Chapter 2: The Twist

Lena's POV

"Pack law lets the wronged party choose the sentence," Kael murmured, so low that only I could hear. "I choose to keep you."

I stared at him. Of all the things I had braced for, that was not one.

He straightened and turned to the hall. "Lena Steele is rejected as my mate," he said, and his voice rang off the stone. "But the pact between our families stands, as my elders have wished for two years. She will be my wife in name, and she will carry my name and nothing else. That is her punishment."

For a heartbeat, nobody breathed. Then the room exploded into whispers.

I watched Alpha Colton's mouth open to disown me, close again, and form a bow instead. "Your Majesty is generous," he said. "My daughter is honored."

A minute ago I had been no daughter of his, and now I was honored.

Near the front, the girl in pale blue had gone the color of milk, and the older woman beside her, copper-haired and kind-faced, was smiling so hard that her lips trembled. Whatever they had planned, this had not been part of it.

"Put her in her room," Kael said. "She is mine to punish. No one else's."

The guards marched me out. As I passed the copper-haired woman, she leaned in and stroked my hair as if she were a loving mother. "You should have stayed asleep, sweetheart," she whispered, and her fingernails dug into my scalp.

They shut me in a narrow room at the end of a cold corridor. I sat on the bed and did what I always did when everything fell apart, which was to start with the facts. There were bruises on both arms. My knuckles were scraped raw, as though I had hit something hard. Then my fingers found a swollen lump the size of an egg at the back of my head.

This girl had fought that man with everything she had, and a blow like that, on a heart as weak as hers, could easily have been fatal. Maybe that was how I had gotten here.

The lock clicked, and a young woman with a messy brown braid slipped in, her face streaked with tears. "My lady! They said you were dead."

"Who are you?"

The tray in her hands rattled. "Don't. Please don't do that. It's Lucy. I'm your personal maid. I've dressed you and fed you and tucked you in every night since we were ten."

"I hit my head. I don't remember you, or the party, or anyone."

Lucy set the tray down very slowly, and her eyes searched mine for the trap. "This is one of Lady Chloe's tricks."

"It isn't. Ask me anything."

"What was the first thing you ever said to me?"

"I don't know, Lucy. I really don't."

She went still. Then she turned my head toward the lamp, and her fingers found the lump. Her face drained of color. "Someone did this to you," she breathed. "You've never looked anyone in the eye in your whole life, my lady, and the whole house is whispering that you looked the king in the eye. I thought the girl I knew was gone. Now I think maybe she's just lost."

"Then tell me everything."

"You're Lena Steele, the Alpha's eldest daughter, and today was your eighteenth birthday. You've never had a wolf. You sleep more than anyone I know, and the pack calls you wolf-less." She swallowed. "Your mother was Luna Selene. She died when you were two, after the Alpha took her own maid into his bed. A girl named Henrietta. Luna Selene stopped eating, and the healers said her heart gave out, but everyone knew it was grief."

A husband who cheated, and a woman who pretended to be a friend. I had died because of exactly that, and the girl whose body I wore had lost her mother to the same story.

"Luna Henrietta is the copper-haired woman, and the girl in pale blue is her daughter, Lady Chloe," Lucy said. "Before the party, Lady Chloe took your tea tray out of my hands. She said she would carry it herself. She has never carried anything for anyone in her life."

The door opened without a knock.

Kael Wolven stood in the doorway. He took a white handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the handle he had just touched, and folded the cloth into a perfect square. Then he stopped, frowned at a candle holder that was slightly crooked, and straightened it before he looked at me.

"Leave us," he told Lucy. She fled.

"Let's be clear about what this is," he said. He did not sit. "My elders have paraded forty women past me in two years. I have no interest in marriage, in mating, or in any woman. A wife who dishonored me in front of the whole pack is the one wife nobody expects me to love. You are my punishment, and you are a convenience. The rest is not your concern."

"So I'm a distraction."

"Don't mistake this for a chance to get close to me. Women have a way of turning the smallest kindness into something more, and I have no patience for it." His pale golden eyes did not move from my face. "Three rules. You will not touch me. You will not touch my belongings. You will not enter my study."

I thought: he wipes doorknobs, he lines up candle holders, and he cannot stand to be touched. I had spent eight years learning to read patients exactly like him perhaps this man is sick.

"I have terms of my own," I said. "Lucy comes with me, and I'm not locked up like a prisoner."

"You are in no position to make demands. You were found half-dressed with a guard. You should be grateful I'm letting you stay at all."

"I would be more grateful if you had asked me what happened. You haven't bothered."

His jaw tightened. "Watch your tongue, Lena."