Chapter 6: A Necessary Fixture

<Cassandra>

The door stood ajar, and inasmuch as I was expecting to see Dominic, it was Jasper who stood at the threshold instead.

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

"Don't look so relieved," he said, stepping inside without waiting to be asked. "I'm not exactly an upgrade."

He shut the door behind him with a quiet click, then looked me over once, taking in the wedding gown I still hadn't bothered to change out of, the flowers still tangled in my hair.

"Dominic won't be coming," he said. "He doesn't do this part."

"What part?" I asked, clearly oblivious to what was happening.

"Explaining things." He moved further into the room, glancing around at the furniture like he was assessing it for the first time, though I doubted that was true. "Someone has to, since you clearly have no idea how any of this works, and as Luna, your ignorance reflects on this house whether either of us likes it or not."

I sat up on the bed and folded my arms in a show of unnecessary defiance. "Then by all means."

Jasper exhaled through his nose, the closest thing to amusement I'd seen on him since the forest. "In public, you’ll put on your best fucking smile. You’ll stand where you're told to stand and you’ll speak only when spoken to, unless the situation calls for warmth of a Luna, in which case you provide it. Council meetings, ceremonies, pack gatherings — you show up, and you are, without any exception, convincing to the entire pack." 

He said the word convincing like it was the only requirement that actually mattered. 

"Whatever you feel privately is your business. Out there, you are the Luna of the Blackthorne pack, and you will act like it."

"And what happens in private?" I wanted to ask. Thankfully, I didn’t need to.

"In private, you stay out of everyone's way." He said it simply, without cruelty or emotion. "The west wing past the second staircase belongs to the Alpha. You don't go there unless summoned. The ground floor is the staff quarters, also off-limits. As for the library, the gardens, and the entire east wing — those are yours to use freely."

I nodded, trying my best to commit all this information to memory. "So who do I report to?"

"No one," he said, "which I'd imagine is the part you're struggling with the most."

I didn't answer that, mostly because he wasn't wrong. "And who reports to me?"

He almost smiled at that. "No one, also. All you have is a title, not a position. There's a difference between the two, and you'll want to learn it quickly." He stopped talking, tilting his head slightly, like he was already bored of this conversation. "The staff already have their instructions where you're concerned. They'll be courteous toward you as the wife of their Alpha. But they will not, under any circumstance, gossip with you, confide in you, or treat you as anything beyond what you are to this house…”

“...A necessary fixture," he said finally. "Nothing more."

The words landed like a blow, but I can't say I expected anything more from these people. I was a prisoner here, regardless of the title that had been bestowed upon me. And whether I liked it or not, the mark on my neck was nothing more than a slave’s brand.

I said nothing, mostly because there wasn't anything left to say that wouldn't make me sound exactly as small as he already believed me to be.

Jasper reached for the satchel slung over his shoulder, and only then did I notice it wasn't his at all.

It was mine.

The same worn leather satchel I'd carried out of Bloodwyn territory, the strap frayed at one edge from years of use, the buckle slightly bent from a fall I could no longer even remember the reason for. 

He held it out to me like he was returning a borrowed farm tool rather than the only thing in this entire manor that had ever actually belonged to me.

"Found this near where I found you," he said. "I thought you might want it back, though there's nothing of value left inside it. The vial's long gone, obviously, and whatever else was in there isn't anything worth mentioning."

I took it from him slowly, my fingers curling around the strap. "Thank you," I said quietly.

He looked at me like the words confused him, then he shrugged, already turning toward the door.

I held the satchel against my chest and watched him go, my throat tightening in a way I refused to acknowledge out loud.

He stopped at the door, his hand resting on the frame for a moment, though he didn't turn around.

"One more thing," he said, his voice lower now, stripped of the brisk formality of before. "Whatever you feel when you're around Dominic — and I'm not asking what that is, because frankly, I don't care — but whatever it is, don't let him see it. He has this ability of reading people the way the rest of us read books, and the moment he decides you're worthless, he’ll toss you into the fire like day-old garbage."

"And Alice?" I asked carefully. "What about her?"

He was quiet for a short moment, as if mulling over what exactly to say to me. “Whatever she told you tonight, I'd be careful taking it at face value. She's not in the business of telling anyone the whole truth.” He muttered, “Not even Dominic.”

Before I could ask him what that meant, he was already gone, the door closing shut behind him.

I lay alone in the middle of the bed for a long moment, the satchel still pressed against my chest, the fire still burning low in the hearth, and I let his last words settle over me the way the cold forest floor once had.

I didn't sleep much that night. I sat with the satchel in my lap until the fire burned itself down to nothing.

By the time the sun came up, I had already made my decision. I would not give any of them the satisfaction of watching me fall apart. Not Dominic, not Alice, not the wolves in those framed portraits who looked down at me like I'd tracked mud through their hallway. If this was the role I'd been handed, then I would learn it the way I'd learned everything else in my life: alone, and without complaint, because complaining had never once gotten me anything worth having.

Life inside Blackthorne Manor was not what I expected.

I had braced myself for cruelty, the kind I understood, the kind I'd grown up fluent in back at Bloodwyn. What I got instead was something far more exhausting — indifference, dressed up in the guise of good manners.

When Dominic wasn't here performing for an audience, he simply… wasn't there. He ran his pack from sunup until well past sundown, and on the evenings he wasn't doing that, I learned — without anyone having to tell me directly — that he was at the second property he kept for Alice on the far side of the territory. 

The Manor would go quiet the way a house does when its owner has left it, and I would be alone inside walls that had more rooms than I had any reason to enter.

So I filled the spaces I could, as best as I could.

I learned the names of the staff first, starting with the maid who had refused to answer a single one of my questions on that first morning. Her name was Delphine, and it took three weeks before she stopped flinching slightly every time I addressed her directly, like she expected to be reprimanded for it. 

I learned which of the kitchen staff hummed while they worked and which ones went silent the moment I walked past, like my presence alone might cost them their very lives. I also learned the Manor's routines before anyone bothered explaining them to me, and somewhere in those quiet, unwitnessed hours, I started, against every instinct I had, to belong to this place even when no one in it particularly wanted me to.

The pack noticed, eventually. A warmth began moving through Blackthorne Manor, and although no one ever said my name in connection with it, I knew exactly where it had come from.

What I didn't yet know, was what it would cost me…