Chapter Twelve

He finished wrapping the cloth around my shoulder carefully, tying it with a precision that was almost obsessive, like he needed the knot to be exactly right. Then he sat back and looked at the work instead of at me.

"Don't read into it," he said.

But I was already reading it.

Because I had known Liam for six years. I had watched him be cold and cutting and deliberately cruel. I had watched him turn away from me in corridors and pretend I wasn't in rooms. I had watched him stand beside Moss while she poured wine on me and said absolutely nothing.

But I had also once, a long time ago, when we were younger and the curse was newer and none of us fully understood what was happening, found him sitting outside my door in the middle of the night. He had told me it was because the darkness was bad. That he needed to be near me to breathe. He had not spoken to me normally for three days afterward, like the vulnerability of it had frightened him into cruelty.

Liam was the most dangerous kind of broken. The kind that knew exactly what it was doing.

"You feel guilty," I said softly.

His eyes snapped to mine.

"You stood there," I continued, keeping my voice level. "When Anastasia had them hold me. You watched. You didn't stop it."

A muscle in his jaw jumped.

"And now you're here with medicine," I said. "Because you can't stand the thought of having done something wrong without doing something small and quiet to fix it. Because then you can tell yourself it balances out."

The silence stretched thin between us.

"It doesn't balance out," I said. "I want you to know that."

Liam stood up abruptly, closing the leather case with a sharp snap. His shoulders were tight, his whole body coiled with something he was working hard not to let out.

"Get some rest," he said, his voice back to flat.

"Liam."

He stopped at the door but didn't turn around.

"Thank you," I said. "For the medicine. Even if it doesn't balance out."

He didn't respond. He just pulled the door open and stepped out.

The lock clicked shut again.

I sat there in the quiet, my shoulder already feeling better, my chest still heavy. The salve was expensive, the kind healers kept for Alpha wounds. He had brought the good kind. He had brought it deliberately.

Too late.

Dinner came at exactly six. Dorla brought it herself, setting it down without ceremony. She lingered a second longer than necessary near the door, like she wanted to say something and then decided against it.

"Dorla," I said before she could leave.

She paused.

"The necklace I had when I arrived," I said carefully. "Silver chain. Small amber stone. Do you know where they put my things?"

She looked at me properly this time. It was brief, but it was real. "I'll see what I can find," she said.

It wasn't a yes. But it wasn't a no either.

After she left, I ate slowly, tasting nothing. The mountain air outside the windows had turned dark and cold. Somewhere below, I could hear voices. Deep and low, travelling up through the stone walls the way sound does in old buildings.

I had just pushed the tray aside when the footsteps came.

Heavy and multiple sets.

They stopped outside my door.

I was already on my feet when it opened.

Ryder stood in the doorway. He was dressed differently than earlier. Not travel clothes but something more deliberately darker and fitted. Behind him stood Liam and Kratavak in silence, their faces wearing expressions I couldn't fully read.

Ryder's eyes moved over the room once, then settled on me.

"Good," he said, like my standing was the correct response to his arrival. "You should be awake."

"What do you want?" I asked.

He stepped inside, unhurried. "The elders finalized the schedule this afternoon." He tilted his head slightly, studying me like I was a problem he was enjoying the shape of. "Given that we are now away from the manor and away from distractions, they decided there's no reason to delay."

My fingers went cold.

"The first bonding night," Ryder said, the words landing like stone dropping into still water, "is tomorrow."

The room went very quiet.

"You can't be serious," I said, my voice coming out steadier than I felt.

"I am always serious," he replied.

"Ryder" Liam started from the doorway.

"The schedule stands," Ryder cut him off without looking away from me. Something unreadable moved beneath the surface of his expression. Not cruelty, exactly. Something more complicated, and somehow worse. "The elders want confirmation by morning that the first ritual has begun. We'll follow the protocol."

"I won't," I said.

"You will," he replied quietly.

"Then you'll have to force me," I said, lifting my chin. "And every person in this house will know exactly what kind of Alpha you are."

Something flickered in his eyes. A warning, yes, but underneath it, something else entirely. The same thing I had seen in the study at the manor, right before Liam had walked in. That fractured, desperate thing he kept buried under seven layers of cruelty.

He held my gaze for a long moment.

Then he turned toward the door. "Sleep well, little mouse," he said, his voice low and controlled. "Tomorrow comes regardless."

He left.

Kratavak followed without a word.

Liam was last. He paused in the doorway just long enough to look back at me, and for one unguarded second, his face said everything he refused to.

Then he was gone too.

The door locked.

I stood in the middle of the room, the silence pressing in from every direction, and for the first time since I arrived at the mountain estate, I wasn't thinking about the necklace or my shoulder or Anastasia's cold, satisfied smile.

I was thinking about tomorrow.

And I was thinking that if there was any part of me left that hadn't been pushed past its limit yet, tonight was the last night it had to rest.

Because tomorrow, everything is going to change.

One way or another.