12 #2
Oona stares at the flames, feet rooted to the ground. Her eyes appear vacant, and the reflection of smoke and flame consuming gown after gown flashes in the small needlepoints of her pupils.
“You said to burn them,” she declares in a frigid sort of voice. And the fire —it doesn’t stop at the gowns. It climbs the walls. The roof. It ignites ivy and wisteria, charring them, as clouds of heavy gray smoke begin to smother the rest of the room.
Oona still doesn’t move.
I shake her. “Oona! Oona! We need help. Help—”
“What the fuck?” There is a low voice, masculine and rough, and my door bursts off its hinges. I jump at the movement, but Oona might as well be a corpse. All while the fire eats the rug, licks at the magical painting. Draws closer and closer.
A boy hurries inside. No, not just any boy.
The one who stole me from my father. The one who shoved me in that car and brought me to this damned place.
Golden eyes, black hair, and the world’s cruelest frown marring his face.
He doesn’t glance at me, simply hauls the rug out from under me and heaves it at the fire.
With a loud hiss, the flames die. Half my room is left burnt and smoking.
But the danger is over.
We’re safe—for now.
I exhale softly. “Thank—”
“What the fuck were you doing?” He storms over to me, to Oona, and pulls up her chin toward him. His golden eyes burn brighter. “Oona, snap out of it. Continue your duties.”
Oona blinks. Sniffles. Then her head turns much too slowly, and she looks at me. “You… you…”
“I know,” the boy says, forcing her gaze away. “Go. You’re not needed here anymore.”
“But it’s my duty to dress her.”
“She can do that herself. Find Fauna, have her grab some of the men, and clean what you can of this room while we’re gone. I’ll tell Lord Allard it was an accident if he asks.”
“Oh, thank you, Calix. Thank you.” Oona runs from the room with a staggered breath. Not once does she glance back.
Dumbfounded, I pick the purple dress off the floor. As it’s the only remaining option, I step into the silk skirt, pull up the stiff bodice, and shove my arms through sheer, billowing sleeves, before lacing up the forward-facing bodice as if I’m tying shoelaces on a sneaker.
The boy growls. He stalks toward me and takes the ribbon from my hands, lacing it up the rest of the way with military precision. “Even if we’re in our technical court right to compel those beneath our station, it’s basic morality that we don’t compel the maids.”
“I…” I shake my head, not understanding. “I compelled her?”
He glares down at me, tying the bodice so tightly, I can’t breathe.
Where Sin is almost ethereal in his beauty—a celestial, divine face adorned with a halo of blond hair, a smile so pure it could be carved from crystal—this boy is darkness.
Death. Ebony hair swallows the little light surrounding us, and golden eyes flash murder, reflecting the smoke clouding the room.
Shadows chisel the tanned muscles of his face and emphasize his snarl.
“Just because she is a Delta does not mean you can abuse her.”
“I w-wasn’t—”
“Being an Alpha doesn’t grant you permission to run over whomever you would like without consequences.” He finishes the bow, his biceps stretching taut beneath a loose, black tunic. “It’s further proof that you should never have been allowed inside this castle.”
I glare up at him. The emotional turmoil of the last ten minutes takes a toll on me, and I forget to be afraid. Forget to be anything but extremely irritated. “ You are the one who brought me here.”
“It was a direct order,” he growls. “Believe me, I had no choice in the matter.” I can hear what he doesn’t say—that he wishes he hadn’t. That he wishes I’d been just another mess to clean up, to leave bloody and dead on the side of the road.
A fifth claw rips free as I shove him away with all my might. To my great pleasure, he staggers. If only an inch.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I hiss, trying desperately to tamp down on the emotions roiling within, to stop the rest of my claws from spouting. “I didn’t mean to compel her. I just didn’t want to wear… those dresses.” I throw a hand toward the ruined wardrobe.
“And what a fantastic cause,” he drawls, moving to the doorway and leaning against the threshold. “You’re needed in the antechamber. Let’s go.”
“A man of few words and much decorum, I see,” I bite out between breaths.
