6

My face burned. With my left hand, I carefully pulled the fabric away from his side. His skin was warm under my fingers, and the muscles of his stomach tightened when I touched him. I had never been this close to a man like this. Not unless someone was dragging me, hitting me, or throwing me aside. This was different. 

Too different.

“Your face is red,” he said.

“It is the candle.”

I pressed the crushed herbs against the wound harder than necessary. He sucked in a breath but still laughed softly.

“Do not laugh,” I muttered.

“I am trying not to.”

I wrapped the wound with the cleanest rag I owned, which was not very clean at all, but it was the best I had. Then I treated the claw marks on his shoulder. He watched me the whole time, and that made my hands clumsy.

“What is your name?” he asked.

I hesitated. 

“Melany,” I finally said.

His silver eyes stayed on mine, or maybe on the curtain of hair I kept over them. “I am Ravok.”

I repeated the name silently in my head. Ravok. It sounded like someone who did not belong in a basement.

“You can stay until morning,” I whispered. “Then you have to leave. If they find you here, they will kill you. And me too.”

Ravok looked around the damp walls, the cracked floor, the pile of rags I used as a bed. His expression changed, but only for a second.

“They keep you here?”

I stiffened. “It is better than outside.”

He did not say anything after that. I gave him the rest of the pastry Dominic had brought me. At first, he refused. Then I pushed it toward him again, and he took it with an expression I could not understand.

“You should eat it,” he said.

“I already had some.”

He looked at me for a long moment, then broke the pastry in half and placed one piece back in my hand. No one had ever split food with me before. I stared at the small piece in my palm until my eyes burned. 

That night, I slept badly, curled on the floor with my back against the door, listening to Ravok’s breathing and every sound from above. 

More than once, I woke up afraid he had died. Each time, he was still there, pale but alive, watching the ceiling as if he too was afraid of dreaming.

**

By morning, Ravok’s fever had gone down.

He left before the servants woke, moving through the basement shadows with more strength than a wounded man should have. At the door, he paused and looked back at me, but his eyes dropped to the silver compass half-hidden beneath the torn collar of my dress.

I stiffened and covered it with my hand.

Ravok narrowed his eyes. “Where did you get that?”

“It is mine.”

“I do not recognize the crest,” he said, still looking at it. “But compasses like that guide noble bloodlines.”

My fingers tightened around the metal. “My mother gave it to me.”

“Then she wanted you to find something.” Before I could ask what he meant, he stepped back into the passage. “You saved my life, Melany.”

I shook my head. “Do not come back.”

His tired smile returned. “I will try.”

Then he disappeared into the dark corridor, leaving me alone with the compass burning like a secret against my palm.

I thought that would be the strangest thing that happened to me.

I was wrong.

Later that morning, Dominic came to the kitchen again. This time, I had already prepared myself for the worst. I kept my head down, my hair falling over my face, and focused on cutting vegetables with my left hand. My fingers were still swollen from the cold, and the knife slipped more than once.

Dominic stopped beside me.

I waited for the insult.

Instead, he placed a small jar on the table.

Medicine. Real medicine. The kind kept in the Alpha family’s private cabinet, not the bitter herbs I stole from the edge of the forest.

“For your hand,” Dominic said.

My heart kicked against my ribs. I looked up before I remembered not to, and for one terrifying second, my hair shifted away from my face. Dominic’s golden-brown eyes met mine, and something inside me changed so suddenly that the knife almost slipped from my fingers.

It was not like the strange closeness by the river. It was not fear, or hunger, or shame, or the dizziness that came from not eating. It was deeper than that, a pull that went through my chest and wrapped itself around a place I had not even known could still feel anything.

My wolf should not have been there. Everyone said I had no wolf. I had believed them for years, because there had never been a voice inside me, never a warm presence under my skin, never anything that made me feel less alone.

But in that moment, something weak and broken stirred in the dark.

Mate.

The knife fell from my hand and hit the floor.

Dominic’s face did not change, but his jaw tightened just enough for me to know he had felt it too. He knew. By the Moon Goddess, he knew.

I waited for him to say something. I waited for him to deny it, to laugh, to look at me with disgust and tell me I had imagined everything. Instead, he only pushed the jar closer with two fingers.

“Use it before your hand rots,” he said coldly.

Then he walked away.

I stood there for a long time with my heart beating so loudly that the kitchen sounds seemed far away. Dominic was my mate. The Alpha’s son. Victoria’s Dominic. The boy who had lifted me by the collar like an animal, humiliated me, insulted me, saved me, and brought me food in the dark.

I wanted to be sick. I wanted to cry. I wanted to run after him and ask why the Moon Goddess would do this to me.

I did none of those things.

I picked up the jar with trembling fingers and hid it beneath my apron. 

For the rest of the morning, I worked as if nothing had happened, but my body no longer belonged completely to me. Every time someone said Dominic’s name, my hand stopped for a second. Every time footsteps crossed the hall, my chest tightened before I could tell myself not to hope.

I hated it. I hated myself for reacting to him. I hated the Moon Goddess for tying the last soft part of me to someone who looked at me as if I were dirt under his shoes.

By afternoon, that secret was no longer mine.

I did not know who noticed first. Perhaps one of the maids had seen Dominic leave medicine on my table. Perhaps Victoria had been watching him more closely than usual, the way she always did when another girl stood too near him. Or perhaps the bond itself betrayed me, because when Dominic entered the hall later that day, my whole body went still before I could control it.

Victoria saw.

Her gaze moved from me to Dominic, then back to me. At first, she only stared, and I almost convinced myself that she had noticed nothing. Then her expression shifted, slowly, as if a terrible thought had begun to take shape behind her pretty eyes.

“What is this?” she asked.

I lowered my head, but it was already too late. She crossed the room and grabbed my arm, her nails digging into my skin.

“Look at him again,” she said.

“I do not know what you mean.”

“Liar.”

Dominic stood near the entrance, silent and unreadable. He did not defend me, but he did not walk away either, and that only made Victoria more certain. 

Her fingers tightened around my arm until pain shot through my shoulder. “No,” she whispered, but there was nothing weak in her voice.. “No. This cannot be.”

People began to look at us.

Victoria turned to them. “She did something to him.”

My blood went cold.

“She is a witch,” Victoria said, louder now. “I knew it. I always knew there was something wrong with her. The daughter of traitors has been hiding in this house and using witchcraft against the future Alpha.”

“That is not true,” I said.

Her hand struck my face before I could say more.

“You dare deny it?”

The hall began to stir around us. Wolves moved closer, whispering the words they had always wanted to say. Witch. Traitor. Curse. They passed from mouth to mouth so quickly that, within seconds, it no longer sounded like an accusation. It sounded like a verdict.

“Call Alpha Andre,” Victoria ordered. “Call Luna.”

Panic climbed up my throat. “Please, I did not do anything.”

Victoria dragged me forward, forcing me into the middle of the hall. “Then explain why Dominic reacted to you. Explain why a slave with no wolf suddenly dares to raise her eyes to the Alpha’s son.”