Chapter Two

Silver Eyes Don't Lie

Emily's POV

Nobody had ever looked at me the way he was looking at me now.

It was not cruel, it was not mocking. It was careful. Like he was trying to read something written in a language he had not seen before.

His silver eyes moved slowly from my face to my hands still gripping the empty tray to the worn hem of my dress.

My brother cleared his throat.

"Alpha Lucas, this is just one of our omegas. She was leaving."

"I did not ask her to leave." Alpha Lucas's eyes did not move from me.

"What is your name?"

I opened my mouth. I closed it. I looked at my brother who gave a small sharp nod that I knew was a warning.

"Emily," I said quietly.

"Emily." He said it like he was testing the weight of it. "Why does she smell like that, Alpha Aden?"

My stomach dropped.

My brother forced a smile.

"She is a little different, Nothing to concern yourself with."

"I am asking her." Lucas's voice was still calm. Still even, but something underneath it had gone very flat and very firm. He looked at me again.

"Why do you have almost no scent?"

I kept my face still. I had practised this saying the truth in the smallest possible way, the way that invited the fewest questions.

"My wolf was bound."

Silence.

Jayden shifted in his seat. My brother's jaw tightened.

"Bound," Lucas repeated.

"By who? And why?"

My brother answered before I could. "A pack matter. Old history, not relevant to today's discussion."

Lucas finally looked away from me and turned to Aden. His expression did not change, but the temperature in the room somehow dropped. "You bound a wolf in your own pack and you call it old history." It was not a question.

"It is handled," my brother said.

"I see." Lucas picked up his water glass. "You may go, Emily."

I almost ran from the room.

In the back corridor, I pressed myself against the cold wall and let out the breath I had been holding.

My hands were shaking, that never happened.

Men had looked at me with disgust, with boredom, with cruelty, but not like that. Not like I was something that needed to be understood.

I shook it off. He was an Alpha passing through. By tomorrow, he would be gone and the house would go back to exactly what it always was.

I went back to my work.

I scrubbed the kitchen floors until my knees ached. I folded laundry until my fingers were stiff. I ate a heel of bread in the corner of the pantry at noon and called it lunch.

By late afternoon, the meeting must have ended. I could hear the pack members moving through the halls, louder than usual, excited. Something had been agreed, I did not know what and did not ask.

It was almost dark when Jayden found me in the garden gathering wood for the fire. He grabbed my shoulder and spun me around hard enough that I dropped the logs.

"Pick those up," he snapped. Then, before I could move, he pulled me close by the front of my dress.

"What did you say to him?"

"Nothing. He asked about my scent. I told him my wolf was bound. That is all."

"That is all." He laughed low and mean.

"Alpha Aden is not happy with you. You made things awkward."

"I told the truth."

His hand came up fast, I braced. I always braced. It was muscle memory by now… the slight drop of my chin, the tightening of my shoulders, the way I had learned to breathe through pain so I did not make a sound that would make it worse.

The blow never came.

"Do not touch her."

The voice came from the garden doorway. I turned slowly.

Alpha Lucas stood in the frame. He had not changed, still dark, still still, still watching. His silver eyes were fixed on Jayden's raised hand with the kind of calm that was worse than anger.

Jayden dropped his arm. "Alpha Lucas. I apologise. You should not have seen that."

"No," Lucas said quietly. "I should not have had to." He walked forward, stopping just a few feet from us. His eyes moved to me briefly. Checking. Then back to Jayden. "I suggest you go inside."

Jayden went.

We were alone in the garden. The last of the light was bleeding out of the sky. I stared at the scattered logs on the ground and bent to start collecting them, mostly so I had something to do with my hands.

"How long?" Lucas asked.

"How long what?" I asked him

"How long has this been your life?"

I stacked the logs carefully. One, Two, Three. "Sixteen years."

He said nothing. But when I finally straightened and turned, he was watching me with an expression I had never seen on any man's face before. Not pity. Something much quieter than that.

"I want to speak to your brother," he said. "Tonight."

"About the deal?" I asked.

"About you."

He turned and walked back toward the house before I could ask what he meant.

And the pull in my chest, the one I had been trying to ignore all day twisted so sharp and so sudden that I pressed a hand over my ribs and choked.

Something was coming. I could feel it.

I just did not know yet whether it was going to save me or destroy me.

I picked up the logs one by one and stacked them against my chest. My hands were still not steady.

He had stopped a man twice my size from hitting me, just with his voice. No threat, no raised fist. Just two words and Jayden had folded like he was nothing.

I had never seen that before. Not once in sixteen years had anyone made Jayden back down.

I did not know what to do with that.

Back inside, I kept to the kitchen. I scrubbed the pots from dinner until my fingers were red and raw. I told myself to stop thinking about silver eyes and the way his voice had moved through me like it belonged there.

He was an Alpha, a powerful, dangerous man who had his own reasons for everything he did. Men like him did not defend girls like me out of kindness. There was always something underneath it. Always a reason that had nothing to do with you.

I had learned that lesson young.

The kitchen fire had burned low by the time I finally sat down on the stone floor beside it and pulled my knees to my chest. The house had gone quiet. Everyone else was asleep.

I pressed my forehead to my knees and closed my eyes.

That was when I heard footsteps in the corridor outside, slow and deliberate. Stopping directly outside the kitchen door.

Then a knock, soft but certain.

Nobody knocked for me,

Nobody ever came looking for me at night.

My breath caught.

"Emily." His voice was low through the wood. "I need you to open the door.”