011— "HOW SHAMELESS."

The gates opened and I saw it and I stopped talking.

I had grown up in a Beta family home.

My father had been proud of that house. Four bedrooms, proper grounds, the kind of home that said we are not wealthy but we are not nothing. I had thought it was large when I was small.

Looking at this, I revised that opinion considerably.

“Say something,” I told myself.

"It has a fountain," I said.

"Yes."

"It's running."

"It runs continuously."

"That's—" I searched for the word. "Unnecessary.”

I got no reply.

He parked and got out and I got out and stood in the driveway. 

I looked up at the facade and then sideways at the east wing and then sideways the other way at the west wing and thought. 

Who needs this much building? 

I was not impressed.

I was assessing.

There was a difference.

The front door opened before we reached it. A man appeared. Tall, silver-haired, dressed better than I had been at any point in the last three months, with the kind of face that had been carefully trained to express absolutely nothing. 

He looked at Kai. He looked at me. He returned to looking at nothing.

"Anton," Kai said.

"Sir," Anton said.

That was apparently the full extent of that conversation.

Inside, the entryway had the specific quality of spaces that have never once been cluttered. High ceilings. Dark floors. A staircase that curved upward. No unnecessary furniture. No photographs on the walls down here. 

I looked around and thought…

“Exits.”

The door I came through. Possible. Two windows flanking the entrance. Ground floor, easy. 

"Guest room," Kai said.

"I'm not a guest," I said.

"No," he agreed. "You're not."

He walked to the staircase. I followed because I didn't know where else to go and I hated that.

The hallway upstairs was long and quiet and the floors didn't creak once under my feet. 

He stopped at a door and opened it.

"This is your room."

I looked past him.

It was… large. Very large. The bed had four posts and a headboard. Floor length curtains in dark fabric. A writing desk. Two armchairs by the window. A rug that I could tell from the doorway was genuinely good.

I walked past him into the room.

I walked to the window first. The ground was further than I'd like — second floor, maybe twelve feet. The latch was simple though. I could work with a simple latch.

"The house rules," Kai said from the doorway.

"I don't follow rules," I said.

"You'll follow these." He leaned against the doorframe. "You don't leave without telling me. You don't go through my things. You answer my questions when I ask them."

"And what do I get?"

"Safety," he said. "Resources. Somewhere Crew's wolves aren't."

"That's it?"

"That's considerable," he said. "Given your current situation."

I looked at him standing in my doorway.

"Fine," I said. 

I kept my face vacant, because the tyrant currently playing landlord didn’t need to know I was already mapping exits in my head… and deciding exactly how I’d ruin him before I left.

He nodded once, then he pushed off the doorframe and walked away down the hall.

I listened to his footsteps fade and then closed the door.

I sat on the edge of the bed and after four minutes a very slow smile spread across my face because I had an idea and it was genuinely good.

Kai Volkov was going to deeply regret…

A knock.

Anton the butler with a tray of food that smelled so good my stomach actually lurched toward it independently of the rest of my body.

I folded my hands.

"Please tell Mr. Volkov," I said, very pleasantly, "that I won't be eating until he releases me."

Anton looked at the tray. Then at me. 

"Of course, miss."

The door closed.

I stared at it.

“You have principles,” I told myself. 

“You're making a statement.”

                     ..

Three hours later the statement was getting harder to maintain.

My stomach had moved past polite protest into something that could only be described as a hostage situation. 

I lay on top of the covers in the dark and stared at the ceiling and told myself I could last until morning.

My stomach called me a liar.

“Fine,” I said, sitting up at what I estimated was somewhere past midnight. Something small. Something that barely counts.

The kitchen was the size of my entire apartment building.

I stood in front of the open refrigerator and the cold light hit my face and I thought — “just something quick. Just enough to function.”

Eight minutes later I had a plate, two bread rolls already eaten. They were incredible, that was irrelevant. 

One more bread roll currently in my hoodie pocket because tomorrow was uncertain and preparation was important, a wedge of cheese wrapped in a paper towel, grapes because fruit was basically just water, and I was reaching for a fourth bread roll when I stopped and looked at myself.

My reflection in the dark kitchen window looked back at me.

Hoodie pockets visibly bulging. Plate in one hand. Grapes in the other. Wearing an expression of complete focused determination.

A giggle came out of me.

I pressed my hand over my mouth.

“This is strategy,” I told myself very seriously. “This is resource management. This is a completely dignified response to an undignified situation.”

I added the grapes to my left pocket.

Checked the refrigerator one more time.

“Something for breakfast,” I thought. *

“Something substantial that'll last so I don't have to do this again tomorrow night. Just one more—”

"How shameless."

The voice came from the doorway.

Deep and completely unsurprised.

I turned around very slowly.

Kai stood in the kitchen entrance in dark clothes, arms crossed, looking at me. At the plate. At my hoodie pockets. At the grapes.