CHAPTER 3

KAYE’S POV

The servant quarters are in the basement, which I suppose makes sense. Keep the prisoner where she cannot see sunlight, where she is surrounded by stone and earth and the weight of an entire packhouse pressing down from above. The room they shove me into is barely large enough for a twin bed and a dresser that looks like someone found it on the side of the road. There is a single small window near the ceiling, the kind that opens maybe six inches if you are lucky, and all I can see through it is grass and the bottom of a fence post.

The lean enforcer whose name I still do not know unlocks the silver cuffs around my wrists. The relief is immediate and overwhelming. I cradle my hands against my chest and try not to look at the raw, weeping burns where the metal ate through my skin. They will heal eventually. Werewolf healing is fast, even for someone like me who has not shifted in six years. But right now they hurt so badly that I feel sick.

"Sit," he says, nodding toward the bed.

I sit because I do not have the energy to argue. He pulls another silver cuff from his pocket, this one attached to a small black box that blinks with a tiny red light. He kneels and wraps it around my left ankle, just tight enough that I cannot slip it off but not tight enough to burn. Yet. I can feel the silver's presence like a constant low-level warning, my wolf whimpering and pressing herself as far from it as she can manage.

"Boundary line is marked by white stones," he says, not looking at me. "You cross that line, this device injects wolfsbane directly into your bloodstream. Enough to drop you in about ten seconds, kill you in about five minutes if no one gets to you first. Don't test it. People have tested it before. They died badly."

"Noted," I whisper.

He stands and looks at me for the first time since we entered the room, really looks at me, and I see something in his expression that might be pity. "For what it is worth, I am sorry about the mate bond. That is a special kind of hell for both of you."

"Does everyone know?" My voice comes out small and broken.

"Not yet. But they will. This pack is two hundred wolves living on top of each other. Secrets do not last long." He moves toward the door, then pauses. "My name is Marcus, by the way. I am one of the senior enforcers. You need something, you ask for me. I will treat you fairly even if no one else will."

"Why?" I ask before I can stop myself. "Why would you treat me fairly?"

Marcus looks at me with tired eyes that have seen too much. "Because you are the Alpha's mate, whether he likes it or not. That means something, even if everything else is fucked." He leaves before I can respond, closing the door behind him but not locking it. I hear his footsteps fade down the hallway.

I sit on the bed in silence, staring at the opposite wall, trying to process what just happened. The mate bond pulses at the edge of my awareness like a second heartbeat, connecting me to Ethan Rivers in a way that feels invasive and intimate and completely unwanted. I can feel him somewhere above me, feel his rage and confusion like they are my own emotions, and I do not know how to shut it off.

My wrists throb. My ankle aches where the silver cuff rests against my skin. My throat is bruised from where Ethan grabbed me. But worse than all of that is the bone-deep exhaustion that comes from six years of running finally catching up to me in a single moment.

They found me. After everything I did, every precaution I took, every time I ran before someone got too curious, they still found me. And now I am trapped in the home of wolves who hate me, bound to an Alpha who wants me dead, wearing a device designed to kill me if I try to leave.

I should be planning my escape. I should be looking for weaknesses in the security, figuring out how to remove the ankle cuff, mapping the exits. That is what the old Kaye would have done, the Kaye who survived six years on the run through pure paranoid stubbornness.

But I am so tired. I am tired of running, tired of hiding, tired of being alone. Part of me almost feels relieved that it is over, that I do not have to keep pretending anymore. At least here I know what I am facing. At least here the hatred is honest.

The mate bond pulses again and I feel Ethan somewhere in the packhouse, feel his wolf pacing and snarling, fighting against the instinct to come find me. I wonder if he is feeling what I am feeling, this terrible pull toward someone who should be my enemy. I wonder if it hurts him the way it hurts me.

Stop it, I tell myself. He wants you dead. The bond does not change that. Nothing changes that.

I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling and try not to think about storm gray eyes or the way Ethan's hand felt around my throat, firm but not cruel, like even in his rage he was being careful not to actually hurt me.

Sleep does not come but I close my eyes anyway and wait for morning.

Someone kicks the door open at what must be five in the morning based on the gray pre-dawn light coming through the tiny window. I jerk awake, my wolf surging forward in defensive panic before I remember where I am and force her back down.

A woman stands in the doorway, late fifties maybe, with gray hair pulled back in a severe bun and a face that looks like it has never smiled in its entire life. She is short and round with flour permanently dusted across her apron, and she looks at me with the kind of hatred that is so pure it almost seems clean.

"Get up," she says. "You work in the kitchen. Six in the morning until midnight, seven days a week. You do not speak unless spoken to. You do not look anyone in the eye. You do what you are told when you are told. You understand?"

I nod and start to stand but my body does not want to cooperate. Everything aches from the van ride and the silver burns and sleeping on a mattress that feels like it is stuffed with rocks.

"I said get up!" The woman crosses the room faster than I expect and grabs my arm, yanking me to my feet hard enough that I stumble. "You think you deserve rest? You think you deserve anything after what your family did?"

