Chapter 2
They put me in the back of an SUV that smells like leather and money and nobody says a word to me the whole ride.
I keep my eyes shut to keep the motion sickness at bay. I don't need my vision to know where my three captors are anyway—I can taste it in the air. The alpha pheromones mixed with each’s strong presence.
Hot copper at the wheel, the youngest one.
Cold wood and ice up front, the father.
On my left, close, cool green—cut grass, clean air, a scent that resets your senses.
My hands won't warm up; they never do when my heart's been running this hard this long, and the nailbeds have gone a little blue. I fold them under the bag so nobody clocks it.
The ride goes long. The stop-and-go of the city smooths out into something faster and steadier, fewer turns, the tires humming under me.
When the car slows and turns, I open my eyes on a gate, a driveway that runs too long, and a house—pale stone, black windows, lights on a timer, nothing about it that says a person lives here.
This must have been the fairytale. This must have been what drew Starla in.
The calm one opens my door. "Out."
I get out. My legs are stiff from the ride and slow to take my weight, and the ground goes a little unsteady for a second before it settles. I wait it out, then walk like nothing happened.
Inside are pale floors and cold air and the smell of money and cold flowers. The father, Vincent, stops in the middle of the foyer and turns, and for the first time he looks at me like he'll speak to me instead of about me.
"You'll remember three things," he says. "This is my house. You stay in it until your mother makes what she did right. And there's nowhere on this property you can run that we won't find you." His eyes move over me once—torn shirt, the bag against my chest—like I bore him. "Calder."
The calm one steps up. Calder. Built like his brother, wearing it nothing alike—sleeves shoved up, hands empty, in no hurry. The green-cool one. I file the name.
"Put him downstairs," the father says. "The old cellar rooms."
"Downstairs?" The young one fills the doorway behind me, hot copper rolling in with him. "We've got nine bedrooms and you want to—"
"He's not a guest, Killian."
Killian. The hand that was around my throat an hour ago. I file that one too.
Calder and Killian escort me downstairs.
The cellar stairs are stone and there's no rail, and by the third one my legs are shaking and my chest has gone tight. I go slow with a hand on the wall and let it look like fear. Calder's behind me the whole way, counting my steps. I make every one look ordinary.
The room's exactly what it sounds like. Bare bulb, stone floor, a cot somebody dragged in, a bucket.
One high window painted over so long ago it's not a window anymore.
Cold comes up through the floor into my bare feet.
There's a drain in the middle of it. I decide not to think about why this room needs a drain.
I've slept in worse. At least, that’s what I tell myself so I don’t start hyperventilating.
Calder sets a water bottle by the cot. I don't know what to do with it, so I don't do anything. He's turning to go when Killian comes down the last stairs with his phone already out.
"Hang on. Before we tuck him in." Killian takes the last stairs two at a time, loose and easy.
Calder stops at the bottom and leans a shoulder into the wall, arms folding across his chest—filling the space without looking like he wants it. "Killian." Flat. He doesn't raise his voice; I don't think he ever has to.
"It's motivation." He crosses to me—all smoke and fired copper, broad through the shoulders and a head taller than me, moving like the floor belongs to him—and takes my chin in one big hand, a cold ring biting into my jaw, and tips my face up to the light.
Up close his eyes are almost friendly. He's younger than his brother, twenty-five at most, a half-healed cut of his own over one eyebrow like this is just what his weeks look like.
"Smile for Mommy," he says, and hits me.
It's a backhand, and it's hard. The ring does the damage.
My head snaps toward the stone, my lip splits on my teeth, copper fills my mouth.
My heart goes off with no rhythm to it, too fast, too hard, and the gray floods in from every side—but I keep my knees under me, because going down in front of him is the one thing I won't do.
"There we go." He steps back and lifts the phone. "Now you look like you're having a bad time."
The mark. That's what he wanted—something that'd show up in the shot.
I don't cover up. Covering up would just make them do it again to get the picture they're after. So I hold still and let him take it, blood on my mouth, the flickering fluorescent bulb making all of it look worse.
The phone clicks.
"Who're you sending that to?" Calder asks. He's pushed off the wall now, hands loose at his sides, still in that contained way that's the exact opposite of his brother—only his eyes move, phone to my face and back.
"Her." Killian's thumbs are moving. "Took her number off Dad's phone. Picture's worth more than a call." He turns the screen to me—Starla's name up top, my face at the bottom. "Back by Friday."
"She won't answer."
It's out flat and sure. Starla doesn't come back for me. She never has. A photo of my split lip won't change that—if anything it tells her exactly what she left and how little it's worth the drive.
Killian doesn't look up. "They always answer."
Calder's eyes hold on me a beat too long, drop to the blood, and something moves in his face and gets put away.
He doesn't wipe it off. He doesn't tell Killian he went too far.
He drags a hand back through his hair—the one restless thing he's done since he came down—and goes up the stairs, unhurried, the green, clean scent thinning out behind him, and Killian follows, still typing.
The door closes behind them and a bolt slides into place.
Then it's me and the bulb and the drain.
I sit down before my legs decide it for me. Now that nobody's watching I let it come—the racing pulse, the cold sweat, the room tipping on its side. Head between my knees, four in, six out, until my heart remembers how to be a heart.
It takes longer than it used to. But that’s what the doctors warned me about.
When it settles I pull the bag into my lap and check, without taking anything out, that it's all there. Heart pills. The strip of suppressants. I've got what I need—for now.
I catch myself reaching for the old thought, the one that's always been true: there's always another strip.
Starla never once let me run out. But Starla's gone, and nobody in this house even knows I take them, and for the first time in my life the math has an end to it.
Fifteen-ish tablets. Fifteen-ish days. After that I have no idea what happens, and no idea if I'll still be down here to find out.
Not something I can fix tonight. I make myself put it down.
I press the back of my hand to my lip until the bleeding stops. I pull the thin blanket around me, lie down in the cold, and make myself small. Then I wait to find out what the three alphas upstairs want from me next.