The Mate They Tried To Bury

"Get up. Now." 

 

The guard's boot hit her ribs before he even finished talking. Marie had been curled on the floor for a while, arms over her head, waiting for the other women to get bored and back off. They usually did. 

 

"She started it," one of them said, wiping blood off her knuckles on her pants and edging toward the wall. 

 

Marie didn't bother arguing. It never made a difference. She pushed herself up, felt the new bruise settle in next to the old ones, and reached inward for her wolf, more out of habit than any real hope. Nothing. Same as it had been for eight months now. She wasn't even surprised by it anymore. Just scared. 

 

"Winston." The guard said her name like he didn't enjoy saying it. "You're being released." 

 

She waited for the catch. There was always a catch. Nothing came. 

 

"Why?" 

 

"Don't know, don't care. Papers came this morning." He jerked his chin toward the hallway. "Gate's waiting." 

 

They took her through three checkpoints before anyone handed back her old clothes. They didn't fit right anymore, loose in some places, tight in others, two years of bad food had done that to her. Nobody said anything else to her. By the time she got to the front gate the light was so bright it hurt, and she had to stop walking for a second just to let her eyes adjust. 

 

She'd imagined this a hundred times, lying on a cot too small to turn over in. Isolde waiting there with her arms open. Herself finally breaking down and crying into someone's shoulder. She'd played it out in her head so many times it barely felt real anymore. 

 

Instead it was Callum standing by the carriage. Alone. Hands behind his back like he was bracing for something. 

 

He looked older. Tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. He looked at her the way you'd look at an injury before deciding if it's safe to touch. She could tell he expected her to run over crying, to grab onto him and fall apart, demand comfort. Some small part of her almost wanted to give him that. It would've been easier than what she actually felt, which was nothing close to relief. 

 

"Marie." Her name came out rough. 

 

"Alpha." She gave him a short nod, formal, like he was someone she didn't know well. "Thank you for coming yourself." 

 

He blinked, caught off guard. 

 

"You don't have to call me that. It's just me. Callum." 

 

"Of course." She walked past him and climbed into the carriage without waiting for help. 

 

He got in across from her and the silence between them felt heavy. He kept glancing over like he wasn't totally sure it was really her sitting there. She watched the fields pass by outside, greener than she remembered, the birds too loud after two years of hearing nothing but stone and other people breathing. 

 

"You've gone quiet," he said eventually, a little annoyed. "I figured you'd have more to say." 

 

She almost laughed. Two years. No letters. No visits. Not one word either way, and now he wanted conversation. 

 

"What would you like me to say?" 

 

He didn't answer that. Instead he changed the subject. "There's guests coming to the estate this week. Important ones. We're trying to lock in an alliance." He paused. "I need you to behave. Don't cause problems for Sera. Not this week." 

 

Sera. Of course. Not you, not the family, not us. Sera, specifically, like the first thing Marie would want to do after two years in prison was make trouble for a girl who'd never had to answer for anything in her life. 

 

"I understand," she said. 

 

And she did. Two years, and the first real thing anyone asked of her was to stay out of Sera's way. Not are you okay. Not what happened to you in there. Just that. She'd already known it, somewhere underneath everything, before they'd even left the gate. Hearing him say it just made it official. Nothing here had changed. She was the only one who had. 

 

He reached over then, probably without thinking about it, just a hand toward her arm. Her body reacted before her brain caught up. She curled in on herself, knees to chest, arms over her head, the same way she used to when someone's hand came at her too fast in that cell. 

 

The carriage went dead quiet. 

 

It took her a few seconds to realize nothing was coming, and she uncurled slowly, smoothing her skirt down like nothing had happened. 

 

Callum hadn't moved. His hand was still hanging there, and his face had gone pale. 

 

"Marie. What was that?" 

 

"Nothing." She looked back out the window. "Reflex." 

 

He didn't push it, but she could feel him watching her the rest of the way, trying to work something out. When the carriage finally stopped at the estate gates, he reached for her again, just to help her down, and his fingers caught the inside of her wrist where her sleeve had slid up. 

 

He froze. 

 

The bruises were old, yellow going brown, with newer ones darker underneath, wrapped around her wrist like a bracelet she never asked for. He turned her hand over and she let him, watching it click for him, piece by piece. 

 

"Who did this to you?" For a second he actually sounded like her brother again, the one who used to check her knees after she fell out of the orchard trees. 

 

Something in her went cold and calm, the way it always did once she stopped fighting something she already knew. 

 

"Does it matter now?" 

 

He didn't have an answer for that either. The carriage doors opened onto the estate she used to call home, the same family that let two years pass without writing a single letter, and she stepped out into the courtyard already sure of one thing. 

 

Nothing here had changed. Only she had.