CHAPTER 13: HEAD HIGH

I am back on my feet, pacing the narrow length of my basement room—three steps and turn, three steps and turn. The thin white gown is crushed tight in one of my trembling fists, and the metallic echo of the iron gate bell is still ringing violently inside my skull like a striking anvil. Every strike of that bell feels like a slow, deliberate countdown to my own execution, rattling through the damp floorboards and vibrating up through the cold soles of my bare feet.

"He won't let me out of his sight," I whisper to the empty, shadow-draped walls, my mind racing in frantic, exhausted circles. Not to the town school. Not to the local market. Not even past the wrought-iron outer gates of the estate grounds. He stands by the window and watches the front entrance like a hawk the moment he returns home from pack council business. And yet Vivian can roam the territory as she pleases... and Victoria can do whatever twisted thing she wishes without a single word of reprimand or correction. "Because Mother's dead? Is that it? Is that why I'm locked away down here?"

It isn't what a loving father does to protect his own flesh and blood. It's what a paranoid keeper does to manage an animal locked inside a cage.

I stop pacing abruptly, my breath coming in short, ragged hitches, and sit down heavily on the edge of the thin mattress. A quiet, painful gasp escapes my throat as the freezing morning air hits my skin. I stare blankly at the crumpled white gown in my hand, then across the room at the warped wooden door, and finally down at the dusty, cracked floorboards beneath my feet, finding no comfort and no answers in the heavy, suffocating silence.

The man with the gold eyes. I close my eyes tight, and his cool, infuriating voice echoes instantly from the shadows of that dark luxury suite: "Do I look short-staffed to you?"

"He didn't even say yes," I whisper into the quiet room, the bitter truth of it sitting heavy and cold upon my chest. He is impossibly, terrifyingly powerful. Grown, heavily armored pack guards ran for their lives from the mere sight of the black wolf inked across his broad back. Why on earth would a dangerous predator like that ever care about a nobody trapped in Beta Victor's basement? Nobody comes to rescue people like me. Nobody wastes their precious time or resources on a broken, forgotten stray.

I open my eyes and look down at my hands resting in my lap—small, soft, and shaking so violently that I have to lock my fingers tightly together to keep them still.

My gaze drifts past my bruised knees toward the dark, forgotten corner beneath the porcelain washstand, where the rusted iron edge of an old, heavy toolbox catches the dim morning light filtering through the edge of the curtain.

I lower myself to my hands and knees, crawling across the cold floorboards, and drag the heavy metal box out from the deep shadows. The latch groans in protest as I pry the lid open with a quiet, metallic scrape that echoes through the silence. I reach deep into the dark interior, past the old rusted nails and dry paintbrushes, until my fingers close firmly around a heavy, cold pair of industrial steel pliers.

Next to the tools sits a sleek, forgotten tube of crimson lipstick—the exact high-end cosmetic Victor carelessly handed to me days ago after Victoria threw a massive fit and refused to touch it because of its shade. I grab both items, wrapping them tightly inside a rough, clean linen handkerchief.

"Take it," Victor's off-hand voice echoes uninvited in my memory, his tone cold, hurried, and completely distracted as he threw it onto my desk. "Victoria doesn't like the shade."

Father gave me this, I think, a bitter, painful knot twisting deep in my chest. Maybe the only physical thing he has ever given me in twenty-one years that wasn't an order, a punishment, or a harsh correction.

The heavy metal of the pliers presses firmly against my palm, cold and unyielding. For a brief second, my grip on the small bundle trembles, but then my muscles steady. I take a short, tight breath and glance once toward the door. I do not put them back in the box.

I stand up slowly, holding the bundle tightly in my hand. I pull the thin white gown down over my head. The delicate material settles against my body, leaving my collarbones and broad shoulders completely bare and exposed to the biting morning chill of the subterranean room.

I take three quiet steps over to the cracked, distortion-warped mirror hanging above the washstand. I place the pliers and the tube of crimson lipstick down on the wooden ledge directly beneath the glass, right next to my resting hands. I force myself to look straight into my own reflection.

"Look at me," I whisper softly, meeting the hollow gaze of the girl staring back at me.

Puffy, bloodshot eyes staring out from the glass. Wet, tangled lashes. Fifteen years of being fed the steady, invisible poison that tells me I am nothing, that I am too heavy, that I am weak, broken, and utterly worthless to the pack.

"If no one will come to help me, I'll save myself," I whisper, the low words carrying a sudden, frightening finality that settles deep into my bones.

"I won't bow my head," I say aloud, my voice growing steadier, harder, stripping away the lingering tremors of terror. "Not again. Not to Tristan, not to Victoria, and not to the elders."

I swipe the back of my right wrist hard across my cheeks, roughly scrubbing away the last damp tracks of tears until my skin stings red. I pull my shoulders back, squaring them against the freezing basement draft, and lift my chin high toward my reflection.

Above me, the heavy wooden floorboards of the ground level creak under the weight of multiple pairs of boots entering the manor's main entry hall. The elders have passed through the outer gates, and their arrival echoes directly through the ceiling.

I do not flee. I do not hide.

My fingers reach out slowly on the ledge, resting flat over the cold steel of the pliers and the sleek cylinder of the crimson lipstick. A dark, terrifying resolve settles over my chest like frost. They expect a broken girl to stumble up those stairs, disgraced, terrified, and ready to be paraded before the pack council. They think they have orchestrated the perfect trap to shatter me completely.

They have no idea what is about to hit them.

I look deep into my own eyes in the glass, my breathing slow, quiet, and deadly steady.

They won't see this coming.