Chapter 7:The life i left Behind

I was thinking about Marcus when the door opened.

Not deliberately. My mind had wandered the way it does when you have been staring at stone walls long enough, drifting back to the bookshop and the smell of old paper and the way Marcus Hale always laughed too loud at his own jokes but somehow made everyone around him laugh too. He was tall in that careless way, dark curly hair always slightly too long, warm brown eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled. He was the manager's son. He came in every Thursday to drop off stock and stayed two hours longer than he needed to and always ended up leaning on my counter talking about nothing while I pretended to be annoyed.

I had never told him I liked him.

I had been planning to tell him how I felt everytime he comes but I end up avoiding it because I was shy and scared if being Rejected and some times I put a little effort by applying makeup when ever I know he his coming that is mostly on Thursday hoping he would notice me 

Now I was sitting in a stone cell sixty miles away wondering if he had even noticed I was gone.

Aunt Ruth would have noticed. Ruth always notice everything, felt everything, carried everything without complaint. She had taken me and Danny in after our parents died when I was twelve and Danny was nine and she had never once made us feel like a burden. She would be at the kitchen table right now with cold tea she forgot to drink and her hands pressed flat on the surface the way she did when she was scared but refusing to show it.

Danny would be pacing who is Nineteen years old and incapable of stillness at the best of times. He would be driving Ruth mad with his theories and his absolute certainty that he was going to fix everything.

I always told you not to take that path Isa.

I could hear his voice so clearly in my head and it hurt.

I pressed my head against the cold stone wall and breathed slowly and told myself very firmly that falling apart was not an option. I had a cell to get out of and sixty miles to cover and a life to get back to.

I was still staring at the ceiling when the door opened.

She walked in like she owned the building.

Tall with a curved shape she wore a red gown which have a lot of glitters on it and her hair which looks so admirable a mixture of grey and wine 

She was dressed better than anyone I had seen in this place and wore it like armor. Her dark eyes swept the cell in one dismissive look and settled on me with an expression I recognized immediately.

She was deciding what I was worth.

I looked back at her and waited.

"Get up," she said. "The Alpha has ordered you moved."

"Moved where?"

"To a proper room. Third floor. Close to his study." That last part came out like something that tasted bad.

"I want to go home," I said still trying to hold my tears 

She blinked. Like the words did not compute.

"I have a job," I continued, sitting forward. "I have a shift tomorrow. I have an aunt who is not sleeping and a brother who is definitely not sleeping and I have been sitting in this cell for days with no explanation." I looked at her steadily. "I want to go home."

She stared at me for a long moment.

Then she crossed the cell, took my arm firmly, and pulled me to my feet with the efficient energy of a woman who had run out of patience long ago.

"What is your name?" she asked.

"Isadora."

"I am Sonja. I serve the Alpha directly." She turned me toward the door. "Your job, your aunt, your brother and everything else you left behind are not my concern."

"They are mine," I said.

"Then you should have stayed on the path."

I had nothing to say to that.

We were almost at the door when her grip on my arm tightened and she pulled me back one sharp step. She turned me around and looked at my face with an intensity that was nothing like the brisk efficiency of thirty seconds ago. Her eyes were sharp and searching and almost suspicious.

"What did you do to him?" she asked quietly.

I frowned. "I'm sorry?"

"The Alpha." Her voice dropped. "He watched you across that entire courtyard today. He released three trespassers in front of the whole pack. He ordered a room on his personal floor." She stepped closer. "He has not done anything like that in four years. Not once." Her eyes searched mine. "So tell me directly. What did you do? What did you say? What kind of spell does a human girl cast that makes Evander Blackthorn behave like a man instead of a wall?"

The cell felt very quiet suddenly.

I looked at her honestly, without deflecting

I was lost with the question I was asked and all I wanted was to have nothing to do with any of the people here and I pray this is just a dream that I need to wake up from

then I told her with all seriousness"Nothing "

She studied me for a long time.

Then she made a sound that was not quite a laugh and turned back toward the door.

"That," After a while she looked away

The fire had burned low by the time Daxton spoke.

He stood at the window with his arms crossed, staring at the courtyard below with the expression he wore when he was building toward something. Caius, who had been sprawled in the chair by the fire for the past hour, finally sat up.

Caius was Daxton's oldest friend. Broad shouldered and easy on the surface with quick eyes that missed very little. He had been with the pack since childhood. His loyalty to Daxton ran old and deep.

"Say what you are thinking," Caius said. "You have been making that face for an hour."

"The Crimson Moon Festival is in three weeks," Daxton said quietly.

Caius was still for a moment. "The Alpha knows."

"Does he." Daxton turned from the window. "Because today the Alpha released trespassers in front of the entire pack and moved a human girl to the third floor. Today he stood in that courtyard and looked at her like she was the only thing in it." His voice stayed flat and controlled. "That is not a man thinking about the Crimson Moon Festival."

Caius said nothing.

"The festival requires a presented mate or a declared intention," Daxton continued. "The elders are already asking questions. The Ashstone family is asking questions. Lyra has been patient but patience runs out." He moved away from the window. "If Evander does not declare for Lyra at the festival the alliance breaks. And if the alliance breaks we lose the eastern border and everything that comes with it."

"And the human girl?" Caius asked carefully.

"Is a problem that needs handling." Daxton's eyes were steady and flat. "Before she becomes something worse than a problem."

Caius looked at the dying fire. "What kind of handling?"

Daxton sat down slowly. He picked up his glass and looked at it for a long moment.

"The kind," he said quietly, "that does not require Evander's permission."

The fire burned to embers.

Outside the window, three floors up in a corridor that had seen nothing but cold and silence for four years, a light flickered on behind a dark window.

Caius saw it. But  he said nothing.