"I did not—" I start, but she slaps me across the face hard enough that my head snaps to the side.

"I said you do not speak unless spoken to. Are you stupid as well as a murderer's daughter?"

My cheek burns and I can taste blood where my teeth cut the inside of my mouth. I keep my eyes down and say nothing because there is nothing to say that will make this better.

"My name is Miriam," the woman says. "I run the kitchens. You answer to me. I lost three children in the fire your father set. Three grown sons who died screaming while the packhouse burned around them. So if you think I am going to show you mercy or kindness, you are more foolish than you look."

She lets go of my arm and I resist the urge to rub where her fingers dug in hard enough to leave bruises. Miriam turns and walks toward the door, clearly expecting me to follow. I do, because what choice do I have.

The kitchen is massive, clearly designed to feed a pack of two hundred. Industrial stoves line one wall, multiple refrigerators and freezers along another. There is a prep area with cutting boards and knives, a baking station with mixers that look older than I am, and a dish pit that makes me want to cry just looking at it.

Two other women are already working, both younger than Miriam but with the same hard expressions. They glance at me when I enter and I watch their faces shift from curiosity to disgust the moment they recognize what I am. Word travels fast in a pack.

"This is the Muani girl," Miriam says like my name tastes bad in her mouth. "She will handle the cleaning. Floors, dishes, trash, anything no one else wants to do. She does not touch the food preparation. I do not trust her not to poison us."

One of the younger women laughs, a sharp mean sound. "Smart. Probably came here planning to finish what her father started."

"I did not come here," I say before I can stop myself. "I was dragged here in chains."

Miriam moves faster than seems possible for a woman her age. She grabs a wooden spoon from the counter and hits me across the shoulders with it, hard enough that I feel it through my shirt. "What did I say about speaking?"

I bite down on my tongue to keep from crying out. The mate bond flares suddenly, Ethan's wolf snarling somewhere in the packhouse, feeling my pain through the connection. For a second I think he might actually come down here, might actually intervene, but then I feel him wrestle the instinct down and force himself to stay away.

Of course. Why would he help me? I am just the prisoner, the daughter of a monster, someone who deserves whatever happens to her.

"Get to work," Miriam says, pointing at a mop and bucket in the corner. "The floors need scrubbing before breakfast service starts. And if you are not done by six thirty, you do not eat. Clear?"

"Clear," I whisper.

The next eighteen hours blur together into an endless cycle of scrubbing and carrying and trying to stay out of everyone's way. My wrists scream every time I grip something too hard, the silver burns not healed enough for heavy work. The ankle cuff chafes with every step. I am given no breaks, no water unless I steal sips from the sink when no one is looking.

Wolves come through the kitchen for meals and every single one of them finds a reason to make my life harder. Someone spills an entire pot of soup on the floor I just cleaned and tells me to scrub it again. Someone else empties a trash can over my head, covering me in coffee grounds and food scraps. A young male wolf corners me by the freezer and tells me in graphic detail what he wants to do to me before someone kills me, and I am so numb by that point that I just nod and wait for him to get bored and leave.

No one stops them. No one intervenes. This is my life now, I realize. This is what being Kaye Muani in Blackwater territory means. Endless work, constant abuse, and the certain knowledge that it will not get better because these wolves have every reason to hate me and no reason to show mercy.

At midnight Miriam finally dismisses me with a warning that if I am late tomorrow she will make sure I regret it. I stumble back to my basement room, every muscle screaming, and collapse on the bed without even taking off my shoes.

The mate bond pulses in the darkness. I can feel Ethan awake somewhere in the packhouse, feel his wolf pacing restlessly, feel his guilt bleeding through the connection even though he is trying to suppress it. He knows what is happening to me. He must. He is the Alpha. Nothing happens in his pack that he does not know about.

And he is letting it happen because I am the daughter of the man who destroyed his family, and in his mind I deserve every bit of suffering I receive.

I close my eyes and try to find sleep, but all I can think about is that I survived six years on the run only to end up somewhere worse than death. A prisoner of my own mate, hated by an entire pack, with no hope of escape and no one who will believe the truth.

My father did not order those fires. I know he did not. But no one will listen to me, and I have no proof, no evidence, nothing except my desperate certainty that the man who raised me could not have done something so monstrous.

The mate bond pulses again and this time I feel something new through it. Ethan is thinking about me. I can feel his attention like a physical weight, can sense him wrestling with the bond and his hatred and the part of him that wants to come down here and make sure I am okay even though he despises himself for wanting it.

Do not come, I think at him, knowing he probably cannot hear my thoughts through the bond but hoping he can feel the emotion behind them. Do not make this harder than it already is.

The attention withdraws and I am alone again in the dark with my pain and my exhaustion and the knowledge that tomorrow will be exactly the same as today, and the day after that, and the day after that, until something breaks.

I am very afraid that the thing that breaks is going to be me.