“You’re not going near him again, Winter. Over my dead body.”My father’s voice cracked through the house like thunder, deep and merciless, rattling something in me I didn’t know was still fragile. Downstairs, something broke—glass, maybe—and I flinched. Again. Just like I had hours ago when he found me in the dungeon with Tyron, screaming, yanking me away from him like I was some child who didn’t know how the world worked.He’d locked me in.Literally.My bedroom door sealed with a god-blood rune, the air inside threaded with suppression magic strong enough to drag my spells to their knees. My father wasn’t a witch, but he sure knew how to cage one.“I’m not your damn prisoner!” I yelled, fists slamming against the sealed door even though I knew it wouldn’t budge.“I am your father!” he roared back from below. “And I am the Alpha God of this house! You’ll obey!”“Then stop treating me like a porcelain doll you can put on a shelf whenever I grow a spine!”Silence. A dangerous kind of
I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.I wasn’t even trying to listen just passing the corridor when I heard my name. I stopped. And stayed. My back pressed flat to the wall as the voices carried from the alpha’s private chambers.“I told you not to go easy on that rogue,” my father’s voice was low and firm, never needing to shout to command the weight of a thunderstorm. “He’s still not talking. Not even after what Ruine and I did to him.”My heart dropped.“You tortured him?” my mother whispered, disbelief cutting her words in half.“He knows something. He’s not just any rogue. There’s something about him, baby. He doesn’t just attack blindly. He’s been trained, and too well. You saw how he got through the borders. How he went straight for Winter. This isn’t coincidence.”The blood in my veins turned to ice.“And you think torture will loosen his tongue?” My mother sounded tired. Angry. But not surprised.“He’ll talk,” my father growled. “Eventually.”That was all I needed to hear.I didn’t wai
The moment she vanished from sight, her soft footsteps swallowed by the corridor’s silence, I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.Naïve little thing.That was her fifteenth visit. Fifteen days of silence, of sitting there like a stubborn ghost who couldn’t let go. And now, after days of nothing but glares and wordless staring contests, she finally cracked—healed me, brought food, unlocked one of my chains. I’d thought she was just soft. But now I know—she’s desperate.Good.I flex my right wrist. It still burns, faintly, where the wolfsbane had sunk deep. But it’s healing now. Fast. Thanks to her magic. She doesn’t even understand how dangerous that was, giving me even a sliver of strength. One chain undone. One wrist free. Magic coursing in my veins again, slowly knitting skin and nerve and bone.Amateur move, pup.I pace inside my mind, pacing because I can’t do it in reality—not yet. I sit back against the wall, stretching the wrist she freed, testing the limits. The o
I slipped through the hidden gap in the outer corridor, pressing myself flat against the damp stone as I edged past the patrol. Again.The guards were laughably predictable. One glance at the map I stole from my dad’s office tucked beneath stacks of council scrolls and I knew the blind spots, the rotation times, the minute gaps between shifts. It was almost too easy.Almost.I didn’t let myself relax until I reached the heavy iron door at the end of the dungeon hallway. My heart drummed as I placed my palm against the cool rusted metal. “Unlock,” I whispered, the word whispered on my breath like a secret prayer. A faint click echoed in the hallway.The fifteenth time.I’d been coming here for fifteen days straight. Always at night, always unnoticed.He never spoke. Not once. Just sat there, chained up in silence, bruised wrists bleeding wolfsbane into the stone floor while our bond pulled at me like a hook lodged deep in my ribcage.I stepped inside the cold prison chamber, my boots s
The walls down here don’t echo.They suffocate.Thick, damp stone. Chains soaked in old blood and wolfsbane. Every inhale burns my lungs. Every breath is a reminder that I failed.And worse—I hesitated.I should’ve gone for the kill when I had the chance. Should’ve ripped Alpha Zander apart when he was distracted. But I looked at her, and suddenly my body betrayed me. My wolf—traitorous bastard that he is—went still. Mute. Obsessed.Mate.The word still rang in my head like a damn curse.I clenched my jaw and yanked at the iron cuffs around my wrists, ignoring the tearing of already broken skin. They had silver laced into the metal. Clever bastards.The cell was cold. Not cold enough to numb the pain, just enough to gnaw at the edge of it. My shirt was long gone. My pants were soaked with dried blood and ash. And my back—it still stung from where they’d dragged me here after she knocked me out.Winter.The girl with thunder in her blood and fire in her eyes.The girl I hated.The girl
It had been a week.Seven whole days since my father looked me in the eyes—still bruised and limping—and told me not to go near the dungeon.And for seven days, I listened.Sort of.I hadn’t stepped foot near the east wing. I hadn’t asked the guards for information. I hadn’t whispered his name aloud.But in my mind? He was everywhere.In my dreams.In the shadows.In the tension that coiled tighter each time I passed the hallway that led to the dungeon.Tyron.Every night, I heard him calling for me—not with words, but with that strange pull I couldn’t shake. Like a thread tugging at my ribs, tightening just enough to keep me from forgetting. I tried to fight it, tried to keep myself busy with the aftermath of the attack.The pack was still healing. The scent of burn salve and healing roots filled the halls. Every room echoed with the sounds of recovery—groans, whispered reassurances, bedsheets shifting with restless bodies.Some of the warriors were responding well. Others still teet