He doesn’t respond, though his eyes track my movements as I try to dig a pair of slippers from the bottom of the wardrobe.
They’re still smoking. It’s like touching hot coals, though, and I hiss and leap away from the mess.
At that, humor floods his amber eyes. But he doesn’t smile.
He looks as if he’s never smiled a day in his life.
My hands ball into fists as best they can around my claws.
“I can’t go shoeless, can I?”
“You won’t be needing them.”
“Unless you plan on dragging me—”
He steps forward as though he does, in fact, plan on doing just that. I stomp my foot, moving beyond irritated and into enraged. Anger squeezes my heart in its tight grasp, forcing my pulse to obey. “Who… who are you to burst in here and start giving me orders?”
He crosses his arms. “The man who saved your life.”
“Calix,” I say, remembering what Oona called him.
His gaze narrows, fixed on my lips, and his heartbeat spikes.
His muscles tense. Almost as though he’s ready to attack.
Good. So far, everyone I’ve met has either been terrifying or helpful—Sin being a horrible combination of both. But Calix… He wants a fight. So do I.
Though I can’t understand it, though I want so desperately to suppress it and return to the human girl I was at the beach, a fight is what I’ve craved since I first shifted into a wolf.
“I prefer to think of you as the boy who ruined my life.” I lift my chin defiantly. “But if you’re too submissive to share anything beyond what you’ve been commanded to, I’m sure I can ask around and find out more on my own.”
“And just who would you speak to?” He moves forward, the action so inherently predatory that I take a step back. “Have you made many friends in your first day outside your chamber? Have you done anything this week but mope in your room, crying yourself to sleep?”
My bones beg to break. They plead for me to transform. I shudder with little control. Calix chuckles softly, not an ounce of humor in the sound.
“You smell like sea salt and rust,” he murmurs. “Like sadness and fear .”
God, I hate him. My toes dig into the half-charred rug. My claws beg to curl around his throat. “I would rather be sad than another pathetic soldier following the orders of their murderous fucking leader.”
He growls and, before I can process the movement, hurls me over his shoulder. The world tilts upside down. All I can see is his wide, stupid back as he charges out of my room and down the hall. Quite literally dragging me to the rite.
“You’re an asshole,” I say, beating my fists against his spine.
He ignores me, even as those in the hallways gasp or laugh or gossip behind their hands.
I hate him. I hate him. I hate him. The emotion—that pure, unbridled loathing—snuffs out my fear and sadness until I can’t think of anything else.
It feels deceptively good. Like climbing into bed after a long night, or the smell of candles being blown out on a birthday. Loathing has begun to feel like home.
I hardly notice when we race down a narrow, winding staircase.
And then I smell it—the scent of dozens of wolves, all clashing, cloying, as the sound of ominous, quiet drumming rises to meet us.
My anger falls away like a shield abandoned on the stairs, and I realize I’ve forgotten to ask the most important question of all. “Wh-what is the First Rite?”
Calix doesn’t answer.
He drops me on the cold ground of a damp cavern.
Stone walls encircle us, deep beneath the castle’s core, while seven shifted werewolves wait around a pool of rippling midnight waters.
The rest of the wolves stand behind them, in the bleak darkness of the enclosed space.
Only a single light illuminates the antechamber—a hole carved into the ceiling that spills pure moonlight into the waters.
Some of the unshifted werewolves beat drums. Others chant low, under their breath, “ For the stars, for the stars, for the stars .…”
It’s horrifying enough to raise the hair on my arms. “Calix?” I whisper, looking to him hopelessly. “Where are we? What is this place?”
Raising a brow as if in condescension, he gestures to the water. “Welcome to the Drowning, Hart.”
The… what?
I glance up, meeting the eyes of the Wolf Queen and her son, just as Calix shoves me into the pool. I crash through the surface, into an endless sea of salt water and… and something else. Something bitter. Rancid. Metallic.
My legs don’t touch the bottom. Can’t—there doesn’t seem to be a bottom to touch—and I fall through the water as the light of the surface distorts and disappears.