Chapter 4: The first touch

Serena's POV 

Three days passed while I sat in that room with the fire burning and the snow falling outside the window, and Alejandro did not come near me, did not send word to me, and did not give any sign that he remembered I existed at all.

I counted the hours as the sun rose and set behind the clouds that never seemed to leave this frozen land, and the fire burned low and was relit by servants who entered without speaking, who left food and water and warm clothes that I had not asked for and did not trust.

I did not eat the food they brought, and I did not drink the water, and I did not sleep in the bed with its soft blankets and its soft pillows, because sleep was a weakness and eating was a risk and drinking could be a death sentence if someone had decided to poison me while I was not looking.

Instead I sat against the headboard with my back to the wall and my eyes on the door, the way I had learned to sit when I was a child and my stepmother roamed the halls looking for someone to hurt, and I waited for something I could not name, for the torture to begin, for the king to return, and for someone to tell me why I was still alive when all the other sacrifices had probably died within hours of arriving at this terrible place.

The nobles laughed outside my door every night, and their voices carried through the stone walls like the howling of wolves, and I heard everything they said because the room was so quiet and my ears had learned to listen for danger.

"The human whore is still breathing," one of them said on the second night, and I could hear the disgust in his voice, the way he said the word human like it was something rotten. "The king must be going soft."

"Soft is not the word I would use," another voice replied, and this one was lower and meaner, the kind of voice that belonged to someone who enjoyed hurting things. "Have you seen the way he looks at that thing, like it matters, like it means something to him?"

"Disgusting," the first voice said again, and I pressed my back harder against the headboard. "A human, a sacrifice, something that should have been killed on the first night, and the king is treating it like a guest."

"He will kill it soon enough," the second voice said, and I could hear the smile in his words. "Give it time, and give Felipe time, and that human will be dead before the snow melts."

I did not believe them, because I did not believe anyone, but I could not stop thinking about the king's eyes, gold and burning and afraid, because the king had been afraid of me, a human sacrifice and a nobody, and that made no sense at all.

On the third night, the door opened without warning, without the sound of footsteps in the hallway or the click of the lock being turned, just the creak of the hinges and the rush of cold air from the corridor, and then I saw him standing in the doorway.

Alejandro was not the same man I had seen in the throne room three days ago, because his hair was disheveled like he had been running his hands through it for hours, and his shirt was untucked and wrinkled, and his eyes were not gold anymore but dark, so dark, wild and hungry with something else I could not name.

He was drunk, and I could smell it from across the room, with Lycan wine so strong that it could kill a human and strong enough to make a king stumble, and when he looked at me, he looked like a starving man who had just seen bread for the first time in years, like a drowning man who had just seen air, and like a monster who had just seen the one thing in the world that could save him from whatever darkness lived inside his chest.

He crossed the room while I sat frozen against the headboard with my back to the wall, and my hands were shaking and my mind was screaming at me to run and to fight and to do something, but I could not move because my body had forgotten how, because I had spent so many years learning to stay still when danger came that I no longer knew how to do anything else.

His hands grabbed my shoulders, and his fingers dug into my skin hard enough to leave bruises, and his breath was hot on my face, smelling of wine and something else, something wild that I could not name. Then his mouth was on mine, hard and desperate and wrong, because this was not a kiss but an attack, and this was a man who did not know how to be gentle trying to take something he did not understand.

He kissed me like he was dying, like I was the only thing keeping him alive, and his hands tore at my shirt until the fabric ripped and the cold air hit my chest.

His hands were on me then, rough and warm and shaking, and I felt every finger like a brand on my skin. He traced down my chest and over my ribs and across my stomach, and his touch was not gentle but it was not cruel either, it was something in between, something hungry and desperate and afraid.

I could smell him, and he smelled of wine and smoke and something wild. I could hear his breathing, fast and ragged, and I could feel his heart pounding against my chest where our bodies touched.

His fingers reached the waistband of my trousers and stopped, and I held my breath because I knew what came next. I had heard the stories, and I knew what the Lycans did to the humans they were given.

But he did not go further.

His hand just stayed there, trembling against my skin, and I could feel the heat of him and the want of him and the way his whole body was shaking with the effort of holding back. His forehead pressed against mine, and his eyes were closed, and his lips were parted, and he looked like a man who was fighting a war inside his own chest.

"I cannot," he whispered, and his voice was broken. "I cannot do this to you."

But his hands were shaking, and I could feel them shake, and I could feel the tremor in his fingers as they touched my skin, and I realized that he was not cruel and he was not gentle but something in between, a man who did not know how to want something without destroying it, a monster who was terrified of his own hunger.

And then he stopped.

He pulled back so fast that I almost fell forward, and his chest was heaving and his eyes were wide and his hands were still shaking, and he looked at me like he had just woken up from a nightmare and could not remember where he was.

"I cannot," he whispered again, and his voice was broken and cracked, like glass that had been shattered and glued back together one too many times.

He stood up and walked to the door without looking back, and his boots echoed on the stone floor. The door closed behind him, and the lock clicked, and the fire crackled, and I was alone again.

I touched my own lips with fingers that would not stop trembling, and they still tasted like him, like snow and smoke and something wild that should not be caged.

I did not know why that made me feel safe when it should have made me feel terrified, and I did not know why my heart was still pounding when the danger had passed, and I did not know why I was not afraid when I should have been more afraid than I had ever been in my life.

But I was not afraid, not really, not the way I had been afraid of my father and my stepmother and the guards and the chains. And that terrified me more than anything else, because it meant that something inside me was changing, and I did not know what I would become when the change was complete.