Chapter Four #2
I stared at Thane’s back, at the set of his shoulders, at the way his magic bristled even as he tried to keep it contained. Protective. Defiant. Loyal to her in a way that he had once been loyal to me.
The feeling that rose in me wasn’t simple anger. It was possessive. It was sharp. It was the instinct of a dominant alpha who suddenly found his second placing himself elsewhere.
I stepped closer, forcing my voice lower, colder. “You choose her over me? Over your bonded?”
Thane was saved from responding when Aveline gave a frustrated sound. We both turned to see her hands fisted at her gown.
“Get out,” she said, voice shaking. “Leave. Now. Before he comes.”
“That isn’t an option,” I replied. “The tower won’t let us leave.”
Thane’s head turned just enough that I glimpsed his eyes, warning and heat. He’d chosen her side in this moment. He’d do it again.
And the tower hummed under us as if it approved.
Aveline’s gaze slid past Thane, meeting mine again. “You can’t just decide to kill him. You can’t—”
“Your father killed thousands.” The words came harsher than I intended, sharpened by years of blood and loss. “He did it slowly. Publicly. With pleasure.”
Aveline’s face crumpled, not into tears, but into a tight, brittle expression that looked like something splitting inside her. Her scent surged again, sweet and panicked, and my body responded with an answering pull that made my skin feel too tight.
Thane moved decisively.
He reached back, caught the edge of the door, and stepped into her bedchamber, guiding her backward with his body and his voice low and urgent. “Aveline, look at me. Breathe. You’re safe right now.”
She stumbled a half-step, gaze darting, then snagged on his face as if it were the only solid thing in the room.
Thane didn’t look at me as he pushed the door inward.
“Thane,” I said, warning cutting through my control.
His eyes flashed once, then he shut the door between us.
Stone clicked softly as it sealed.
I stood in the corridor outside her chamber, staring at the closed door, the tower humming beneath my boots, her scent still seeping through the cracks as if it had no respect for barriers.
The bond between Thane and me pulled tight, strained by the distance and by the choice he’d just made. I inhaled slowly, forcing air into lungs that wanted to fill with her, forcing my mind back into the shape of strategy.
The king might come. If he did, we would have one chance.
And I had just lost control of the only ally I trusted at my side.
Aveline
The door closed with a solid sound that reverberated through the stone, final and unmistakable.
I stood where the fair-haired alpha, Thane, had left me, my back pressed to the wall, breath coming too fast for the size of the room. The tower’s hum softened immediately, as if it approved of the separation, the space settling around us with a careful quiet that felt deliberate rather than empty.
He didn’t move closer.
That registered first, before anything else.
He stayed several steps away from me, angled slightly to the side instead of facing me head-on, his sword still belted but his hands loose at his sides, palms open.
His presence filled the room anyway, not because he crowded it, but because his scent did.
Warm leather. Cedar. Clean sweat and the faintest trace of hearth embers, as though he carried the memory of fire with him rather than smoke.
It washed over me slowly, not sharp or overwhelming the way it had been in the corridor when fear had spiked and my body had no idea where to put itself. This was different. Steady. Grounding. My lungs drew it in without effort, my shoulders lowering a fraction as my breathing eased.
The warmth under my ribs didn’t vanish, but it stopped climbing. The frantic edge dulled, turning into something quieter that sat heavy and low instead of sharp and panicked.
I slid sideways until the edge of my bed caught behind my knees and let myself sit, then curl, drawing my feet up beneath me.
The blanket waited where I had left it, folded neatly at the foot of the bed.
I dragged it around my shoulders and wrapped it tight, burrowing into the familiar weight and texture as if I could anchor myself there.
The alpha swore under his breath.
The sound startled me more than his raised voice earlier. It wasn’t sharp. It wasn’t directed at me. It was a quiet, frustrated sound that came from somewhere deep in his chest, like he’d just realized something had gone very wrong.
He turned and yanked the door open.
“Malric,” he snapped, his voice carrying down the narrow corridor. “Get the blankets from the nest you saw downstairs. Now.”
There was a pause. I couldn’t see Malric, but I could feel him, a pressure just beyond the door that made my stomach tighten again.
“That’s unnecessary,” Malric said, his voice clipped. “She already has—”
“Now,” Thane repeated, flat as stone.
Another pause, heavier this time.
“I'm not debating this with you,” Thane added. “Move.”
Something in his tone must have landed, because a moment later I heard boots retreating down the stairwell, the sound sharp and irritated against the stone.
Thane shut the door again, harder than before, the impact echoing through the room. He leaned his forehead briefly against the wood, exhaled once through his nose, then turned back toward me.
“Sorry,” he said quietly. “He doesn’t get to decide what you need.”
The words settled strangely in my chest. No one had spoken to me like that or taken my needs into consideration in a long time.
Perhaps ever. Except for the tower, but I wasn’t sure a stone structure, even a magical one, could count as caring for me.
Certainly my father, the only other human I had seen in years, didn’t care about my comfort.
I hugged the blanket closer, fingers knotting in the fabric. “What…what’s happening?”
Thane didn’t answer immediately. He moved to the small table near the window and nudged it aside, clearing space, then crouched a few feet from the bed instead of sitting beside me.
The distance was intentional, careful. He rested his forearms on his knees, hands loosely clasped, his gaze lifting to mine without trapping it.
