The wrong entrance

I did not go down the front stairs.

Amelia Hartwell would have. She would have swept down them in her red dress with her chin high and her heart full of foolish hope. I was not Amelia Hartwell, and I had a lake to reach.

"My lady?" the servant called through the door. "The Alpha is waiting."

"I am dressing," I called back. My voice shook, so I made it sharper. "Give me a moment."

Her shoes shuffled away down the hall. I did not trust the quiet. In every book I had ever read, the quiet came right before something went wrong.

I pulled the gray cloak over my head, tucked my wet hair inside, and slipped into the corridor. Somewhere far off, a crowd murmured like bees in a hive. I went the opposite way.

The castle's layout came back to me in pieces. The book had described it in the chapter where Amelia sneaked out to meet a spy. Kitchen stairs, servants' door, herb garden, stone arch, lake.

Left, then right, then down.

I counted my steps the way I used to count bus stops. Forty-two to the corner. Eleven to the narrow staircase. At the bottom, a kitchen maid with a basket of eggs stared at me. I kept my head low and walked right past her. She said nothing. Maybe she was too scared. Maybe she knew exactly who I was.

The servants' door groaned when I pushed it. Sunlight hit my face, and the air smelled like mint and wet earth.

The herb garden lay in neat green rows. At the far end, the stone arch rose like a doorway to another world, and through it I could see the lake, blue and still, like a mirror someone had dropped on the grass.

It looked so peaceful.

It looked like the place where someone had tried to kill me.

I swallowed and ran.

My boots slapped the gravel. Twenty steps to the arch. Fifteen. Ten.

"You are walking the wrong way."

I skidded to a stop so hard I nearly fell.

He was standing under the arch. He had not been there a second ago. I would have bet my life on it. But there he was, leaning against the stone as if he had been waiting all morning, arms crossed, coat open at the collar. Behind him, faintly, I could hear the courtyard. A whole pack standing in rows, waiting for a ceremony that had lost its Alpha.

He had walked out on all of them.

Gideon Ashcroft.

Up close, he was worse than the book had promised. Handsome was too soft a word. He was tall and broad and still, the way a mountain is still, and his face looked carved by someone who did not know how to be kind. A thin scar ran along his jaw. His eyes were pale, terrible gold, and they were locked on mine as though I were the only thing in the world.

That thread behind my ribs pulled tight again. I hated how my body wanted to step toward him.

"Alpha Ashcroft," I said carefully.

"Amelia."

He said her name in a voice so low it seemed to come from the ground. It was not the voice of a man who hated a woman. It sounded like a door, locked for years, being slowly pushed open.

I flinched.

His eyes narrowed. "You flinched. You have never flinched at your own name before."

"I am tired. It has been a long night."

"Yes." His gaze moved over the gray cloak and my wet hair. "You are not wearing the red dress."

My mouth went dry. "What?"

"Your letter said you would wear it when you came back."

My brain stuttered. In the book, Amelia sent no letter. Not one. She returned without a word.

"I changed my mind," I said.

"About the dress," he asked, "or about everything?"

I had no answer. He stopped an arm's length away, and I could smell him now, cedar and rain and woodsmoke, a scent that made my knees weak.

"You are going to the lake," he said.

It was not a question.

"I wanted fresh air."

"Three of my guards pulled you out of that water this morning."

"I would like to see where I fell."

"No."

The word came down like a hammer.

"You will not go near that water today." His jaw tightened. "Not alone."

I stared at him. I had a terrible, desperate plan, and this man was standing in the only doorway out of it.

"You do not get to tell me where to go," I said, and tried to walk around him.

His hand shot out and caught my wrist.

Pain flared, hot and sharp, right across the bruises. I hissed through my teeth.

He let go at once, as if I had burned him. His eyes dropped to my arm, and I watched them go wide. The sleeve had slid back, and dark marks ringed my wrist, each one the exact shape of a finger.

For a moment, he did not breathe.

Then something dark moved across his face, and the air changed. The birds went silent. A cold wind swept through the garden. The hair on my arms stood up, and for the first time since I woke in this world, I felt real, animal fear.

"Who did this?" he said, very softly.

"I do not know."

"Who."

"The maid said I slipped into the lake." My voice cracked. "I woke up like this."

His hands curled into fists. A muscle jumped in his cheek. I thought he might tear the castle apart, stone by stone.

"I will find out," he said. "And when I do, they will wish the lake had taken them first."

Something in my chest cracked, just a little.

This was wrong. In the book, Gideon would have laughed at her pain, called it a cheap trick for sympathy, and walked away.

Instead, he stood here with murder in his eyes because someone had touched her.

Touched me.

"Why do you care?" I whispered.

He looked at me for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was so quiet I almost missed it.

"Five years ago, you promised me, under the full moon, with your hand on my heart. You said you would never leave."

My blood turned to ice.

"And then one night you were simply gone." His eyes burned into mine, golden and furious and broken all at once. "No note. No goodbye. Not a single word."

"Gideon..."

"So tell me, Amelia." He took one more step. "Why did you break your promise?"

I stood frozen under the stone arch, the lake shining behind him.

