9

The silence in the west wing of the packhouse was suffocating.

Charollet’s bare feet whispered over cold stone, the only sound in a corridor built for silence. Her palms, raw and reddened, trembled faintly at her sides. Scrubbing the endless mosaic-tiled halls—floors she wasn’t permitted to step on unless cleaning them had become part of her ritual humiliation. Her nails were chipped, her knuckles cracked, and every bone in her spine screamed from hours spent on her knees. Still, she stood straight. Not proudly, but deliberately.

Her hair, once cascading in golden waves, now clung to her scalp in tangled strands. Weeks of ash and labor had dulled it to the color of broken straw, yet in the right light, it still shimmered faintly, rebelliously. Her storm-grey eyes, so often dulled by sorrow, had sharpened to steel. They did not weep anymore.

She refused to let them.

Pain no longer frightened her. It was a daily companion constant, predictable, duller than the cruel laughter of the other servants or the icy stares from the elite wolves who passed her like she was invisible. Invisibility would’ve been a mercy. Charollet wasn’t granted that.

“You walk like you still believe you’re something,” hissed a servant girl one morning as they crossed paths near the great hall.

Charollet paused not long, not dramatically, but long enough to look at the girl. Just once. There was no hatred in her eyes. No fear, either. Only a depth that made the girl flinch and scurry off, as if she’d stared too long into the eye of a storm.

She remembered Viktor’s voice, clearer with each passing day. “Wolves don’t need fangs to be dangerous. They just need patience.”

Patience. She repeated that word like a prayer.

She was not a warrior. Not yet. She hadn’t shifted. There was no wolf clawing beneath her skin. There was only a girl they believed to be weak, orphaned, and abandoned.

But she was still here.

And every cruel word, every spilled drink she had to clean, every dress they ripped off her while laughing they were all memories now. Fuel.

In the shadows of the upper balconies, Kade watched.

His fingers curled around the edge of the wrought-iron railing. The marble beneath his boots gleamed. His jaw tightened as Charollet bent to lift a fallen tray, the rags she wore slipping off one shoulder to reveal the delicate slope of her collarbone.

She didn’t tremble. Didn’t whimper.

She simply adjusted the tray and moved on.

He hated that about her.

Hated the way she had become quiet, but not broken.

Hated how she didn’t cry anymore.

It had been days since he’d heard her beg.

And something about that silence was worse than the sound of her sobbing.

He wasn’t sure when it started this… fixation.

Maybe it was the way her grey eyes never dulled. Maybe it was how she had looked at him that day—after he’d dragged her out of the rogue camp, after she’d been whipped and auctioned—like she still held something he couldn’t reach.

He had stripped her of everything. Status. Safety. Dignity.

And still… she looked at him like he was the one falling.

“Kade.” Matthias approached from behind, arms folded across his chest. His voice broke the quiet. “Still watching her?”

Kade didn’t move.

“You know what the elders are whispering,” Matthias continued. “A female without a wolf—she shouldn’t be alive. If she hasn’t shifted by nineteen, she’s either cursed… or something worse.”

“She’s not cursed,” Kade snapped.

Matthias raised an eyebrow. “Then what is she?”

Kade didn’t answer.

How could he?

She was nothing. A stray. A mistake. A ghost-child born under a blood moon and raised by exiles. She was nameless until Viktor named her. Soulless, until her eyes burned their way into his dreams.

“She’s human,” Kade said flatly.

“Then why haven’t you sold her?” Matthias asked. “You parade her like a pet you don’t want anyone touching. You punish her like she’s your mate. But you don’t kill her. You don’t free her.”

Kade’s silence was its own confession.

From the training fields below, the wind caught her scent.

Rain-soaked ash. Soft petals. Stormlight.

It clung to his memory like a curse. His wolf snarled inside him, not in rage—but something worse. Longing.

He hated that too.

“She’s not hiding anything,” Kade said through clenched teeth.

But even as he said it, doubt slithered in.

Because Charollet was changing.

Not visibly. Not outwardly. But inside… something was waking.

He saw it in the way she moved, the way she didn’t flinch anymore. The way she bore shame like armor, not chains.

That night, the elite of Darkfang gathered in the upper halls.

Another meaningless celebration. More political posturing. Wolves laughing too loud, drinking too much. Kade stood at the head of the room like a king without a crown, his eyes drifting across the sea of silk and smugness.

Charollet entered quietly, head bowed. She wore the dress he had ordered—black velvet, too tight at the chest, too short at the thighs. Her wrists were bare, marked faintly by the silver cuffs she’d worn earlier. Her hair had been brushed out, but not pinned.

Let them see the shame of her, Kade had said.

Let them see her, and know she’s mine.

She moved with measured steps, balancing a tray of wine, the crystal glasses trembling slightly. She didn’t speak. Didn’t make eye contact.

But her presence pulled attention.

Laughter quieted.

Eyes turned.

Whispers followed.

She didn’t falter. Not once. Even when someone spilled a goblet of wine down her dress and called it an accident. Even when an elder’s mate sneered and tugged her by the wrist for fun.

She endured.

And that was what unsettled them most.

Kade’s wolf paced beneath his skin.

He should’ve felt victorious. Should’ve relished her humiliation.

But as he watched her walk past the gathered wolves, wine-stained and silent, her face still as the moon—he didn’t feel powerful.

He felt… watched.

She looked at no one, but somehow everyone felt seen.

Later that evening, Kade cornered her in the servants’ wing.

“Still pretending to be above all this?” he asked, voice like gravel.

She turned to him. Slowly. “I don’t pretend.”

He stepped closer, eyes narrowing. “You think you’re better than this?”

“No,” she said, her voice calm, even. “But I think I’m more than you want me to be.”

That hit deeper than she could have known.

Kade slammed a hand against the wall behind her, caging her in.

“You think your silence is strength?” he whispered, face inches from hers. “You think enduring makes you powerful?”

She didn’t answer.

He could smell her fear. It curled at the edges of her scent—but it didn’t dominate it. There was something else. Defiance. Fire.

His fingers grazed her jaw.

She didn’t flinch.

“I could destroy you,” he said.

“You already tried,” she replied.

It stunned him into stillness.

In that moment, she saw something crack behind his eyes. Not rage. Not lust.

Doubt.

She stepped past him, silent as a ghost, leaving him in the dim corridor.

He didn’t stop her.

Not this time.

But he knew—she wouldn’t break the way he wanted her to.

And now, he wasn’t sure he wanted her broken at all.