Chapter 5 Sable #2
The words cut through her little act like a blade. She froze, her tearful expression quivering with confusion.
"What?"
"I'm a truth-taster." I wiped the blood from my split lip, letting her see the red smear on my fingers. "Every word you just said landed on my tongue like rotten meat. So unless you want me to tell your Alpha exactly what you said to me—what you did—I suggest you stop playing pretend."
Silence.
Petra's mask crumbled. The wounded victim disappeared, replaced by the cold-eyed predator I'd first encountered. She looked at Harkan, then at me, then back at Harkan.
"She's lying," she tried. "Alpha, you can't possibly believe—"
"Enough." Harkan's voice was quiet, but it carried the weight of absolute authority. "I can smell the blood on your hand, Petra. I can see the bruise forming on her face. And I can hear the way your heart is racing."
He stepped forward, putting himself between us, and Petra flinched.
"You struck a woman under my protection, carrying my mark," he continued.
"A woman healing from injuries she sustained defending herself from Varro's men.
You injured her familiar—a creature bonded to her soul.
" His voice dropped to something barely above a whisper.
"Give me one reason I shouldn't tear your throat out where you stand. "
Petra went pale. Actually, genuinely pale.
"Alpha, I—"
"Get out of my sight." The words were ice and iron. "You're confined to your quarters until I decide what to do with you. And if you so much as look at her again, I won't bother with decisions. I'll just act."
Petra fled.
The hallway was empty now—the wolves who’d come running had apparently decided they wanted no part of their Alpha's fury. I stood there, trembling, adrenaline still coursing through my veins, and watched Harkan's shoulders slowly unknot.
When he turned to face me, his expression was carefully controlled. "Are you all right?"
"Fine," I said automatically. Then, because my lip was still bleeding and my hands wouldn't stop shaking: "No. Not really."
He nodded like that was the answer he'd expected. "Can you walk?"
"Yes."
"Then let's get you back to the room."
He didn't touch me. Didn't try to carry me or guide me or do any of the things that would have made me bristle and snap. He just walked beside me, close enough to feel his heat, far enough that I didn't feel caged.
Trouble was cradled against my chest, his small body trembling, his foxfire barely a flicker.
His pain bled through our bond—bruised ribs, maybe cracked, the ache of being thrown by something ten times his size.
My arms tightened around him, and I had to swallow down the surge of magic that wanted to chase Petra down and finish what I'd started.
By the time we reached Harkan's quarters, the shaking had gotten worse instead of better. Delayed reaction. Adrenaline crash. Whatever you wanted to call it, my body had apparently decided that now was an excellent time to fall apart.
I made it to the chair by the window before my legs gave out.
Trouble pressed his small body against my stomach, and I buried my fingers in his fur. He was warm. Alive. Still here.
I'm okay, he seemed to say. We're okay.
But we weren't. Not really. We were trapped in a house full of wolves who hated us, hunted by a crime lord who would never stop, bound to a man I didn't trust by a mark I hadn't asked for.
"She came to me a year ago," Harkan said quietly, breaking the silence. He was standing at the threshold, watching me with an expression I couldn't read. "Petra. Offered to be my mate. I refused."
"I know," I murmured. "I could taste it on her. The rejection."
"She didn't take it well."
"No shit."
Another silence stretched between us as I wove healing magic into Trouble. My sweet boy didn’t deserve this bullshit, and I hated that he’d gotten hurt because of me.
"How did Varro bind you?"
The question hit me like a physical blow. I looked up, startled. His steady amber eyes were fixed on me.
"What?"
"You've been bound for years. Someone like you—someone with your gift, your fire, your magic—doesn't just let that happen." He pushed off the doorframe, moving to sit on the edge of the bed across from me. "So how did he do it? How did he get close enough to put that mark on your wrist?"
I opened my mouth to deflect. To snap something sharp and dismissive and change the subject.
But the words wouldn't come.
Maybe it was the adrenaline crash. Maybe it was the way he'd defended me without hesitation or question. Maybe it was just exhaustion—over a decade of carrying this weight alone, and suddenly, someone was asking to share the burden.
Whatever the reason, I heard myself say: "His name was Rafe."
Harkan went still.
"I was nineteen," I continued, my voice distant, like I was telling someone else's story. "Young. Stupid. So fucking na?ve it hurts to remember. My mother had just started teaching me to use my gift properly. I thought I knew everything."
Trouble pressed closer, sensing the old pain rising to the surface.
"Rafe was... charming. Beautiful. He smiled at me like I was the only person in the world.
" I laughed, the sound hollow. "My mother hated him from the moment she saw him.
She was a mirror scryer—she could see people's true nature in reflections.
