The Trap Closes

I became a piece of property the exact second the champagne glasses clinked.

The Obsidian Claw packhouse grand ballroom was shaking with the thunderous shouts of hundreds of wolves down the staircase. He was celebrating the wedding of the century. My mother, who was weak and smiling with her exhaustion, had just become the Luna Queen. She was married to Alpha King Thorne, who was the most ruthless and feared predator across the whole territory of the north.

It was a beautiful union to the rest of the world. A widowed and ill woman who was rescued by a great King.

But I knew the truth. Thorne didn't want a wife. He wanted a trophy. And worse still, bringing us into this citadel of black marble and silver, he had pitted me directly in the nest of his three monstrous, breathtaking sons.

I ran down the dark arboresque of the east wing of the house, my bridal bridesmaid gown rustling too noisily on the heavy carpet. I needed to get to my room. I had to shut the door, take the curtains, and vanish. My heart was throbbing against my ribs, a crazy, hysterical beat, of which my inner wolf--mute and slumbering by birth--could not have even endeavored to quiet.

Simply get to the door, Elara, I said to myself, gripping the cold brass key which the head-enforcer at Thorne had given me a little earlier. Just survive the night.

It was stuffy air in this section of the packhouse. It was stuffy, oppressive, with the remaining odor of unfiltered, unadulterated Alpha dominance. It seemed physically to press my skin, and I could hardly breathe. I was a wolf without shift, power, and rank. I was not much better than a step above human to them. I was prey.

I came to the heavy oak door cut with the pack snarling wolf crest. Room 402. The nearest room to the new royal suite of my mother. I pushed the key into the lock, and my hands were trembling so much that the metal scraped on the brass plate.

It didn't turn.

I scowled and tried to shove the handle. The massive door moaned and opened itself. There was not a glow of any kind indoors. No lights were lit, and the heavy velvet curtains were pulled down over the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, and the blood moon outside was shut out.

A chill was crawling up my spine violently. My human instincts, which were now human, cried out to me to flee to the crowded ballroom.

But the coughing paroxysm of my mother, who had preceded my thoughts, was echoed in my mind. She required the expert healers of the lycan, which only the vast wealth of Thorne could afford. Had I been gay, had I made a scene and disgraced the King on the eve of his marriage, he would have cut her off from her treatments. I was forced to become an ideal, law-abiding stepdaughter.

I crossed the door, swallowing the congealed mass of terror in my throat.

"Hello?" Whispered I, and my voice was disgustingly small in the cavern.

Click.

The door was closed behind me like a thunderclap. The deadbolt was closing with a heavy metallic clop that sounded like a prison cell closing behind.

I turned about, and my back to the solid wood of the door, and I flattened myself with my hands against it in a panicky fashion. "Who's there?"

There was low, dark chuckling in the corner of the room. The noise caused the small hairs on my arms to erect. A laugh it was, but a physical vibration of crude power.

Whose there, she asked a voice in the velvet shadows. It was oily, false, and shot through with lethal diversion. Jace. The third youngest among the stepbrothers. The odor of spiced rum and ozone, a storm about to strike, was on him.

She ought to be asking what we are going to do with her, another voice sneered out of the farther side of the room. Caleb. The middle brother. Next was his smell, which was of burning ash and crushed pine needles. He was a fighter, a sadist who flaunts his sadism as a badge of honor.

All at once, a low reading lamp flashed into light towards the large fireplace.

The amber glow lightened me on the horror that awaited me.

Jace was leaning lazily on the marble mantle, rolling a silver coin across his knuckles. He was wearing his made wedding suit to the letter, his long black hair cascading down loosely about his grey, angry eyes. Caleb was sitting backward on a velvet chair, and his big, muscular shoulders were straining the material of his vest, and a savage grin was twisting his scarred jaw.

However, what caused my lungs to completely cease functioning was the third man in the room.

Kaelen was sitting, admittedly in the huge armchair in the middle of the darkness, dark, but gleaming with silver where his cufflinks could be seen.

The eldest. The true heir. The deadliest wolf that I had ever seen during the nineteen years of my life.

He didn't speak. He didn't even move. But his aura was crushing. It poured into the room, a great wave of black ice and dark cedar, which quailed my knees. His eyes met mine with cold and unforgiving eyes like a frozen lake.

"What are you doing in my room?" I was able to strain out, forcing up my chin. I would not give them an opportunity to find me in tears. I would not be their victim. Not without fighting back. "Get out. If your father finds out--"

Caleb threw his head back and laughed, a bitter, yelling laugh. "If our father finds out? The key is with our father, Little Elara.

The curse of life ran out of my face. "What?"

Jace kicked off the mantle, and his feet made no sound whatsoever against the carpet as he started circling me slowly like a shark in the scent of blood. Did you suppose out of the goodness of his heart that Thorne had you moved into the Alpha wing? You have no wolf. You have no rank. You are a waste of the resources of our packs.

