Seralyth Ashcroft

I wake up like my body is still falling.

Not the soft kind of waking—no stretch, no calm, no normal. Just a sharp inhale that drags pain through my skull and makes my stomach flip like I’m back in that van, braced against metal, trying to bite through fear and not puke from the cold burn of brinks.

My eyes crack open and the room swims.

Ceiling first—high, familiar, carved beams that used to feel like safety when I was twelve and convinced the Ashcroft mansion was the only place in Aurelith that couldn’t be touched. There’s a chandelier above me, dimmed low, throwing warm gold across stone walls and dark wood.

East wing.

My room.

The one that faces the forest.

That’s how I know I’m alive. Because my lungs fill with cedar and fireplace smoke and the faint clean bite of whatever herbs the healer rubbed into my temples.

Then my head throbs and the memory slams into me anyway.

Hands on my arms. Stairs. The brinks clamping around my wrists like cold teeth. Voices—calm, practiced. Like they’d done this before. Like taking girls out of buildings is just another Tuesday.

My fingers twitch.

Metal bites into skin.

The brinks are off, but my wrists feel like they’re still there. Phantom weight. Phantom cold.

I swallow hard and roll my head—slow—because if I move too fast the room tilts and I’m going to lose everything in my stomach across Ashcroft linen.

My throat is dry. My mouth tastes like copper. My ribs ache when I breathe.

There’s a glass of water on the bedside table. A folded cloth. A small vial of something dark that smells like crushed pine needles and bitterness.

And there’s a chair in the corner that wasn’t there before.

Someone’s sitting in it.

Not looming. Not pacing. Just… present.

Black clothes. Long legs. Stillness so complete it makes the shadows look loud.

Soryn.

My heart does something pathetic and traitorous, like it’s trying to climb out of my chest to get to him faster.

He doesn’t look up right away. He’s watching the window, like he’s been counting the trees, like he can hear the wind thinking.

When he finally turns his head, his eyes catch the low light and go molten for a second.

“You’re awake,” he says.

His voice is quiet. Rougher than usual. Like he’s been grinding his teeth.

I try to speak and it comes out a rasp. “How long?”

“Three hours.” His gaze flicks to my forehead, my ribs, my wrists. Cataloging. Same as always. “Healer said you’d wake furious.”

“I’m not furious,” I lie, because it’s easier than admitting the truth.

His mouth twitches like he almost smiles. He doesn’t. “Drink.”

He doesn’t get up. He doesn’t cross the room. He doesn’t make it easy.

Instead, it makes my eyes sting.

I push myself up slowly, biting back a hiss when my ribs protest. The room tilts—just a little—and Soryn’s body shifts, barely, like he’s ready to catch me without touching me unless he has to.

My fingers wrap around the glass. The water is cool, clean, perfect.

I drink like I’ve been dying.

When I lower it, my hands are shaking.

Soryn’s gaze drops to them and something dark tightens in his face. He looks away like he doesn’t want me to see it.

“Where are my brothers?” I ask.

“Downstairs.” His voice flattens. “Arguing.”

That tracks.

I swallow. “Where are—”

I don’t say their names. I don’t have to. The question sits there anyway, heavy and hot in the air.

Soryn answers it like it hurts him. “Vaelor’s in the hall. Bramrik’s on the stairs. Elowen hasn’t stopped making calls since the van.”

My chest tightens.

They’re here.

All of them.

I should feel safe. I do—somewhere deep down, where instincts live. But safety has never stopped me from wanting. And wanting has never stopped me from getting hurt.

I stare at my wrists. The skin is bruised, angry. Little red crescent marks from where the cuffs bit in.

“Did they…” My throat tightens. “Did they say anything? Who sent them?”

Soryn’s eyes snap back to mine. Sharp. Cautious. “You remember?”

I do.

Not everything in a clean line, but flashes. A voice near my ear. A hand shoving me into the van. Someone laughing like it was a joke.

One word that tasted wrong.

High—

I blink, and the room sways.

My stomach lurches.

Soryn is up in a second—not rushing, not dramatic—just there. He’s kneeling by the bed before I even realize he moved. His hand hovers near my shoulder, not touching, a barrier between me and the floor if I fall.

“Easy,” he murmurs.

I grip the blanket so hard my knuckles ache. “I’m fine.”

“You’re concussed,” he says, like the truth is a knife he’s decided to keep using.

Anger flares. Not at him. At the fact my body is betraying me.

“I fought,” I say, voice breaking. “I didn’t freeze.”

“I know.” His gaze softens, just a fraction. “You fought like you were trained.”

Like you were raised.

Like you were theirs.

The thought hits me so hard it makes my throat close.

