CHAPTER 9: THE GUARDS' TERROR

"We... we didn't know it was you, My Lord," the first guard stammered out, his rough voice cracking violently mid-sentence as the sheer, suffocating weight of the man's primal growl crushed down upon him. His eyes were blown wide with pure, unadulterated panic, locked entirely onto the tattooed black wolf and crowned crest stretched across the broad, powerful back right in front of him. "Forgive us! We had no idea you were quartered in this suite!"

"Wrong room! Completely wrong room!" the second guard squeaked out in sheer terror, stumbling backward into the corridor so fast his heavy boots caught on the wooden doorframe, nearly throwing him flat on his back in his frantic haste to escape the terrifying presence towering over them.

They practically scrambled over one another to grab the handle and pull the heavy oak door shut, the latch catching with a sharp, desperate click that echoed loudly through the quiet suite like a gunshot.

I stood completely frozen in the stranger's firm arms, my shallow breath coming in ragged, painful hitches against his chest.

Why were grown, heavily armored pack guards shaking like terrified children just by catching a glimpse of his back? Who on earth is he to command that kind of instantaneous, paralyzing fear?

I suddenly realized I was still leaning entirely into his intense body heat, my small hands pressed flat against the bare, warm skin of his chest. I pulled back slowly, my palms sliding over the dense, unyielding muscle of his torso as I tried to steady my racing pulse and reclaim whatever shredded dignity I had left.

That was when my eyes caught the mark.

A thick, jagged scar slashed diagonally across his left ribs, pale and raised against his dark skin—a brutal mark clearly born from a lethal blade in some forgotten battlefield. I stared at it in stunned silence, completely unable to look away from the physical evidence of his mortality and lethal past.

He caught me staring at the scar. Without saying a single word, he reached out, grabbed his discarded shirt off the chair, and pulled it back on over his head in one sharp motion, concealing the pale scar, the dark ink on his back, and his striking icy blue eyes behind a thick mask of absolute, impenetrable detachment.

To him, I wasn't a person in need of saving. I could read the cold calculation in his sharp gaze—he looked at me like I was a dangerous complication, a stray liability he hadn't asked for, wrapped up in enemy cloth.

"Thank you," I breathed softly into the quiet room, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to sound brave. I swallowed hard, taking a desperate, small step forward as he turned away from me. "Take me with you. Please. I have nowhere left to go."

He turned his cold, unreadable gaze down on me, his expression carved entirely from stone. "Do I look like I'm running a charity for stray wolves?"

"I can work," I insisted, my quiet voice gaining a sudden, desperate strength born of pure survival. "Whatever you expect of me. Cleaning, cooking, heavy labor, anything you need done to earn my keep here."

He stared down at me for a long, agonizingly silent pause, his expression utterly blank and ungiving. He didn't offer comfort, and he didn't offer pity. He simply looked at me like a puzzle he couldn't quite figure out yet—or worse, a risk he was trying to calculate.

"It depends entirely on my mood tomorrow," he muttered coolly.

He turned sharply on his heel and walked straight out of the bedroom into the private sitting area, leaving the heavy door slightly ajar behind him.

I sank down heavily onto the edge of the mattress, pulling his oversized white shirt tight around my bruised knees. The heavy silence of the room pressed in on me like a physical weight, suffocating my thoughts.

Through the cracked door, a quiet, low voice echoed down the corridor as he spoke to someone waiting quietly in the shadows of the hall.

"Victor's daughter," he commanded, his cold tone clipped and utterly dangerous, sending a chill straight down my spine. "Get me everything on her dossier. Every secret, every scrap of poison, every tie to the Beta. By morning light."

My blood ran instantly cold in my veins. I sat frozen in the dark.

Why does a complete stranger want my father's name? And what could he possibly want with a nobody like me?