I hiss. My mother is his mate, and my hands twisted into fists against the door. "He loves her."

He loves that she has a rare bloodline that he wants to research, and the voice of Kaelen finally broke through the room.

It was a very deep, gravelly baritone, and it was a shockwave of heat all the way down to my toes. I despised the fact that my body responded to him. I despised that in the presence of his dreadful strength, my traitorous heart should have skipped a beat.

Kaelen slowly stood up. He was enormous, and more than six-foot-four, a mountain of pure, cut muscle under his dark suit. And you, little human, the cost of her admission.

He walked slowly toward me. Caleb and Jace moved in on one side with each stride Caleb made. I was trapped. Leaning on the heavy oak door were three giant Alphas, of whom the combined auras were literally causing the air to shimmer with heat.

I do not know, I mumbled, and at last my voice broke, and Jace touched me at the very first fingertip, causing me to scream. I violently pulled off his hand, hitting him.

The eyes of Jace flashed dangerous, vibrant gold--his wolf coming to the surface at the contempt. There was a growl of his throat, but Kaelen held up one finger, and Jace immediately receded, yielding to the complete authority of his elder brother.

It is quite easy, Elara, very easy, sneered Caleb, and leapt right up beside me, so that I could almost have sworn it was his chest that was heating so. Your mother should have her medicine. The medications she receives on a weekly basis? They were more expensive than all your old packs used to be. Failure to take at least one dose would lead to her lungs being crystallized.

There came a nauseous sensation. I had heard that she was extremely ill, but I did not know how the cure was to be administered. Thorne had not told anybody anything.

Would you rather the healers should continue to visit her suite, said Kaelen asked as he halted with a stop that was only inches short of me. He was so near that my head had to be thrown upwards in order to look at him and glimpse his icy stare. "You will obey us. Completely. Unquestioningly. You are a slave here, in the darkness.

My chest heaved. I gazed between the three of them. Three ugly, beautiful creatures that were in possession of my mother through their clawed paws. They wanted to break me. They desired to make me an outlet to their perverse, superior instincts, to abuse me only because my mother had dared to usurp their dead mother on the throne.

"And if I refuse?" I requested, and hissed. I wanted to sound gallant, but my lower lip was trembling.

Kaelen leaned down. His cheeks were within a fraction of an inch of mine. The odor of black ice and black cedar intoxicated and horrified me. His breathing stirred his lips over my mouth.

You see, death chokes your mother, then, by sunrise, he said ruthlessly. "And you will watch."

One of the tears had betrayed me, and leaped off my eye and dotted down my cheek. I was trapped. I was broke, disempowered, and friendless in this giant, aggressive pack. I was entirely alone. But when I looked up and caught the cold gaze of Kaelen, a kind of ache, I believe, went through my breast. It wasn't fear. It was a spark. The smallest, sleeping spark of pure rage that I had ever known before.

I wouldn't just survive this. I would make them pay. I would subject myself to their perverse game, I would give in to their gloomy demands, and I would make it a means of discovering their vulnerabilities.

All right, I grumbled, getting myself together. I had to make myself look into the eyes of Kaelen. "What do you want?"

The sadistic smile of Caleb increased. Jace cursed a black contented hum.

But Kaelen didn't smile. His eyes grew black, and the pupils dilated, eclipsing the icy blue. He raised his hand, and his big, coarse fingers encircled my throat. He did not squeeze to hurt me, but he had a grip that was a frightening reminder of his unquestionable power. He turned my head back and made my neck bare to him.

He bent slowly in and hid his face in the crook of my neck. He made a long, deep, shivering breath of my smell.

Kaelen suddenly stiffened his whole body with a twitch.

I felt the hand that was around my throat tightening. A roar of ferocious, deafening noise tore open his chest and trembled the very structure of the room. The reading lamp fluttered and burst open, and cracked the glass bulb.

Kaelen tore himself off me like a burnt bandage. He fell backwards, holding his chest, his eyes fully filled with the flaming, desperate gold of an Alpha-wolf who had just come upon a discovery of world-shattering moment.

"Get away from her!" His voice broke out with a horrible mixture of anger and horror, and with a roar, Kaelen shouted at his brothers.

Caleb and Jace stood in shock through the violent loss of control of their brother.

Kaelen gazed on me in the darkness with his heaving heart and his fangs completely at rest. He did not see me as a property, but like his very greatest nightmare just brought to life.

"Kaelen?" Jace asked cautiously. "What is it?"

Kaelen wiped the back of his hand over his mouth, and his face twisted in an expression of unfiltered disgust, as he looked up at me.

She is my mate, snarled Kaelen, the utterance so pregnant with unutterable repulsion. He used a waving, gnarled finger to point at my face.

And I will make her die before she ever gets a claim on me.