If you falter, you feed my wolves. If you cry, you feed me.

Clara's POV

I hurried to fill it from the sideboard, hands trembling so that the water spattered on the tray as I poured. Ice cubes chimed, sharp, and I prayed he didn’t notice the droplets running down the crystal’s neck.

I set it before him. My knuckles were white, but I willed them still.

He poured and drank, never lifting his eyes from me—not once blinking, not once letting me forget the audience I could never escape.

“Slow,” he mused, swirling water. “Weak. You would not last a day in the border woods. Perhaps we’ll fix that.”

He set the crystal down with a thunk.

“This afternoon, you will serve in the kennels. All day. You will do as the omegas command. Fail, and I will let the wolves treat you as traitors are treated—chewed, hounded. Do you imagine you know pain, Clara?” He bent close again, lips brushing my hairline, voice threading down my spine. “You don’t. But you will.”

His hand pressed to my neck again, pale thumb stretching the broken flesh. “My claim is warning. My bite is the law. Disobey, and I will mark you until no piece is left unscarred, girl.”

“So say it,” he challenged, digging nails into my scalp. “Say who owns you.”

I closed my eyes, humiliation muffling my breath. “You do.” The words tasted like blood.

He released me so suddenly I nearly fell.

“Pathetic,” he said, already dismissing me. “Go. If you’re late, I’ll know.”

The door slammed shut behind me, heavy and final. I heard the lock click. The hall beyond smelled suddenly like rain on ash—maybe freedom, maybe only another flavor of prison.

---

I wandered the corridor, led by shame and habit. Guards watched me without blinking—none smiled, none spoke. Only contempt, only warning.

I remembered my mother’s sunlit kitchen, the cinnamon and laughter, the old garden where daisies grew wild. I pressed those memories down, hard, until there was only heavy silence.

Below, the house was alive. Voices called—cheerful, cruel, or bored. Somewhere a dog barked and a child giggled.

All I had was footsteps and dread.

A staircase narrowed toward the service wing. At the landing waited a woman—omega, hair scrubbed to apple-shine, scars lacing her hands. She looked me up and down, distaste written deep between her eyebrows.

“This way,” she snapped.

Down more hallways. Through the kitchens thick with warm bread, past the pantry’s faint sugar scent, out disorienting doors until the world brightened to gravel and brown grass.

The kennel yard was a fenced square behind the main house, mud-daubed and echoing with the howls of the pack’s beasts. Iron runs spilled from a low, windowless building—inside, the air was sharp with piss and raw meat, cages stacked in rows on cold flagstones.

My guide gestured to the nearest cage, her mouth set in a line.

“You want to survive, Luna?” she asked, voice rolling the word in the dirt. “You do what I say. You don’t, I give him every drop of fodder you hand me. That’s how it is.”

She shoved a wooden bucket and harsh bristle brush into my hands. “Start with Empty’s run. You’ll know which one—she bites. Born with no tail, heart built of glass. Don’t bleed on the straw.”

I nodded, too numb even for tears.

I set to work—scrubbing dried filth from cold stone, fingers cramping on the wet wood, sweat stinging cuts along my wrists. The wolf in the next cage paced, eyes never leaving me, lips curled from ivory teeth as if tasting my fear.

With every stroke, with every breath, I remembered Taehyung’s words:

*If you falter, you feed my wolves. If you cry, you feed me.*

So I did not cry.

Time crawled. Sweat tracked salt along my hairline. My hands began to shake. I kept cleaning.

The omega watched me from the shadow of the door, arms folded across her chest. Sometimes she muttered, sometimes she kicked a bucket aside, always ready to report if I slackened, if I wept.

At midday, she threw me a chunk of bread. “Eat,” she grunted. “Don’t choke. He’ll know if you do.”

The bite of bread stuck in my throat. I forced it down. Our eyes never met.

Afternoon brought cold wind, sleet rattling against the slate roof. Still, I worked—on hands and knees, until my dress was torn, knees raw, arms shaking.

Wolves snarled, scenting my fear.

I did not cry.

---

Twilight found me in the empty yard, dusting grime from my ruined dress with trembling hands. My neck throbbed—a constant, burning reminder.

I traced the mark—Taehyung’s law, Alpha’s prison, iron curving beneath my skin.

The omega returned, eyes sharp, mouth twisting in a parody of pity. “He wants you,” she announced, voice almost regretful. “Now.”

I climbed unsteadily to my feet, exhaustion anchoring every muscle. I bowed my head and walked, step by step, through the empty hall, trailing filth and shame.

Taehyung stood in the foyer, cloaked in black, arms folded. The others whispered from far doorways, eyes flicking from me to the bloodstain still drying on my neck.

He beckoned with two fingers, a silent summons.

I crossed to him, numb. The room was graveyard-silent.

He looked me up and down, slow and cold.

“Did I say you could fall apart so fast?” he sneered, biting every word. “You look like trash dragged in from the woods. Did you think the pack would respect that?”

I straightened. I didn’t speak.

He stepped close, throttling breath. “You think pain is the worst I can offer?” He bent low, whisper hot at my jaw. “I can carve worse. I can make you long for the night you killed her, beg for that memory instead of me.”

He said it so soft only I heard, but I trembled.

His fingers circled my marked throat.

“Obey—no matter how it stains you. If I want you on your knees before the Pack—if I want you in rags, chained to the stones—you will do it, and you will thank me for the lesson.”

He brushed rough knuckles along my jaw, tugged my chin up. “Because the only way out of this house is through me, Clara. And I do not set prisoners free.”

He released me with a bored push. “Go to your room. You get nothing tonight but water and darkness. Tomorrow, you scrub the Alpha’s quarters. If I find a speck of dust—if I smell even a hint of your defiance—”

He let the threat hang, a blade at my nape.

“I’ll make you wish you’d died with her.”

I did not reply. I would not give him the fuel.

He watched me climb the stairs—eyes memorizing every falter, every limp.

---

My chamber door slammed behind me. Still, I refused to weep. I sat by the window, knees drawn to chest, my soul battered, dignity ground fine as salt.

Outside the world darkened—one window at a time.

I pressed my palm to the scar at my throat and whispered a promise into the growing hush:

“I will not break. Not for him. Not for them. Not tonight.”

Below, the pack howled, the sound spiraling into the long, cruel night. I listened, heart split between rage and survival.

One day, even monsters bleed, I thought.

And I would endure, no matter the cost.

But first, I had to survive the dark.