Because that’s the thing nobody ever says out loud, the thing that sits under every silence, every careful distance, every time they looked at me like they wanted to touch me and then stepped back like I was a loaded weapon.

They didn’t just help hide me.

They raised me.

My brothers did too—of course they did—but the four of them were the gravity in my orbit. The pillars. The ones my father trusted with everything he loved.

Including me.

I blink fast, furious with myself. “Why did they take me?”

Soryn’s jaw tightens. “Because you’re valuable.”

I let out a harsh laugh that turns into a wince.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch. “Fox bloodlines don’t show up by accident. Not anymore. Not after the war.”

My stomach turns. I’ve heard versions of that my whole life, always in fragments, always in half sentences that ended when I walked into rooms.

“Stop,” I say. “Don’t— don’t do the vague thing. Just— tell me what I’m missing.”

He studies me. Like he’s deciding how much truth my bones can take.

Then he says, quietly, “People think a rare bloodline can be owned. Controlled. Used. Sold. Caged. Bred.”

My skin crawls.

I look down at my hands like I can scrub the idea off.

“I’m not—” My voice cracks. “I’m not a—”

“I know.” His tone turns deadly-soft. 

A pulse of cold slides through my spine.

That’s why.

Not because I’m special in the way stories lie about girls being special.

Special the way a knife is special. Special the way a crown jewel is special. Special the way something dangerous and rare makes men think they’re entitled to it.

I swallow hard. “How did anyone find me?”

Soryn’s eyes narrow. “That’s the question.”

The air shifts.

I can feel it in my teeth.

Because that’s the part that doesn’t make sense.

We hid. We moved houses. We changed routines. We used decoys. We lived like prey even when the men around me were predators.

So how?

My chest tightens with a different kind of fear, sharp and ugly.

“Someone talked,” I whisper.

Soryn doesn’t answer right away.

That’s an answer.

My breath stutters. “Was it… one of ours?”

His gaze flicks to the door. Then back to me. “Not from the inner circle.”

I stare at the window, at the dark forest beyond it. Trees swaying like they’re whispering.

I remember another forest.

A different night.

A different kind of fear.

I was eight when the war ended. Old enough to understand death, young enough to still expect it to be unfair.

I remember the smell of smoke on my father’s coat when he carried me into the Ashcroft mansion the first time. His jaw was bruised. His eyes were bloodshot with exhaustion.

He set me down in this very room, right by the window, and knelt in front of me like I was the crown itself.

“You listen to me, little fox,” he’d said, voice low. “You stay quiet. You stay smart. You stay alive.”

I’d nodded because my throat didn’t work.

Then the door opened and four men walked in.

Not men, not really. Not in my little-girl brain.

Kings.

Vaelor first—shoulders squared, scars like punctuation across his hands. Bramrik behind him, filling the doorway, eyes soft and brutal at the same time. Elowen stepping in with that cold, polished calm that made my mother’s old silver comb look warm. And Soryn… barely visible until he was right there, watching me like he could read every thought I’d ever have.

My father’s voice had gone quieter. “She’s yours too.”

Not as property.

As responsibility.

As family.

And I’d been too young to understand the weight of that sentence.

Now I do.

And it crushes.

My chest aches, not from bruised ribs. From the shape of my life.

Because my whole life has been uphill.

Every year, a little more careful. A little more controlled. A little more watched.

No loud parties. No careless friends. No wandering alone. No public photographs. No obvious attachments.

I grew up learning how to disappear in a world that wanted to own me.

I learned how to laugh quietly. How to walk like I wasn’t afraid. How to swallow panic and still make eye contact.

And through all of it, I learned to want men I wasn’t supposed to want.

Because they were always there.

Always watching.

Always teaching.

Vaelor’s discipline. Bramrik’s patience. Elowen’s rules. Soryn’s silence.

Four different ways to survive.

Four different ways to feel safe.

Four different ways to make me ache.

I blink hard and stare at Soryn, because he’s the only one in this room right now, and if I let myself think about the others too much my chest is going to split open.

“I don’t know what happens now,” I whisper.

Soryn’s gaze holds mine like a tether. “You heal.”

“And then?” My voice rises, sharp with fear I hate. “Then what? We go back to hiding? We pretend this didn’t happen? We— what— move me like a piece on a board because it’s easier than letting me live?”

Something flashes in his eyes—anger, maybe. Or pain.

He stands slowly, and for one second I think he’s going to leave. I think he’s going to do that thing they do—step away before it gets too real, too close, too dangerous.

Instead, he moves to the edge of the bed.

He doesn’t sit. Doesn’t touch.

But he’s close enough that I can feel his heat, his presence, the quiet pull of him.

“You were taken from a building we believed was secure,” he says, each word controlled. “That changes the board.”