And I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

"I do not know what you mean," I said.

It was the truth, and it sounded like the worst lie in the world.

Gideon's face did not change. That was the scariest part. I had expected anger, or the cold cruelty from the book. Instead he stood there, still as stone, and watched me like a man waiting for a wound to start bleeding.

"You do not know," he repeated.

"I am sorry. I really do not."

"You are sorry." He let out a short, dry breath that was not a laugh. "Five years, and that is what you have for me."

"Gideon..."

"Walk with me."

"I would rather not."

"That was not a request."

His hand closed around my elbow, careful of the bruises, but I knew I could not shake it loose. He turned me away from the arch and the lake and the only plan I had, and walked me back through the herb garden like a prisoner being escorted to court.

"Where are we going?"

"To finish what you started."

My stomach dropped. "The great hall?"

"Yes."

"Gideon, please. I do not want to do this in front of everyone."

That made him look at me. For one second, the gold in his eyes flickered, and I saw something raw underneath.

"You wanted an audience when you wrote that letter," he said quietly. "You wanted the whole pack watching you walk in. Now you can have it."

How do you argue with a letter you never wrote?

We passed the servants' door and a long wall hung with banners. The courtyard stood empty now, the pack already called inside. Ahead, two men in gray cloaks guarded a pair of tall oak doors. They straightened when they saw their Alpha. Then they saw me on his arm, and their faces turned to stone.

"She actually came back," one whispered.

"After what she did," the other muttered.

What she did.

In the book, Amelia's crime was leaving a powerful Alpha. These men sounded like she had burned a city down.

Gideon pushed the doors open.

The great hall was enormous.

Black stone floor. Pillars as thick as old trees. A long red carpet that ran straight to a raised platform where a carved throne waited under the wolf crest. And on both sides, rows and rows of people in dark gray cloaks, packed shoulder to shoulder.

Every head turned at once.

The murmur died. The silence felt like a hand pressed over my mouth.

I saw hatred in some faces. Curiosity in others. A few showed nothing at all, and those frightened me most.

I knew how this scene went. I had peeked ahead.

Amelia walks in. The pack whispers. She begs. Gideon looks down from the throne and says, in a voice so cold it freezes the room, "I have no use for a woman who leaves when it suits her." Then he turns his back, and the whole hall laughs.

I braced for it.

Gideon did not walk to the throne.

He stopped in the center of the carpet, still holding my arm, and turned to face his people.

"You were told Amelia Hartwell would return today," he said.

His voice rolled across the stone like thunder. Not loud. It did not need to be.

"You were told she would come begging. Some of you have waited years for it."

Somewhere in the crowd, a woman in a pale green dress smiled behind her hand.

"I will tell you what happens now." He paused. "Nothing."

A gasp went through the room.

"No rejection. No punishment. She has been inside these walls less than a day, and someone has already put their hands on her." He lifted my wrist so the dark bruises caught the light. "Whoever did this is in this room, or knows who is."

The silence went tight, like the air before lightning.

"I will find them," Gideon said. "Then Amelia Hartwell will answer for the night she disappeared. She will stay within these walls until she does."

A tall man with a sharp, sunburned face stepped forward. I knew him from the book. Silas Brandt, the Beta.

"Alpha, she is not a prisoner of this pack."

"No," Gideon said. "She is a guest."

He looked down at me, and his voice dropped to something only I could hear.

"A guest who will not be leaving."

The blood left my face. "You cannot do that."

"Watch me."

"I have a right to go."

"You gave up that right when you walked out five years ago." His thumb brushed the inside of my wrist, right over the bruises, so lightly I almost imagined it. "You will stay. And I will have my answers."

I should have been furious. A smart woman would have been.

But the thread behind my ribs pulled tight again, and for one stupid second I did not want to run.

That scared me more than any threat.

"Alpha Ashcroft."

The voice came from the back of the hall, soft and clear. The doors had opened again. A young woman stood in the gap in a pale blue dress and a simple silver necklace, her brown hair tied in a loose braid. She looked gentle and a little shy.

Tessa Whitmore. The destined mate. The sweet heroine. The woman Gideon was supposed to love.

My heart hammered. In the book, everything went wrong from here.

Tessa walked down the carpet, and the crowd parted for her like water. Gideon glanced at her, polite and distant, the way a man looks at a neighbor. Not like a man whose soul had been promised to her.

That was wrong, too.

Silas stepped close to Gideon's shoulder and murmured something low about the Council. Gideon turned his head to listen.

And Tessa did not look at either of them. She looked at me.

I braced for a glare, or a trembling lip, or a brave little speech about forgiveness.

Instead, she stopped an arm's length away and studied my face the way a doctor studies a patient she has waited a long time to see.

"You are back," she said gently.

"I..." My mouth felt like paper. "Yes."

"Good."

The crowd rustled in confusion. In their eyes, the sweet destined mate was welcoming the woman who wanted to take her place.

Tessa smiled, small and tired, and leaned in so close that her breath touched my ear.

"I was starting to think you would not make it in time."

My blood went cold.

She did not look surprised.

Not even a little.