Chapter Two

The car moved like a shadow through the trees, gliding over the narrow asphalt strip that wound out of human civilization and into Valtoris territory. Pines lined the road like sentries. The sun had dipped low, casting long bars of golden light across the windshield. Xavier barely noticed.

His hands were loose on the wheel. He drove with precision, but without thought. The road was muscle memory, like everything else in his life.

The silence in the car wasn’t peace. It was weight.

It pressed behind his eyes, inside his skull, in the tightness between his shoulders. He hadn't said a word since the meeting. Neither had anyone else, but that wasn’t new. In the Valtoris family, silence was a sign of discipline. Stillness was strength. And yet, for the first time in a long time, Xavier felt like speaking—just to shake the feeling that had clung to him since he left her house.

Her.

The girl.

No—Elara.

He hadn’t meant to learn her name. No one had said it directly. But he’d heard it murmured once as her father led them in, all false charm and swelling pride. Elara. It suited her, in a strange, fragile way. Soft around the edges, like the petals of a flower already beginning to wilt under the sun.

He exhaled sharply through his nose.

She hadn’t looked up once. Not until she was told. Not even when they spoke about her like a product. Not even when they discussed her cycle like a breeding chart.

And that… disturbed him more than he could articulate.

Xavier had expected fear. Or at least discomfort. Most women in their world learned early how to wear a mask. But this one? She didn’t even blink. Her stillness wasn’t practiced—it was engraved.

She wasn’t hiding her thoughts. She wasn’t thinking anything at all.

She had been emptied out.

Conditioned, no doubt. Raised for this moment like a lamb raised for slaughter. The thought turned his stomach.

But the worst part?

She didn’t flinch.

Not when they talked about her body. Not when her father detailed her bleeding schedule like livestock stats. Not even when that disgusting bastard leaned in to inspect her teeth.

She had opened her mouth when told.

Like it was nothing.

Xavier gripped the steering wheel harder, fingers twitching against the leather. He didn’t know why it got under his skin so badly. He’d seen worse. Much worse. He lived in a household built on worse. But there had been something in that room—some mix of her silence and his father’s pride—that made his stomach turn.

“She’ll kneel if she’s told to,” her father had said.

And she’d nodded. Just a little. Just enough.

It wasn’t obedience. It was absence.

And Xavier wasn’t sure what infuriated him more—how easily they stripped her of humanity, or how completely she had surrendered it.

No, he thought bitterly. Not surrendered. She never had it to begin with.

She had never been allowed to be a person.

He could see it now, the way her hands folded with mechanical precision, the smile that appeared without warmth or context. The way her gaze stayed lowered as if even looking directly at a man was an offense she could not afford.

This was what they wanted from her. What his family wanted. A silent, obedient wife who wouldn’t question why she had to eat scraps from the kitchen floor or bear children like it was her sole function.

And now they’d chained her to him.

The car turned off the main road, gravel crunching beneath the tires as it entered pack territory. The forest thickened, the trees older, twisted, and familiar. The scent of the land shifted—damp earth, pine sap, the distant tinge of blood and dominance. The Valtoris estate was still a mile out, but already, Xavier could feel the weight of it bearing down on him.

He rolled his neck slowly, trying to ease the tension there.

He hadn’t said a word during the negotiations. Not because he agreed. But because his voice wouldn’t have mattered. It never did.

Theron—his father—had already made the decision.

And Xavier knew better than to challenge him in front of outsiders.

It was a strategy. Stay silent. Stay useful. Play the dutiful heir long enough to earn the right to dismantle the machine from the inside. That had always been the plan. His mother had taught him that—quietly, in whispers and glances, in the brief moments when the men weren’t watching.

But today, that plan felt like ash on his tongue.

Elara’s silence hadn’t felt like strategy.

It had felt like submission so complete, she didn’t even recognize it as submission anymore.

He was supposed to marry her.

Supposed to claim her. Breed with her. Dominate her.

Those were the words his uncles used, behind closed doors and over whiskey.

And all Xavier could think about was the way she hadn’t looked at him. Not with fear. Not with hope. Not with anything.

Just silence.

Like she’d already accepted she was nothing more than an offering. A vessel. A thing.

He wasn’t angry at her.

No. That would be easy.

He was angry at the system that had turned her into this.

Angry that she had never been given the chance to be anything else.

And somewhere, buried deep beneath the logic and restraint that ruled his life, there was something worse.

Guilt.

Because despite all his quiet rebellion, all his silent contempt for his family's traditions… he hadn’t stopped it.

He’d stood there. Said nothing. Let them examine her like she was a breeding mare in a painted parlor.

He hadn’t even asked her name.

The mansion came into view through the trees, its silhouette rising like a tombstone against the darkening sky. Stone walls, iron gates, centuries of rot and legacy all woven into its bones.

Xavier didn’t slow down as he approached. The guards opened the gate without question.

The car slipped inside.

He would see her again soon. In a different setting. In a place far worse than that too-bright drawing room.

And when she arrived, she’d be his.

Legally. Officially. Utterly.

He wasn’t ready for what that meant.

Because he didn’t want to own her.

He wanted to wake her up.

And he wasn’t sure if there was anything left inside her to wake.