. For touch. For… anything.
But it had never come.
A pit of frustration coiled in my chest like a hot coal as I curled my hands behind my neck a little growl slipping out.
I didn’t get it.
Why paint this story if there was no happy ending?
When I drew, I wanted to draw my dreams, not this . I reached out, jaw clenched and heart racing?—
“Little Doll…” Knox’s ice-cold words snapped me from the trance and I jumped to my feet, eyes wide as I caught sight of him. He leaned against the doorframe, arms folded, and gaze fixed on me.
How long had he been there?
Now I was breathing normally, his scent was in the air, but I’d been so transfixed I don’t know that I would have noticed if he hadn’t spoken.
“Is this his?” I asked, voice cracking.
That’s why I was banned from here?
Knox cocked his head, peering around at the canvases of charcoal. “Rogue?” he asked.
“I can see his pain,” I said, glancing back at the picture, the little coil of fury still pulling tighter in my chest. Knox’s eyebrow rose as he considered me.
“You can see the drawings?”
“Does he hide them after, so you don’t know what they are?”
That had to be why.
I’d been so desperate for the pain to be over, instead to find… I squeezed my eyes shut, shoving that last image away.
He’d broken in the end.
He’d never found freedom.
Was it too late? Even if I got him free?
But that last piece…
It had felt so final.
“I wouldn’t know,” Knox said quietly. “I don’t make it my business to work out what goes through his thick skull.”
A low growl rolled through my body, something more protective and furious than I’d ever felt.
Knox cocked his eyebrow, gaze fixed on me intently.
I wished I hadn’t seen them—Rogue hurt because of the Alpha before me.
The one I was letting in.
And yet he was punishing my mate for wanting to draw just like I had always been punished…
Knox hadn’t stepped further into the room, and there was an edge of bitterness to that usually gentle scent of ink and antique wood.
He didn’t like this place.
Because it held Rogue’s expression?
That was a freedom of sorts, and he didn’t like the idea of us creating like this.
He was never going to get us a sketchpad, Bunny.
“Come here,” Knox said.
I was almost relieved to grab Bunny and obey. It had given me a glimpse into something that ached. A split seconds of desperation, of cries for help that all echoed into my soul.
I had to find Rogue.