She looked at Rafe and saw something that terrified her. "
"What did she see?"
"I don't know. She never told me. Just begged me to stay away from him." My fingers tightened in Trouble's fur. "I didn't listen. I thought she was being overprotective. Paranoid. I thought I knew better."
The memory of my mother's face—worried, pleading, afraid—rose up behind my eyes. I forced it down.
"We were together for six months. He was perfect.
Attentive. He never lied to me—or at least, never in a way I could taste.
He was careful about that." I swallowed.
"Then one day, he told me he was in trouble.
Family debts. He owed money to dangerous people, and they were going to kill him if he didn't pay. "
"Varro," Harkan said.
"Varro." I nodded. "Rafe said there was one way out. Varro would forgive the debt if... if he could meet me. Just a meeting, Rafe said. Just an introduction. Varro had heard about my gift and wanted to see it in action."
"And you believed him."
"I loved him." The words tasted like ash. "I would have believed anything he told me. So I went to the meeting. Let Varro test my gift on some poor bastard he'd dragged in. And when it was over, when I'd proven what I could do..."
I held up my wrist. The broken ouroboros gleamed in the firelight, Harkan's bite mark silvering through the shattered serpent.
"Varro had his men hold me down while he burned the mark into my flesh. And Rafe..." My voice cracked. I hated that it cracked. "Rafe just watched. Smiling. Like I was a prize he'd won."
Silence.
When I looked up, Harkan's face was carved from stone. But his eyes—his eyes were blazing with a fury so cold it burned.
"The debts were a lie," he said. Not a question.
"There were no debts. Rafe worked for Varro the whole time.
The romance, the relationship, all six months of it—it was a job.
His job was to find vulnerable magic-users, seduce them, and deliver them to Varro.
" I laughed again, bitter and broken. "I was just another mark. Another tool for Varro's collection."
"And your mother?"
The grief hit me fresh, even after all these years. "She died three months after I was bound. Hollowbone Fever swept through the Divide that year. Killed thousands." I had to stop, had to breathe, had to force the words past the tightness in my throat.
"I tried to go to her. I made it halfway to the door before Varro's men dragged me back.
He had me whipped until I passed out, then locked me in a room with wards I couldn't break.
The cuff burned every time I even thought about escaping.
By the time the plague passed, and he finally let me out.
.. she'd been dead for weeks. Burned in a mass grave with the other victims so the sickness wouldn’t spread. I never even got to say goodbye."
Trouble whined softly, pressing his nose against my palm.
"After she died, I..." I stopped. This part I'd never told anyone. "I wanted to end it. The pain, the grief, the knowledge that I'd ignored her warnings and lost everything because of it. I stood on a bridge one night, looking at the water, and I thought: 'Why not’? What was left?"
"Sable." His voice was full of compassion, but I had to get this out. It was like poison from a wound and I had to get it out before it burned me up.
"That's when Trouble found me." I stroked the fox's fur, letting the familiar comfort ground me.
"This tiny ball of red fur and foxfire, yipping at me like I was the stupidest person he'd ever met.
He bit my ankle hard enough to draw blood, and when I looked at him.
.. I don't know. Something shifted. He needed me.
And maybe I needed something to need me. "
I looked up at Harkan, expecting pity. Expecting the soft, sympathetic expression that made me want to scream.
That wasn't what I found.
His face was still stone, but the fury in his eyes had shifted into something else. Something that looked almost like recognition.
"I know what it is to be owned," he said quietly. "To have someone else hold your leash. To lose everything that matters and be powerless to stop it."
He held out his wrists. The scars I'd noticed before—pale bands of twisted tissue encircling both arms like bracelets made of pain.
"A century," he said. "That's how long I wore chains. How long I was kept in darkness, alone, with nothing but my own rage for company."
I stared at the scars. At the evidence of suffering that dwarfed my own.
"Who?" I whispered, needing to know. Something inside me wanted to avenge him the way he’d done for me.
His jaw tightened. "That's a story for another time."
"Harkan—"
"Another time," he repeated, and something in his voice told me not to push. Not yet.
We sat in silence, the weight of shared pain settling between us like a third presence in the room. It should have been uncomfortable. It wasn't. Something about it was comforting in the absolute worst way.
"I don't tell that story," I said finally. "Ever. To anyone."
"I figured."
"So why did I tell you?"
He met my gaze, and for a moment, I saw past the Alpha, past the control, past the carefully constructed walls. I saw someone who understood what it meant to be broken and put yourself back together, piece by jagged piece.
"Because you needed to," he said simply. "And because I asked."
It wasn't enough. It shouldn't have been enough.
But somehow, impossibly, it was.