Chapter 5

The drug turned my muscles to sand.

I sagged against Calvin's chest, my arms hanging, my legs gone. He held me up with one arm around my waist and kept the cloth over my face until the room went soft around the edges.

When he finally pulled it away, I gasped. The ceiling tilted.

"W-what—" My tongue was thick, the words coming out slurred and wrong. "What are you doing?"

Calvin set me down in a chair and locked the door. The bolt slid home with a sharp click. Then he pulled his shirt over his head, tossed it on the floor, and turned to face me. He wasn't rushing. He was smiling.

"What do you think I'm doing?"

"They'll know." I gripped the armrests, my nails biting into the wood. "If you — if I'm not — they'll examine me again. They'll know."

"And who dies when they find out?" Calvin crouched in front of me, tilting his head slowly, almost playfully. "The wolf-chosen surrogate, defiled by another man? That's treason, Lillian. They'll put you down like a sick animal." He clicked his tongue. "And I'll walk out the front door, because who's going to believe a Gamma's daughter over a future Alpha?"

My stomach lurched. The drug burned through my veins in hot, sick waves.

"You have Maren." My voice cracked and I hated it. "You already got rid of me. Why?"

He stood. The smile was gone. What replaced it was something lean and raw and ugly — hunger with all the pretense stripped away.

"Because I can't stand that I never had you."

He said it simply. Like confessing a preference for salt over sugar.

"Three years, Lillian. Three years you were mine, and I never once got to taste what was mine. You'd kiss me and then pull away. You'd let me hold your hand and then tell me to wait." He bent down until his face was inches from mine. His breath was hot. His pupils were dilated. "And now some ghost-wolf picks you out of a lineup and you think you're something special? You think you're a princess?"

He grabbed my chin. His fingers dug into the sides of my jaw.

"You're not a princess." His voice was a whisper, but it scraped. "You're a tool. A breeding tool. My breeding tool."

The drug was fogging my thoughts, drowning them in static and heat, but one cold thread cut through the haze.

If Calvin wanted my body, he'd had three years to push for it. He'd never tried. Not once. He'd been patient, strategic, careful — and then he sent me to the palace. He waited until I was the Prince's chosen surrogate.

He didn't want me.

He wanted what I could carry.

The fear didn't leave. It just made room for something colder.

"You want your child on the throne." The words scraped out of my throat raw. "You want to get me pregnant. Pass it off as the Prince's heir."

Calvin's hand went still on my jaw. For a half-second, surprise crossed his face. Then it was gone, replaced by a look that was somehow worse — acknowledgment. He didn't even bother denying it.

"You don't need to understand the plan," he said, straightening up. "You just need to hold still."

He stepped toward me.

My arm shot sideways. My hand found the iron candlestick on the side table and swept it off the edge. It hit the stone floor with a crash that echoed through the chamber like a cannon shot, bouncing twice, ringing off the walls and down the corridor.

Calvin froze.

Footsteps in the hallway. Urgent voices. A knock. "Luna Princess? Is everything all right?"

His jaw clenched so hard the muscle jumped in his cheek. He scooped his shirt from the floor, yanked it over his head. By the time the servant cracked the door, Calvin was standing three feet from me, hands in his pockets, expression pleasant and vaguely concerned.

"She tripped," he said. "Knocked the candlestick over. You know how she is — clumsy."

The servant looked at me. I was shaking, flushed, tears streaming. I probably looked exactly like a clumsy girl who'd scared herself.

"I'm fine," I managed. "I'd like to go back to my room."

They escorted me toward the door. Calvin fell into step beside me, and his hand closed around my upper arm — casual, possessive. His grip was iron.

"Say one word about tonight," he murmured, close enough that only I could hear, "and I'll destroy your family. Your father's already mine. But your brother — Ronan, twelve years old, still dreaming about becoming Beta someday?" His voice dropped even lower. "One word from me, and that dream dies. Along with everything else."

My hand flew to my locket — instant, maternal, as if grabbing the one thing I had left of someone I loved could protect the other.

The blood drained from my face so fast the hallway tilted.

"Be a good girl, Lillian." He released my arm with a little pat on the shoulder. "And your brother stays breathing."

He smiled at the servant, nodded politely, and walked away down the corridor whistling.

...

The walk back to the Prince's chambers was a blur of stone walls and candlelight and my own heartbeat screaming in my ears.

Ronan. My baby brother. Calvin had him — or could get to him. That was all I needed to hear. Whatever Calvin had done or was willing to do, I couldn't risk finding out by calling his bluff.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. But I had to think, because Ronan's life depended on it.

The drug was getting worse, not better. Heat pulsed through my body in rolling waves, and my skin burned like I'd swallowed something alive and it was trying to claw its way out through my pores. My wolf thrashed behind the walls my mother had built — frantic, wild, desperate — and the walls were cracking.

I stumbled through the chamber door. The room was dark. The Prince lay exactly where I'd left him, motionless, the faint blue glow of his wolf shimmering at his side.

I didn't choose to go to the bed. My legs carried me there — not the drug, or not only the drug. Something that had started earlier than that. His body was warm and solid and the only thing in this entire palace that felt safe. My burning skin screamed for touch.

I crawled onto the mattress. I hadn't taken a full breath since Calvin's cloth hit my face. I took one now.

Pressed myself against his side. Buried my face into his shoulder and breathed in the clean scent of him — winter air and cedar and something underneath that was just skin, just warmth, and my wolf keened behind her walls, desperate and raw.

My fingers gripped his shirt. My cheek rubbed against his chest. A whimper slipped out that I couldn't have stopped for anything.

"Please," I whispered into the dark.

A hand closed around my wrist，"How dare you."