Chapter 5

Lyra's POV

Before I could open my eyes, I was falling.

Not down — forward. Into warmth, into arms that locked around me so tight my broken skin screamed in protest. His chest heaved against my cheek, each breath shuddering through his entire frame. His heart hammered fast and furious beneath my ear — nothing like the calm, measured rhythm I'd felt through his shirt in the parlor.

I was shaking. My whole body trembled against him, rattling like a thing coming apart at its joints. I couldn't make it stop.

"What the hell is this?" His voice cut above my head — low, dangerous, barely contained. "Is this how your pack honors a bargain?"

"It's not — please, you misunderstand—" Arabella's voice, recalibrated to sugar. "I was only protecting you! She tricked you somehow, I just wanted—"

A thud. A shriek.

I opened my eyes in time to see Arabella hit the ground. Rowan — the beta — stood over her with his boot still raised and his expression perfectly empty, as if he'd kicked aside a stool blocking his path. Nothing more.

Arabella sprawled on the filthy floor, white nightgown pooling around her, and for the first time in my life I saw her look small. She screamed — not in pain, but in disbelief. Raw, ugly outrage.

I stared. None of this made sense. People didn't do this. Not for me. Not for anyone like me.

Guards surged forward. Weapons drawn — knives, batons, a short sword. They formed a ring around us. The shrieking Arabella was pulled to her feet.

Alpha Thorn arrived next, shouldering through the doorway, face purple and slick with sweat. His eyes swept the room — the blood on the floor, his daughter's mascara-streaked face, my body limp in the northern alpha's arms.

"Alpha Draven." His voice was measured, but his jaw trembled. "This is my territory. You take my servant, strike my daughter — you think I have no authority at all?"

"You broke the contract first." Cassian's voice didn't rise. It dropped, quiet as a blade drawn from a sheath. "I paid for her. She was mine the moment you said the word."

"I was doing you a FAVOR!" Alpha Thorn stepped closer, finger jabbing the air. "That girl is cursed. Her mother was a witch — killed my mate with her filthy blood magic. The girl owes us a lifetime of atonement for what was done to this pack—"

My body went rigid.

There it was. The words I'd heard since I could remember. My mother's crime. My tainted blood. The reason I didn't deserve freedom, or food, or the sound of my own name.

I braced for it. For his arms to loosen. For the disgust to reach his hands and drop me to the floor where I belonged. Witch's daughter. Cursed. Filthy.

His arms tightened.

"No blood is dirty," Cassian said. The words came from his chest — I felt them vibrate against my cheek before I heard them in the air.

"You don't understand what she IS—"

"I understand perfectly." His voice went flat and cold as iron. "You took a child — a child who had done nothing — and made her pay for her mother's crime for fifteen years. You starved her. Beat her. Took her voice from her." Each sentence landed like a verdict. "That is the only filthy thing in this room."

The alpha's mouth opened. Closed. No rebuttal came.

Nobody had ever said that. Not once in fifteen years. Not the servants who averted their eyes when Arabella dragged me away. Not the butler who sometimes left extra bread on the kitchen table. Not one person had looked at me and said: this is not your fault.

Something inside me cracked open.

My eyes burned. My fingers curled into his blood-soaked shirt on their own — gripping the ruined fabric like it was the only solid thing left in the world.

More soldiers crowded in from the corridor. I heard their boots, their breathing, the clink of weapons. Fifteen. Twenty. Against two.

Cassian laughed. Short. Cold.

Then the air changed.

Something pressed outward from him — invisible, immense, like gravity doubling in a single heartbeat. The room itself seemed to flinch.

I felt nothing. My wolf was dormant, my witch-blood interference making me deaf to what every other wolf in this room was drowning in. Whatever power he'd released passed through me like wind through an open window.

But the guards buckled. The alpha's knees bent, face draining from purple to ash-white. His mouth opened — no sound came out. His hands shook violently at his sides.

Alpha pressure. The kind only a true alpha could wield — the kind spoken of in whispered stories but rarely seen. The kind that made lesser wolves submit whether they chose to or not.

One by one, weapons clattered to the floor.

"Let us pass," Cassian said. Not a request.

The alpha managed a single jerky nod. The ring of soldiers parted like curtains drawn back.

"FATHER!" Arabella's scream tore through the silence. Her face was a ruin of smeared makeup and fury. "You can't let her GO! You promised me — you PROMISED she would never—"

The crack of Alpha Thorn's palm across her face echoed off the stone walls.

"Shut your mouth."

Arabella crumpled. Her sobbing was the only sound as Cassian carried me toward the door.

Then he paused. Shifted me in his arms so I could see his face. His jaw was set hard, but his eyes — warm amber, flecked with gold in the dim light — found mine.

"One last thing," he said. "Do you want to come with me?"

Yes. YES. The word filled my entire chest, bursting against my ribs. Take me away from here. Please. I'll go anywhere. I'll do anything.

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

My throat locked. The familiar paralysis climbed back, seizing the muscles that had produced one single sentence tonight and then spent themselves completely. The pain, the blood loss, the years of conditioned silence — they owned my voice again.

I tried. My lips shaped the word. No sound.

Panic clawed at my chest. My eyes went wide. He'd think I was refusing. He'd put me down. He'd leave me here—

Cassian watched me struggle. His expression didn't change — no impatience, no disgust. He just waited, holding me steady, as if he had all the time in the world for a girl who couldn't produce a single sound.

Then one eyebrow lifted. Slow. Almost amused. The corner of his mouth twitched upward.

"Doesn't matter," he said. "Even if you don't want to — you're coming anyway."