Chapter 6

Rhett’s POV

“Heads up. Put them by the gate.”

The words fell from my mouth without weight, yet the air itself seemed to flinch. Eris moved with the efficiency of habit, the others slower, still shaken by what the morning had demanded.

Blood pooled dark beneath the gallows. The heads would be taken to the pikes, the bodies burned before dusk. We’d hang them high enough that the ravens would finish the sermons for me.

A reminder to every pack watching from the treeline: fear is a language, and I am fluent.

Let him send more. Let him test how deep I’ll dig their graves before he stops pretending to be brave. I’ll keep chopping open his illusions and letting the stench spread, knowing they were his followers.

Eris entered without knocking.

“The soldiers had been camping around our camp, our search leads us to believe there is movement to the east. Likely reinforcements. A larger camp forming.”

“Good.” My tone was a blade laid flat, not yet drawn. “And the girl?”

He didn’t need to ask which. “Keeping to herself. More to say she has been avoiding the tents.”

I leaned back, fingers tapping the arm of the throne, remembering the night before.

Her silence now was a lie, I’d heard her voice break once, felt the tremor of her defiance when she should’ve been begging. That memory lived like a bruise under my ribs. My wolf stirred, irritated that she was still breathing and relieved that she was. She had survived what others wouldn’t. That alone made her more interesting than being Ronan’s daughter.

“That wouldn’t save her for long.”

Eris inclined his head, sensing the line he shouldn’t cross. “The new supplies—”

“Handle them,” I cut in. “I’ll handle the rest.”

***

By the time dusk bled into the hall, I could feel the shift before the knock even came. Trouble always had a certain weight to it.

“Spit it out,” I told Eris when he lingered at the threshold.

“General Gareth…” He hesitated. “He demands the girl. Says she’s his prisoner.”

Men like Gareth always mistake bloodlust for ownership. It makes them brave for about five seconds.

The door slammed open before I could reply. Gareth stormed in, the sound of arrogance and armor. Two soldiers flanked him, they were his captains, dragging her behind like an afterthought. The sight of her—hiss.

I tamed my wolf, and set my face in stone.

Her knees hit stone. Her hair was disheveled, blouse torn from her shoulder, a bruise on her arm blooming purple. And when she lifted her head, those eyes, still steady, looked right at me. My control thinned for the space of a breath, remembering how my cock had been down her throat hours ago. My wolf pressed forward, a low growl of memory curling through my spine.

But I swallowed it. Control was the only god I ever prayed to.

“What do you want, Gareth?” My voice stayed quiet, quieter than a threat ought to be.

“My respect back, my Alpha. I want to be the one to break her. And end her.”

She flinched at his words, but didn’t cower. The way her pulse beat hard at her throat made something primal twist inside me.

“You want your respect?” I asked.

Gareth’s eyes hardened. “She took mine. In public, to say the least.”

He thought his fury mattered. It didn’t.

I rose from the throne, slow and deliberate. The room seemed to lean with me.

“Bring her forward,” I said.

The two captains shoved her closer. She stumbled, stopped short before me. Close enough that her scent burned the back of my throat. Close enough that I could hear the soft hitch in her breath.

My wolf’s claws scraped at my chest, wanting. Not the act itself, the ruin. The unmaking. That slow, irreversible claim that left nothing untouched.

‘Give her to me.’

‘You’ll have to wait. Another is demanding for her.’

My wolf growled at me. ‘No! I want to know how she tastes!’

My veins pulled taut. ‘Shut it, Lust!’ Even as I hacked my wolf, my nose flared. I called him that whenever his desires started to complicate things.

I might have fucked many women, but not taste them.

He groaned and retreated.

“Your pride blinds you,” I told Gareth without looking at him. “She’s not yours to touch.” Lust hummed. Then my eyes flicked to him. “You have always been swift to act and slow to think. Your valor is useful, but it is not now the thing I require. I have a use for her,” I said.

I could see the question in Gareth’s jaw. He wanted violence for its own confirmation; I wanted violence for its returns.

“A use for her?” he demanded.

“Yes. She serves me a purpose. She will be punished for disrespect, yes. But she will not be killed.” I pushed as the hall stretched into my words. “I apologize.”

I didn’t apologize to just anyone, I did because I understood that he was hurt and his pride bruised, however he should take heed.

He didn't listen.

“I’m sorry, Alpha, but you made the rules. A slave must be punished by the soldier she wronged, however he sees fit.”

Fine. If he could not be reasoned with.

“You can have her,” I said, and watched his chest fill with an immediate, fat satisfaction. He reached for her as if the moment were a proof of his worth.

Her lips thinned, and I watched her bite the inside of her mouth, ready to beg.

“I didn’t mean—”

Do not beg, I thought, and the reflex made my mouth curve.

Lust cursed me.

Damn the goddess.

That was when I moved. I let Gareth see the motion of my hand as I took Eris’s sword from its scabbard, a show of intent, a punctuation. I do not send metal unless I have decided a throat should open.

And that exactly was what happened.

His head rolled, a crimson comet slowing to rest at my boots.

Silence broke over the hall like water freezing solid. No one breathed.

Her whole body shook. His blood streaked her cheek, her lips parted in a soundless tremor. Her eyes… wide and luminous and terrified…lifted to me as if she’d seen something worse than death itself.

Maybe she had.

I stepped closer, just once, to look at her properly.

She was trembling, though not running. The little quake of her body did not repel me, rather it stirred an idea. A thought so quick and sharp I almost missed it: ‘She should’ve been the one to kill him.’ Lust purred. The image was corrupting in the most pleasing way, her standing over that head, chest heaving, eyes wild while the hall watched. Beautiful and cataclysmic. A ruin I would have admired.

Then maybe I would’ve taken her right here on the throne.

‘Yes…’

Make her scream from pleasure while his shoulderless head watched. Fuck. What a thing of sin she was. The desire to know how far she could take me, how many times she could go, the noises she’ll make. Her screams. I’d never wanted to fuck the others in places I want to fuck her.

She had been inexperienced with her mouth last night but even that made me want to know the rest.

I let that thought fade. Not yet.

“Dispose of him,” I ordered, voice cutting the silence cleanly. “And let her go.”

When the guards hesitated, I turned my head, slow enough that it hurt them to look at me. “Now.”

The room moved again. Gareth’s body was carried out. She was pulled to her feet.

Eris began, “Alpha, this will cause—”

“Send for wine,” I interrupted. “And new girls for the camp.”