•Chapter 6•

Ashley

From the very beginning, it was all a part of their plan. I didn't know how I didn't notice it earlier—how I had been so blinded. How someone once considered a formidable warrior could be so oblivious to such sinister plans.

I clutched my head in my hands, feeling the world spinning and spinning around me. The rescue. The raising. Jace’s confession. Amy getting stripped away from me.

It was all part of their plan. I was a perfectly played pawn in this chess game, and I was only finding out after I had been swept off the board.

How pathetic.

“Was our mate bond . . . even real?” I hated the shakiness in my voice, but the inside of me has become cold . . . So very cold. “Or was that part also perfectly orchestrated?”

The silence gave me enough answers. I laughed in response, the sound hollow in my ears. “I saw this place as home. I considered you all family, despite everything, despite how many times you all showed me the very opposite of what family should be.”

Jace couldn't even look me in the eye. He averted his gaze. Anywhere else was a better sight than I was.

So foolish. So hopelessly naive.

Lucas' eyes shone with malicious intent. “You should be grateful. You would have never survived on your own as an orphan. We did you a whole world of good. You simply forgot your place.” The corner of his lip curled up. “Wasn't it an honour being raised by the Luna?”

He rose from where he sat and came over to my side, leaning over me. “What happened to you was even better than what we initially planned. You don't know how lucky you are.”

He turned to Jace. “Imagine if we had executed plan B or C.” He chuckled. “We could have locked you up in the dungeons. Injected you with some wolfsbane and caged you with silver. Or . . . sent you to an even more violent end.”

I shut my eyes to keep out the horror of his face as his hands went to my throat, missing the start of his sinister smirk. But still, I could tell that he thoroughly enjoyed seeing me like this. Broken. Empty.

He started to squeeze his fingers around my skin, increasing the pressure bit by bit until I was certain I was going to pass out. The one thing I held on to was my dignity. I wasn't going to beg him or anyone to have mercy.

“Was this the look on your face when Joseph was almost killing you? Gosh, I can almost imagine the high he must have gotten from it.” Harder, he squeezed. “You used to be so high and mighty. Look at you now . . . With your future in my hands—”

“Enough, Lucas.” Jace's voice cut through the air like a knife. Sharp, and absolute. “This is no time for games.”

The weight around my throat lessened. Typical. Even years after, Jace's word still managed to bring Lucas to order. Like a dog and its owner.

Like the time when Lucas had made me pick herbs in the middle of a storm, but somehow Jace had shown up with a coat and helped me finish up.

When I had been told to scrub the floors as a punishment. Jace had stepped in. Lucas, the villian, and Jace, always the hero. The knight in shining armour.

What sane woman wouldn’t have fallen for Jace?

An Alpha falling for a no-name orphan—it had felt like a fairytale. Too good to be real.

But now I saw it clearly.

It had all been carefully crafted—just the right mix of kindness and cruelty to sell me the dream of a perfect life that was never real.

Lucas moved, and was replaced by someone else.

I didn't see him, but I could smell his perfume, which I had often found myself sniffing because of the comfort it brought me. He looked over me, that I was certain of, but I wasn't going to give him the benefit of looking at him.

He sighed. “Come on, Ash. Just look at me.” Jace’s fingers found my cheekbones in that gentle way I had grown too comfortable with. By instinct, I almost broke, but then caught myself. I would have moved away, but I was right against a wall with no way to escape from him.

“If you won't, then there's no point trying to make you.” He clutched my jaw, and tilted ny head to the side. His breath brushed my neck. “But it'll be in your best interest to be obedient, Ash. I just need you to be a good Luna. That's all I ask.”

As soft as his words were, they carried the unmistakable command of an Alpha. They pressed into my mind, trying to force me into submission, but somehow, maybe because of the rage burning like a hot coal inside ny chest, I held on to my will.

I opened my eyes, catching his in a sharp, locked-in gaze. His were focused, full of intent. He wanted to finish marking me—a process that would bind me to him in irreparable ways. Once he did it, it was going to be even harder to free myself. If it would even be possible at all.

“Stay still, I don't want to hurt you,” he said, bringing his lips closer to the point where my neck met my shoulder.

Oh, but he already did. Terribly. And he would never be forgiven.

Inches away from my neck, he paused. Something like a charge pased through the air, crashing into three of us all at once. But Jace must have felt it seconds earlier because of his heightened senses.

Power. Terror. Desire. Every powerful emotion one could think of combined into one.

Jace rose to his feet, seeking out the source just as panicked cries and shouts started to reach us.

One of the rogues rushed out into the clearing from the surrounding bushes, eyes wide with palpable fear. “He's here!”

With a pained groan, Lucas went stiff, and then fell to his knees. Jace's surrender to the force took more time, but eventually he too, couldn't stop his body from succumbing to the powerful aura filling the atmosphere.

The hairs on my skin stood at attention. Gooseflesh erupted.

“Im . . . Impossible,” Jace said, focusing on the parting shrubs as a lone figure approached us, different from the rest.

Lucas sounded as though air no longer remained in his throat. “It's the Lycan King.”