Chapter 2

I had just leaned back against the cold headboard when the door swung open again. Leah walked in wearing a snow-white wolf-fur cloak, the blue moonstone hairpin Kyle had just bought her pinned in her hair. She shut the door, and the weakness and fear vanished from her face in an instant.

"Disappointed?"

She covered her mouth and laughed softly, her eyes full of a winner's triumph.

"Kyle is in my kitchen right now, brewing my calming tea himself. He won't be back for at least half an hour. His own words: he doesn't trust me to drink anything someone else has touched."

Her gaze swept to the table, and her smile faded.

"Berry pie from Redstone? He bought that for you?"

I didn't answer. Leah stared at the box, barely able to contain her jealousy. The next second, she grabbed it and flung it to the floor, plate and all. The ceramic shattered, and scalding berry jam splashed across the top of my foot.

Before, a burn like this would have healed in moments. But the wolfsbane had shut down my healing, and the skin immediately blistered and swelled, burning with pain. Leah looked down at me, her voice light and vicious.

"A bastard raised in a border-town dump thinks she deserves something Kyle stood in line to buy?"

I leaned against the headboard and said nothing. What she hated most wasn't my defiance, but my refusal to cry and beg like I used to. Leah's lips curved into a smirk. "Want to bet? All I have to do is cry out in pain, and my brothers will burst in here and break every bone you have left."

The words had barely left her mouth before she deliberately fell backward.

"No! Erin, don't push me!"

She fell into the broken ceramic shards, opening a shallow cut in her palm. Footsteps pounded across the courtyard. Darian was the first to burst through the door, scooping Leah up from the floor.

"Leah!"

Leah curled into his arms, sobbing and shaking, and pointed at me. "I just came to check on her wounds. But when she saw the hairpin Kyle bought me, she threw the plate at me and said I'd stolen everything from her." Victor arrived moments later. The instant he saw the blood on Leah's palm, his face went dark. He crossed the room in a few strides, grabbed me by the collar, dragged me off the bed, and slapped me hard across the face.

My ears rang sharply, and my teeth cut the corner of my mouth.

"Vile creature!" Victor glared at me with disgust. "Leah came to check on you out of kindness, and you dared to hurt her?"

The wolfsbane had already spread through my organs, and the slap sent agony tearing through my chest, as though claws were ripping every organ apart at once. Ryan walked over and planted his foot on my right hand. As the pack's finest tracker, he had enough strength to snap an elk's neck. With the slightest twist of his boot, my finger bones cracked one after another.

The pain shot straight to my heart, and darkness pulsed at the edges of my vision.

"Slicing the tendons in your foot a few days ago clearly didn't teach you a thing." Ryan looked down at me, his voice stripped of all warmth. "Since this hand dared to touch Leah, you don't get to keep it."

I swallowed blood and forced the words out. "She fell on her own."

"And you still have the nerve to lie!"

Darian handed Leah to a maid, seized me by the hair, and dragged me across the floor littered with broken ceramic. My ankle hadn't healed, and the motion wrenched the torn tendons and broken bones all over again. The pain nearly made me black out.

"Kneel. Apologize to Leah."

I braced myself against the floor and refused to bow. Darian gave a cold laugh and kicked the backs of my knees. I crashed down onto the shattered ceramic.

Sharp fragments pierced through the fabric and into my flesh. Silver dust from the decorative plate seeped into the wounds, reactivating the wolfsbane that had gone dormant. Blood ran down my shins and spread in rivulets across the floor.

"Bow," Victor ordered from beside me. "Forehead to the floor, again and again, until Leah decides to forgive you."

Footsteps sounded outside the door again. Kyle stepped in carrying the calming draught, and his brow furrowed the moment he saw the scene.

"What happened?"

Leah threw herself at him with red-rimmed eyes, holding up the hand with nothing more than a faint scratch, and whimpered, "Kyle, my hand hurts so much." Kyle's expression changed instantly. He thrust the medicine bowl at a maid and grabbed Leah's hand to examine it.

"How did this happen? Didn't I tell you to wait for me in your room?"

He cleaned the cut with antiseptic, then took out the softest gauze and wrapped it layer by layer. Only after confirming the scratch wouldn't scar did he relax. Then, finally, he looked at me, kneeling among the broken shards. His gaze swept over my bleeding knees, twisted fingers, and ashen face, only to settle into irritation.

"Erin, what did you do to upset Leah this time?"