เข้าสู่ระบบSloane's POV
We left at 06:00, and every hour after that was a stone in my shoe.
The first parties went north to the second bridge. The others fanned out along the river, the quarry, and the farms because Lucien wouldn't gamble on Ryan's word alone. I understood. I hated it. I sat in the back of Vince's car with Carl's spare oxygen tank in my lap, a clean mask folded in my pocket, and watched the road crawl.
"Eat something," Emma said.
"I can't."
Sloane's POVWe left at 06:00, and every hour after that was a stone in my shoe.The first parties went north to the second bridge. The others fanned out along the river, the quarry, and the farms because Lucien wouldn't gamble on Ryan's word alone. I understood. I hated it. I sat in the back of Vince's car with Carl's spare oxygen tank in my lap, a clean mask folded in my pocket, and watched the road crawl."Eat something," Emma said."I can't.""Then drink." She pushed a water bottle into my hand and held it there until I took it.Nora sat on my other side. She hadn't said much since the dungeon. When I glanced over, she was staring at the tank in my lap."He's tough," she said quietly. "He asked me yesterday to teach him to throw a knife."I laughed, and it came out as a sob."Then trust that," she said.I held the tank tighter.We reached the second bridge at 14:20. The logging track be
Sloane's POVThey moved him to the dungeon before dawn.I watched from the top of the stairs as four sentinels hauled him down the steps, silver at his throat, his bad leg dragging. He didn't fight them. He kept his eyes on me the whole way."Don't go," Lucien said."He asked for me.""He's a liar.""He's a liar with Carl." I turned. "Please."I watched him lose the argument with himself. He kissed my knuckles, hard, once.I'll be right outside the door, he said into my head.I know.The cell smelled of damp stone and old iron. Emma stayed on the landing. Nora stood against the wall by the bars, her hand on her knife, her eyes never leaving his face.Ryan sat on the cot with his chained wrists across his knees. One eye had swollen shut. He looked up when I came in, and something in his face eased."Luna.""Where is he?""No greeting?""Where is my brother, Ryan?"He tilted his head and studied me. "Vince won't look at me," he said. "Lucien won't speak. Fifteen years in this house, and
Lucien's POVAt 02:50, I was standing over a sleeping boy, telling myself I was not afraid.Carl lay on his side in the hospital wing with one hand curled under his cheek. The monitor beeped, soft and steady. In nine hours a surgeon would open his chest, and I would sit beside his sister and be useless.Be careful, I'd told Sloane, an hour ago. I'd thought of nothing else since.Vince found me in the corridor. He was already speaking before I'd turned."The north gate sensor just went dark. And the east. Both at once.""A fault.""Two circuits, one second apart?" His face said what he thought of that.Before I could answer, the alarm bells began to scream.I was out of the door and down the stairs with my ribs stabbing every step. I didn't feel it. Through the great hall windows I saw the gates standing wide, and through them, pouring in like floodwater, men in grey cloaks and black jackets, and behind them, wolves. Dozens. Elders' sons I had eaten beside. Rogues with scarred muzzles.
Sloane's POVEmma drove like the road owed her something.Trees whipped past the headlights, black on black. Nora sat rigid in the back with her hand on her knife. I sat in front with both palms pressed over my chest, over the folded paper hidden against my skin, and felt my own heart slam against it.Lucien.Nothing.Lucien, answer me.A flicker. Pain, white and hot, then gone, like a candle someone kept trying to blow out."Faster," I said."I'm doing a hundred and ten." Emma's knuckles were bone-white on the wheel. "Hit a deer, and we don't get there at all.""Faster."She pressed down harder.I couldn't think about Oscar. If I thought about Oscar, I would turn this car around and drag him out of his bed by his hair.Lucien. Lucien. Lucien.The gates of Blackstone came out of the dark at 03:40.They were open.Not unlocked. Open. Bot
Sloane's POVI found the line on the third night, by accident.I'd read Bernard's notebook until the pages went soft at the corners. The weather. The wages. The unfinished sentence. Then I turned it over to hide it under my mattress, and the back cover gaped.Someone had slit the lining with a blade and pressed it shut again. A fold of paper sat in the pocket. Four lines, in pencil:If I'm gone, the cellar. He keeps every record. He can't help it. Third shelf, behind the wine.I read it eleven times.Tonight was the last night Lucien had given me. At five a car would come to take me home, and by noon Carl would be on a table in a white room, and I would be sitting outside it with my hands in my lap.If I found nothing tonight, I found nothing at all.Cellar,I told Lucien.Be careful,he said. His voice was thin, distracted. Something was pulling at him, a noise in th
Ryan's POVLucien came back across the border at dawn, and I was the first one at the gate to greet him.That's what a Beta does. He stands in the cold with the morning report in his hand and a face arranged to say welcome home, and he watches his Alpha climb out of a muddy car with his shirt buttoned wrong.The scent hit me from ten feet away.Her. Rain and warm skin and sex soaked through his collar, his skin, and the seat of the car. It rolled off him like heat off a stove. Every wolf in the courtyard lowered their eyes, because it was private, and because it was hers, and an Alpha's mate marked him as loudly as he marked her.Lucien met my gaze across the gravel. He looked tired, and strangely lit, like a man who had finally slept."Morning, Ryan.""Alpha." I smiled. "You look well.""Do I?""You look like a man who's had a good night."He almost smiled back. Then Vince stepped out of the guardhouse, and they almost vanished, and Lucien went inside with Vince at his shoulder and d
Sloane's POVHis chest heaved upwards and took a lot of time heaving downwards. Tonight, I wasn't Sloane,the naive girl who wrote a letter to her crush. I was Sloane, the contract wife of Lucien. His cock stood erect between his thighs,the veins pulsed quickly with each breath he took and one thoug
Sloane's pov.I gasped when Lucien swept me off the floor, placing me on the bed. He didn't lean away from me and his face was dangerously close that I was forced to gulp.His body was pressed against my naked boobs and his hand reached out to my back. I subconsciously arched away from the bed, let
Sloane's pov.They say Omegas’ don't matter. They reminded us that we are nothing. Thus, someone like me can't dream to be with someone like Lucien. What he did to me back in college also confirmed it.Omegas' like me are treated like we don't belong and I've been made to live with that truth every
Sloane's pov.A knock on Dad's study was all it took. I didn't wait for permission before I twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open.Dad was seated on the swivel chair, his hand tapping slowly on the desk. “You really want to do this?” I stopped in front of him and asked.Our eyes locked an







