Chapter five:She’s a Slut

Nyra

“Can you hear yourself?”

I said it slowly, so he could catch every word, because the man in front of me clearly needed that. “Are you out of your mind? Two hundred years? A curse? Do you honestly expect me to believe any of that?”

Eramon didn’t blink. His hand was still at my face, his thumb resting over the bruise like he had every right to it, and the worst part was that I hadn’t pushed him away a second time. I told myself it was the leg. It throbbed with every heartbeat, a dull, sickening ache that made even sitting still feel like work, and I did not have the strength left to fight a man who looked carved out of stone.

That was all it was. The leg.

“I do not expect you to believe it,” he said. “I expect you to stop calling me a drunk.”

“Then stop acting like one.”

“I am a king.”

“You’re a man who broke into a stranger’s house and cut off someone’s hand.”

“He was about to whip my mate.”

“I’m not your mate!” My voice cracked on the last word, and I hated it. I hated how small it sounded in that huge, quiet room. “I’m nobody’s mate. I’m nobody’s anything. That’s the whole point of me.”

Something moved behind his silver eyes, too fast for me to name. Then it was gone, and the arrogance slid back over his face like a mask he had worn for so long it fit without effort.

“You are mine,” he said, like he was reading the weather. “Whether you believe it or not makes no difference to the fact.”

I stared at him.

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to scream. Mostly I wanted to cry, because everything I’d held together since the barn was starting to come loose. My mother’s silence. The whip uncoiling. My own father standing there, doing nothing, while a stranger’s hand closed around my wrist. It was all sitting just under my ribs, and if this man kept looking at me like I was something precious, I was going to fall apart in front of him.

I looked away first.

“I need you to leave,” I said quietly.

“No.”

“I’m asking nicely.”

“And I am declining nicely.” He rose to his full height, and the room somehow got smaller. “You are injured, you are in my territory, and until I have a healer look at that leg properly, you will remain exactly where you are.”

“Or what?”

“Or nothing.” His mouth twitched, almost a smirk. “I simply would rather not carry you twice in one day.”

My face went hot. Before I could throw something at him, a pillow, a shoe, the bedside lamp, he turned and walked toward the door, unhurried, as though he had never once been told no in his life.

“Do not move,” he said over his shoulder, and left.

The door clicked shut.

I sat there for one full minute, breathing. Then I lay back, pressed my palms against my eyes, and let the tears come, as quietly as I could, the way I’d learned to do at home.

•~~•

I must have slept, because the next thing I knew, the light had changed.

Gold sunlight lay across the sheets, and the stone floor had lost its night chill. The throb in my leg had dulled into something I could almost ignore. 

I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes. It had been a dream, I decided. A long, ugly, ridiculous dream, and any moment I’d hear my mother’s voice calling me down for classification.

The bandage on my calf said otherwise.

I was still lying there, trying to work out what to do with my life, when the shouting started.

Far away at first, a low murmur of male voices that I mistook for wind. Then it sharpened, and one voice rose above the rest, cutting through the stone as though it had been built to carry.

“Bring her out! I know she’s in there!”

My stomach dropped through the mattress.

I knew that voice. I had fallen asleep to it for four months.

I was off the bed before I’d decided to move. My leg protested, and I caught the bedpost, then the wall, then the window ledge. Below, past the courtyard and the tall iron gates, a crowd had gathered. Estate guards formed a line across the entrance, shoulder to shoulder, and behind them was Kyrell with half a dozen wolves from his pack, his phone in his hand.

I made it down the stairs somehow, gripping the banister. The front doors stood open. I stopped in the shadow just inside them.

Eramon stood alone on the steps with his hands clasped behind his back, looking at the gate the way you’d look at a dog barking at a fence.

“Word travels fast, you know,” Kyrell was shouting. “A stranger storms Corrick’s hall, cuts off an Alpha’s hand, and carries off a girl like she’s his property. Everyone’s talking about it. So I came to see who has so little shame.”

Eramon stood there, his lips crooked slightly as he watched the outburst.

“Whoever you are,” Kyrell went on, louder, playing to the wolves behind him, “you should know exactly what you’re protecting especially because she doesn’t belong to you.”

Eramon hummed in response, which clearly pissed Kyrell even more. 

“Where is she?” Kyrell scanned the steps. “Where is that fat slut? Come out here.”

His eyes drifted past Eramon, up the steps, and found me in the doorway.

His face split into a grin.

“There she is.”

All heads turned.

I had spent eighteen years learning how to shrink under stares. I knew how to hold my shoulders, how to keep my face blank, how to slip through a room without being noticed. None of it worked. Nothing I’d ever learned helped me stand there in a torn dress with a bandaged leg while strangers looked at me like a joke someone had already explained.

Eramon didn’t turn. He didn’t say a word. But his shoulders shifted, just slightly, like a wolf hearing a twig snap.

“Look at the girl you’re protecting.” Kyrell swept an arm toward me like he was introducing a show. “A slut. A liar. Kyrell’s tone had softened, almost kind, and that was worse. “Go on, Nyra, tell everyone here how much of a slut you are.. Tell this nice msn here how you begged me to fuck you senseless in that barn.”

My eyes widened in complete shock. “That’s not true.”

“How you threw yourself at me because you couldn’t stand the thought of being classified as nothing tomorrow.”

“That’s not true.” My voice cracked. “You tried to—”

“Spare me.” He didn’t even look at me. He was talking to Eramon. “You think you saved her? You’ve been played, friend. She’s good at it.” He turned to the crowd, spreading his hands, the picture of injured virtue. “I told her I was loyal to my real mate. And she lost her mind. She ran off screaming lies so she’d have someone to blame. That’s what desperate wolfless girls do.”

Heat crawled up my throat. “That’s not true.” I looked at Eramon who had not turned to me.

 He had a single brow raised. He’s going to believe it. Why wouldn’t he? He’d known me for less than a day. He’d found me half-dressed and bleeding in a forest.

“You don’t believe me?” Kyrell’s smile sharpened. He held up the phone. “Fine. I’m not asking anyone to take my word.”

He tapped the screen.

“I have proof.” Kyrell held the phone high, the way you’d hold up something you were proud of, and swiped his thumb across the glass.

“I’m sorry it has to come to this, Nyra.” He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded like he’d been waiting years for this moment. “But I think everyone deserves to know what kind of girl they’re dealing with.”

Just like that he tapped this screen.

For a second, there was only static.

Then a girl’s voice, small and shaking and unmistakably mine, echoed out across the room, thin and tinny through the phone’s speaker:

“Please, Kyrell. Please. I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t leave me. Just touch me—”