Chapter Two Chains

I screamed when the cuffs clamped around my wrists. Not just from the pain. From humiliation.

"Zara." My voice broke completely. "You are my sister. Why are you doing this? What have I done to you?"

She crouched in front of me. Her wolf flickered behind her eyes. Cold and satisfied.

"You exist. That was always enough."

She stood back up and I dropped my head and I begged.

“I would disappear, I would leave, you would never hear from me, never see me, I would be gone so completely it would be like I had never existed at all.”

She tilted her head. For one second I thought she was actually considering it.

"You will disappear," she said softly. “To the Alpha's House. You will stay exactly like this. No food. No water. Nobody is coming for you."

She turned and walked back toward the house without looking at me once.

One by one the lights in the windows went out.

Then the rain came.

It started soft. Just drops, scattered and cold. Then it came down all at once, heavy and merciless, soaking through my clothes in seconds. My hair plastered to my face.

The chains grew heavier with the water and the cuffs bit deeper into my wrists and I pulled against them with everything I had left, which was almost nothing.

"Help… Someone... please..."

The rain didn't stop.

My vision blurred. The world tilted sideways. The chains were the only thing keeping me upright as my body gave out completely.

* * *

I woke to an unfamiliar scent. Stone. Cold tile.

Stronger wolves.

My arms were tied behind me now, tighter than the chains had been, and there was thick fabric over my eyes.

Footsteps. Slow and pacing. Someone was already in the room.

I pushed myself upright too quickly and nearly collapsed.

"Who's there?" My voice came out shaking. "Please. Who's there? Please answer me, someone—"

A kick to my stomach cut the sentence in half. I folded forward and screamed.

"Shut up," a voice snapped. "Be quiet."

I knew that voice. "Father?" I whispered. "Father, where am I. Please take this off, I can't see anything, what are you going to do to me."

His hand closed around my throat.

"If you ruin this, your life will not just be painful. It will be nothing. Do you understand me?"

I tried to nod. I couldn't tell if my head actually moved.

“You are Mia Morrow now. My youngest. You will accept the mating bond offered to you. You will smile.”

My stomach dropped through the floor.

"What did you—"

"Enough."

A different voice. Coming from the side of the room. The kind of voice that didn't need to be loud because it had never once in its life needed volume to be obeyed.

My father's hand dropped from my throat instantly. Silence filled the room like water filling a container. Even my breathing felt too loud.

"Alpha Lucian," Father said. "I... I brought her. My youngest. The one I promised. She is here."

A pause. Then footsteps.

A stick. Tapping against the tiles. Once.

Twice. Coming closer.

"Stay still," Father hissed. "Do not embarrass me."

The tapping stopped.

Right in front of me. Then his hand slowly reached toward my face.

His fingers found the edge of the blindfold.

And pulled it down.

The light hit me all at once and I blinked, eyes burning. And when it finally cleared, I saw him for the first time.

And whatever I had imagined Lucian Draveth to be, it was not this. I had built him wrong in every way that mattered.

The whispers had painted him old. Weathered. A war relic kept upright by power alone. But the man standing before me was none of that.

He was tall, broad through the shoulders. Late twenties? Maybe early Thirties?

His cane rested against his palm. He was not leaning on it.

The silence stretched.

I made myself breathe evenly. It cost me more than it should have.

His hand moved again. Hands calloused. His rough fingers brushed my cheekbone making a mark down my face.

I flinched, twisted my head and tried to shove him off with my shoulder.

“Stubborn,” he murmured, his voice low and rough like he admired the fight in me but fully intended to crush it.

Then he released me and stepped away. The steady tap of his cane echoed through the room as he moved.

He lowered himself into a chair. One hand rested along the armrest. The other held his cane loosely, the tip touching the floor.

“So…” he drawled, his voice slow and edged with boredom. “From her scent and what I felt she seems bruised. Pale… so underfed.”

“I was under the impression your youngest daughter was healthy. A little more… well-fed.”

The last words dripped with sarcasm, a clear jab at my father’s earlier attempt to sell a lie.

I didn’t lift my eyes, but I felt the shift in the air. My father had gone rigid.

“Alpha Lucian, I–I promise you, she is my youngest. She just—”

Before he could finish, Lucian's Beta, Raith bent close and murmured something into his ear.

Lucian lifted one hand. A simple gesture.

My father snapped his mouth shut instantly.

Then he turned his head at a precise angle toward my father.

"Dorian."

My father straightened. "Alpha Lucian, I—”

"This one does not smell like the daughter you described."

My heart slammed against my rib hard.

Father laughed. "Alpha, she has been travelling. The rain, the cold, her scent is disrupted, she was kept near silver bolts for months, that alone would—"

"I am aware of what silver does to a wolf's scent," Lucian said. "I am also aware of what it does not do."

He stood slowly. He turned his face toward my father fully now. "So I will ask you once, Dorian. Just once."

"Is this your youngest daughter?”