My stomach twists. “So you don’t know either.”

“I know one thing,” he says, voice dropping. “You are not going back to that apartment.”

Relief and anger hit at the same time, messy and raw.

“I liked it there,” I snap. “It was mine.”

“It was a target,” he counters, and his calm is the most terrifying thing about him. “And you were alone.”

The words sting because they’re true.

I was alone.

I’ve spent so much of my life alone on purpose. Not because I wanted to be. Because it was the price of keeping everyone else safe. If I didn’t attach too hard, nobody could use them against me. If I didn’t lean too much, nobody could blame them when I fell.

Now look where that got me.

My throat tightens. “They put brinks on me.”

Soryn’s eyes go black for a second.

“They mocked me,” I admit, voice shaking with fury. “Like— like it was funny. Like I was—”

His hand lands on the bed.

Not on me.

On the mattress, near my thigh, fingers splayed like he’s grounding himself.

It’s the closest he’s ever gotten without touching, and it sends a stupid, aching pulse through my entire body.

His voice is very quiet. “Say their faces.”

I blink. “What?”

“Say what you remember,” he repeats. “Every detail. Every sound. Every smell. Every word.”

My mouth goes dry.

I close my eyes and force myself back into it.

Boots. Rubber soles. Disinfectant. A cheap cologne trying to cover sweat. The cold press of brinks metal. The van floor vibrating.

A voice near my ear, calm and bored: You’ll stop struggling eventually.

Another voice, younger, laughing: She’s pretty when she thinks she’s brave.

I swallow bile.

And then… something else.

A phrase.

Not a name.

A title.

The Regent will be pleased.

My eyes fly open.

Soryn doesn’t blink. He just watches me, entire body still, like a predator waiting for the moment prey makes a mistake.

“I heard that,” I whisper. “I heard them say— the Regent.”

The room goes colder.

Not physically. Emotionally.

Like a door just opened somewhere and a draft from hell slid through.

Soryn’s jaw tightens. “Who said it?”

“I don’t know.” I hate how helpless it sounds. “It was— behind me. I couldn’t see.”

A beat.

Then Soryn’s gaze flicks to the door again.

And before I can ask why, the handle turns.

The door opens.

Caelric steps in like he owns the air.

He’s dressed in dark layers, hair neat, eyes sharp and sleepless. He looks… calm, but it’s the wrong kind of calm. The kind that comes right before a storm hits land.

His gaze lands on me, and something in his face softens for half a heartbeat.

Then it hardens again.

“You’re awake,” he says.

“I’m fine,” I lie automatically.

Caelric’s mouth tightens like he’s sick of my shit. “No, you’re not.”

He steps further into the room and holds something up.

A strip of dark metal.

A broken brinks clasp.

My stomach drops.

“We found this in the wreckage,” Caelric says, voice clipped. “Not standard issue. Not black-market either.”

Soryn’s posture shifts—subtle, lethal.

Caelric’s eyes flick to him, then back to me. “It has a stamp inside the lock.”

My fingers curl into the blanket. “A stamp?”

He nods once. “A Regent seal.”

The words don’t feel real.

They’re too big. Too clean. Too terrifying.

“A High Regent?” I whisper.

Caelric’s gaze doesn’t flinch. “We don’t know which one yet.”

My breath catches.

Because in Aurelith, High Regents aren’t rumours. They’re law. They’re untouchable. They’re the reason my life has been lived in shadows and half-truths.

And now one of them might be the reason I was dragged down a stairwell like I didn’t belong to myself.

My throat tightens. “Why would a Regent—”

Caelric cuts in, voice sharp. “Because you’re an Ashcroft.”

I flinch like he hit me.

His eyes narrow. “And because you’re a fox.”

The room spins again, and I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing my breathing to steady.

This is too much.

I open my eyes and stare at the window, at the forest that used to be enough to calm me.

Nothing calms me now.

Because the question isn’t just who found me.

It’s how many people have always known where I am.

And if a Regent seal was on my wrists…

Then my entire life hasn’t been hiding.

It’s been waiting.

A sound echoes from somewhere downstairs—raised voices, a sharp bark of anger, something crashing like a chair hitting a wall.

Caelric’s head turns toward it.

Soryn’s attention stays on me.

And I feel it then—like a whisper along my skin.

A shift in the house.

Not footsteps.

Not sound.

Something else.

The kind of wrongness you feel right before a door opens and changes everything.

Soryn’s gaze snaps to the hallway.

His voice drops to a deadly murmur. “We’re not alone.”

My blood goes ice-cold.

Because if they found me once…

Why would they stop now?

And then, somewhere in the mansion—somewhere too close—glass shatters.