“That depends. On what you want to know.”
I swallowed. My mouth went dry, my tongue thick.
“Who are you?” I asked. The question came out smaller than I intended. “How did you get here?”
Thane’s mouth curved, not in humor exactly, but in something that looked like understanding. “Those aren’t the questions you really want to ask. But I’ll answer anyway. My name is Thane and I’m an alpha. Malric is the other alpha. He’s a good man. He’s just worried about the war.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again.
The truth of that pressed in from all sides.
My body still felt strange, too warm, too aware, and every time I breathed in his scent, my thoughts slipped sideways, tugged toward things I didn’t have words for.
The war. I didn’t want to talk about that.
I wanted to stay in my tower—protected, isolated, safe.
He waited.
Time stretched. The tower hummed quietly, the sound low enough that to feel more than hear, a vibration that seemed to match the steady rhythm of Thane’s breathing.
I clutched the blanket tighter, my gaze dropping to my hands, to the way my fingers trembled slightly despite the calm settling into my chest.
When I finally spoke, my voice came out barely above a whisper.
“What did he mean,” I asked, “about the war?”
Thane’s jaw tightened. He looked away, not from me exactly, but toward the far wall, as if measuring how much truth could fit into the space between us.
“And about my father.”
The silence that followed was heavier than before.
Thane inhaled slowly, then nodded once, as if committing to something. “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I know. But I’m not going to dress it up, and I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t hurt.”
I nodded, my stomach tightening in anticipation.
“The Unseelie lands weren’t always like this,” he began. “Before your father took the throne, the courts were brutal, but predictable. Power shifted. Alphas fought. Omegas were rare, but they existed. Bonds were messy, political, sometimes violent, but they weren’t hunted.”
My fingers curled into the blanket.
“When the king rose,” Thane continued, “he decided control mattered more than balance. Omegas became leverage. He claimed they destabilized the realm. That they made alphas weak. So he started taking them. For ‘protection.’ For ‘containment.’”
My breath hitched.
“He built programs,” Thane said, his voice steady despite the tension running through it. “Breeding houses. Forced bonds. Experiments. When resistance formed, he crushed it publicly. Executions in the square. Villages razed when they sheltered dissenters.”
I pressed my palm to my stomach, nausea rising fast and sharp.
“The rebellion didn’t start because of ideology,” Thane said. “It started because people were disappearing. Because packs were breaking apart. Because entire bloodlines vanished.”
My vision blurred. Shutting my eyes, the room began to tilt under the oppressive weight of his statement.
“That’s-that’s not true,” I whispered, though the certainty wasn’t there. “He said…he said it was necessary. That he was keeping order.”
Thane looked back at me then, his gaze steady and unflinching. “That’s what tyrants always say.”
The sickness crested. I bent forward slightly, clutching the blanket to my chest as my breath came too fast again. A small sound escaped me, broken and involuntary, and before I could stop it, my body folded inward, curling tighter as if trying to protect something vital.
Thane was on his feet in an instant, then halted himself just as quickly, stopping short a few steps away. His hands lifted, then stilled in midair.
“May I?” he asked quietly.
I nodded, the motion small and desperate.
He crossed the distance and sat on the edge of the bed, not crowding me, his presence warm and solid beside me. He didn’t touch me right away. He let me close the space instead.
I did, without thinking.
I leaned into him, my forehead brushing his shoulder, my hands fisting in the fabric of his tunic as if it were the only solid thing left in the world. His scent surged, enveloping me, and something inside me loosened with a shuddering breath.
Thane froze.
His body went still beneath my touch, the tension that snapped through him like a wire pulled too tight. His scent changed, deepening, warming, and my own body responded in kind, heat pooling low and sudden, my breath hitching as something sharp and unfamiliar twisted inside me.
I didn’t understand it. I only knew that it made me cling harder, my fingers digging into his clothes as if letting go would send me spiraling.
Thane swore softly, the sound vibrating against my temple. His arms came around me then, careful, loose, as if he were afraid of hurting me, his hands settling at my back without pulling me closer.
His body was hard beneath the layers of leather and cloth, and the awareness of it sent another wave of heat through me, my thighs pressing together instinctively.
Something solid pressed against my hip.
Thane sucked in a sharp breath and shifted slightly, trying to give me space without breaking the embrace entirely. The movement only made the sensation more obvious, more impossible to ignore.
“What’s happening?” I whispered, panic creeping back in around the edges.
His breath shuddered. “I don’t know,” he said, voice rough and honest. “I swear, I don’t.”
The door banged open then.
Thane stiffened, his arms tightening around me just enough to steady me as Malric appeared in the doorway with an armful of thick blankets, his expression thunderous.
“I told you to—” Malric began, then stopped short when he took in the sight of us.
Thane glared at him. He stood, took the blankets, then slammed the door shut in Malric’s face hard enough that the stone rattled.
Silence followed, broken only by the tower’s low hum and the sound of my breathing as it slowly began to even out again.
Thane wrapped one of the blankets around me, layering it over the one I already held, cocooning me in warmth and weight until my body finally stopped shaking. He settled against me, curling around me to lend me his warmth and strength, his presence still close enough that his scent lingered.
We sat like that for a long time, the world narrowed to stone and warmth and the strange, frightening pull that thrummed between us.
Whatever this was, whatever had begun here, it was bigger than fear.
And neither of us knew how to stop it.