Liliana

chapter 21

I learnt early that silence keeps you alive .

in the pleasure house , silence was currency.we learned when to moan, when to speak , when to gesture and act. all men did not come to us for Truth. they came to forget it .

I was good at helping them forget.

By the time the Alpha king sent for me, I had already survived more nights than I could count. I had learned how to separate my body from my thoughts, how to let men touch my skin without ever touching me. It was the only way to survive a place like this.

Still, when his name reached the halls, the pleasure house went quiet.

The king Alpha of the black bridge did not visit often. When he did, it was never announced with celebration. No laughter followed his arrival. No bargaining. No choice.

You did not choose the king.

The king chose you.

The matron’s fingers tightened painfully around my arm when she came for me. “You,” she said, already pulling me forward. “Prepare yourself.”

Her voice held no warmth. No warning. Just finality.

I nodded, because nodding was easier than asking questions I already knew the answers to.

The bathwater steamed as servants scrubbed my skin raw, perfuming me with oils meant to please men who owned too much power to care about consent.

The bathwater steamed as servants scrubbed my skin raw, perfuming me with oils meant to please men who owned too much power to care about consent. They dressed me in silk so thin it was almost a lie, brushed my hair until my scalp burned, painted my lips a soft red meant to look inviting rather than bold.

They wanted me quietly beautiful.

Presentable.

Expendable.

As they worked, my mind betrayed me.

It always did when I was afraid.

I saw my mother’s face the night the soldiers came.

I had been younger then. Still foolish enough to believe mercy existed for people like us. We lived near the lower borders, where the ridge swallowed villages whole when it expanded. My mother had argued. She always argued. She believed land could be shared. She believed words mattered.

She had stood between our door and the king’s men, her back straight, her voice shaking but unbroken.

This land is ours too.

The king had not been there himself. He never needed to be. His orders were enough.

They killed her quickly and Efficiently. As if she were an inconvenience rather than a woman who had raised a child, who had laughed, who had loved.

I remembered the way my heart was shattered in many pieces that could not be mended.

I remembered screaming until my throat burned.

I remembered learning that night that the king did not need to know your name to end you.

And now, years later, he wanted me brought to his bed.

The irony tasted bitter.

When the doors finally opened, the room beyond was dim and vast. Firelight flickered across stone walls. The air smelled of smoke and leather and something colder beneath it control.

He stood near the window, his back to me.

The Alpha king.

Tall. Broad-shouldered, Unmoving.

he didn't turn immediately when I came, he needed not to, I was just a tool to be used for the men satisfaction.

You may look at me,” he said.

His voice was calm, Not cruel. That was worse.

I raised my eyes.

He was not monstrous. That was the lie people told themselves to make men like him easier to hate. He was handsome in a way that felt deliberate, as if the world had shaped itself carefully around him. His eyes were dark and steady, his expression unreadable.

This was the face of the man who had ordered my mother’s death.

He studied me in silence, and I felt it, his attention, slow and heavy, like hands without touch. I had been looked at by countless men, but this was different. This was not hunger.

This was ownership.

“Come closer,” he said.

My legs moved before my courage could stop them.

Each step felt like betrayal. Of my mother. Of the girl I had been. Of every vow I had made to survive without surrendering what little dignity I had left.

He reached out, lifting my chin with two fingers. His touch was warm. Steady.

I hated that my body reacted.

Hated the way my breath caught, the way my skin remembered what it was made for, even when my mind screamed.

“You’re afraid,” he observed.

I swallowed. “It’s my first time with a king.”

A lie. But a useful one.

His thumb brushed my lower lip. “Fear is not unpleasant,” he said. “It keeps people honest.”

He released me and stepped back, watching me as if I were a puzzle rather than a person. “Do you know why I chose you?”

My mouth went dry. “No, my lord.”

He studied my face again, longer this time. “You have familiar eyes.”

I was surprised at his outburst.

He didn’t know.

Or maybe he did.

The thought made my stomach twist in an uncomfortable way.

He moved closer, close enough that I could feel the heat of him, the power pressed into his presence. He did not rush. Did not touch me again. He simply stood there, making the space between us feel too small.

I thought of my mother’s blood on the dirt.

I thought of the way he stood now—clean, composed, untouched by the lives he had destroyed.

And I realized something that terrified me more than his proximity.

He did not remember her.

To him, my mother had been nothing. A voice. A problem. A brief inconvenience erased with a gesture.

And now I stood before him, dressed to please, breathing because he allowed it.