Something of My Own

LYRA'S POV

"Name your price," I say before he can enjoy the silence any longer than he already has.

Ashford settles back into the chair across from me, unhurried, like we have all the time in the world instead of the time Kael has left to fight whatever's eating through him

"How eager," he says, almost delighted. "Very well. A week. Here, with me, under my terms, no running, no fighting, no appeals to whatever loyalty that pack thinks it owes you. At the end of it, I relinquish the claim. Publicly, formally, in whatever form the old law requires. Your Alpha walks away unharmed."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then he dies slowly, and you spend the rest of your life knowing you had the chance to stop it and chose otherwise." He says it without malice, which somehow makes it worse. "I'm not a cruel man, Lyra. I'm simply a patient one."

"Fine. A week. Then it's over."

He laughs, soft and genuinely amused, like I've said something endearing rather than agreed to his terms.

"Oh, sweetheart." He shakes his head slowly. "Did you think the price erases the promise? I relinquish a claim, yes. The old law requires it, so I'll do it, and I'll smile while I do. But you were promised to me before that Alpha ever caught your scent. That doesn't stop being true just because the claim is relinquished." He leans forward. "You'll belong to me in every way that matters for the rest of your life, whether the curse says so or not. This is simply the version where nobody has to die over it."

"That's not what I agreed to."

"That's exactly what you agreed to. You just didn't read the terms closely enough." He stands, smoothing his jacket, unbothered by the way I'm staring at him. "You always were in such a hurry to decide things felt simple. I find that about you almost charming."

He leaves without waiting for a response, and I sit there afterward shaking, not from fear this time but from something closer to fury, the particular kind that has nowhere useful to go.

I don't let myself sit with it long. I have too much to do and too little time to do it.

What I do find, an hour later, pacing the same four walls until I've memorized every crack in the plaster, is an unattended phone.

One of the younger guards left it on the hall table outside my door, probably forgotten during a shift change. The screen is dark but not locked. It's the kind of carelessness that happens when nobody expects a prisoner to be looking for exactly this.

I don't let myself think too hard about what I'm doing. Thinking leads to hesitating, and hesitating leads to getting caught.

I slip out, grab it, and I'm back behind the door within ten seconds, hands shaking so badly I almost drop it twice before I manage to pull up a blank message.

Then I stop.

I don't know Kael's number. I never needed to, not when he was always just down the hall or across the room. I don't know Darin's either, or anyone else's, not a single digit memorized.

I stare at the screen like it might offer an answer if I wait long enough. It doesn't.

I try anyway, scrolling through the guard's own contacts instead, looking for anything useful, a name I might recognize, something I could use even secondhand. Most of it means nothing to me, initials and nicknames I have no context for. One entry near the top just says BOSS.

I don't touch it. I'm not foolish enough to think dialing that number ends anywhere good for me.

Footsteps sound in the hallway, closer than they should be this soon.

I shove the phone back exactly where I found it, heart hammering, and I'm still catching my breath when the door opens and a guard steps in, his eyes scanning the hall table as if he suspects something has been moved.