XII - Between predator and prey

The chamber swallowed me whole.

Its walls were draped in crimson velvet, heavy and suffocating, its curtains drawn tight against the night. Firelight flickered across stone carved with beasts and wolves, shadows prowling the edges of the room as though they waited to devour me. At the center, the bed loomed — a monstrous thing of blackwood, carved with snarling wolves, its silken covers a dark river spilling to the floor.

The attendants had left me there, dressed in nothing more than a thin robe of pale gossamer. It clung to my damp skin like a second layer, transparent enough to make my heart race. My breath trembled in the silence. My knees pressed together as though I could hold myself inside, safe, untouched.

I folded my hands and whispered prayers I could no longer remember, words spilling like broken beads from a snapped rosary. Gods, spirits, anyone… deliver me. Deliver me now.

A sound stirred.

A shadow shifted at the far end of the chamber.

The Alpha King emerged.