chapter 5

Daisy

There are lies you tell to survive. Then there are lies that tear you open on the way out.

"A man," I said. Lucien went very still in his chair.

"A man," he repeated.

"Someone I was with before Moonstone." I stared at the ceiling so I wouldn't have to look at him.

"He wasn't kind. He told me I was nothing. He told me I'd never be anything. When I left, I didn't want him to find me. So I took the pills."

It wasn't even a lie. Not really. I just didn't tell him the man was sitting right next to me.

The room went so quiet I could hear the clock ticking on the wall. When I finally turned my head, his hands were curled into fists so tight his knuckles had gone white. His eyes had bled from gold to black.

"Give me his name," he said. Everything inside me stopped.

Give me his name, Daisy girl, and I'll break his legs. I was fifteen, crying on the back porch over a stupid boy, and he sat down beside me and said those exact words. I laughed so hard I forgot why I was crying. Now I wanted to scream.

"No," I said.

"Rose."

"He's not your business, Alpha. Neither am I."

He stood up so suddenly the chair tipped over. He leaned over the bed and planted his hands on either side of my head, caging me in. His shirt was still on my body. His sheets were still wrapped around my legs. His scent was everywhere, and Nyx was whimpering like a kicked puppy.

"You collapsed in my house," he growled. "You bled in my house. You saved my mother's life in my house. You are absolutely my business."

"Why?" I said.

"Because I'm useful?"

"Because I said so," he said.

He grabbed the pill bottle off the nightstand and shoved it into his pocket. My heart stopped.

"Give that back."

"No."

"I need those!"

"You don't need to hide from anyone here." His voice dropped low and dangerous.

"Nobody touches what's under my roof. If that bastard ever shows his face on my land, I'll rip his spine out through his mouth. You hear me?" I stared up at him. He meant it. Every word.

The man who broke me was promising to kill the man who broke me. I almost laughed. I almost cried but I did neither.

"Fine," I said. "Keep them."

He didn't know about the six pills sewn into the lining of my bag. Six pills, two a day. Three days before my scent came back.

He moved me that afternoon. Not to the staff quarters. To the bedroom right next to his mother's in the family wing, with a door that connected straight through to hers. It used to be my room.

Someone had painted the walls. My posters were gone. My little desk was gone. But the crack in the window was still there, the one I made with a softball when I was eleven. Lucien had covered for me and told Helena he did it.

I sat on the bed and pressed my hand over my mouth. Every night, he sits in her old bedroom until the sun comes up. This room. He sat in this room.

"He did that, you know."

I jumped. Helena was watching me through the open connecting door, propped up on her pillows. Her voice was thin as paper, but her eyes were clear for the first time in days.

"Did what?" I said.

"Moved you in here. He threw a fit at the staff this morning. Said no healer of his was sleeping in a cupboard." She smiled weakly.

"He hasn't let anyone sleep in that bed for two years, sweetheart. Not even the cleaners are allowed to sit on it." I walked over and sat down beside her, taking her cold hand in mine.

"Mama," I said quietly,

"please don't."

"He's not what you think he is," she said, her voice was laced with so much pain that it made my heart hurt.

"He's exactly what I think he is. I heard him." Helena's eyes filled with tears. She squeezed my fingers with what little strength she had.

"Then ask him," she said.

"Ask him about the night you left. Ask him what his father made him promise." I pulled my hand away.

"His father's been dead for six years," I said.

"Yes," Helena whispered.

"And some promises don't die with the man who made them." She closed her eyes. She was asleep before I could ask what that meant.

That evening, Celeste found me in the hallway. She didn't spill tea this time. She didn't smile. She just stepped right into my space, close enough that I could smell her expensive perfume, and spoke very softly.

"I saw your neck yesterday," she said.

"I saw where you came out of. And now you're sleeping in the family wing."

"I'm caring for Lady Helena."

"Sure you are." She tilted her head.

"Let me explain something, sweetie. I've waited two years for him to stop moping over some little runaway nobody. The ceremony is in a month. I will be Luna of this pack. And if you get in my way, they'll find you at the bottom of that river you like so much."

My blood went cold. She knew about the river. She walked away humming.

I didn't sleep that night. I sat in the dark with my back against the headboard, listening to Helena breathe through the connecting door and counting my pills over and over in my head.

At two in the morning, my bedroom door opened. I didn't need the light. I knew that shape. I knew that heavy footstep and that smell of whiskey and pine.

Lucien walked in and sat on the end of my bed like he'd done it a thousand times. Because he had. Just never with me in it.

"You're awake," he said. His voice was rough and slurred.

"You're drunk."

"Very."

He didn't look at me. He stared at the cracked window, the moonlight cutting across his face. He looked so tired. So much older than twenty-four.

"This was her room," he said. I didn't answer. I couldn't.

"She was so small when my mother brought her home. Like a little bird. She used to hide food under her pillow because she thought someone would take it." He laughed, but there was nothing happy in it.

"I used to bring her cake. Every night. She wouldn't eat unless I sat right here and watched." My eyes burned. I dug my nails into my palms. Stop. Please stop.

"I said something to her once," he said quietly.

"The worst thing I've ever said to anyone. I said it on purpose, because I wanted her gone." He swallowed hard.

"And she believed me. She believed every word."

"Then why did you say it?" The question ripped out of me before I could stop it. He finally turned his head and looked at me. His eyes were wet.

I had never, not once in ten years, seen Lucien Blackwood cry.

"Because I'm a monster, Rose," he said. "And she deserved better than a monster."

Before I could breathe, he leaned forward and took my face in both his hands. And he kissed me.

Not like the office. Not angry and punishing. Slow and desperate and broken, like a drowning man finally coming up for air. And God help me, I kissed him back.