Todos os capítulos de The Mate They Tried To Bury: Capítulo 1 - Capítulo 5

"Get up. Now." The guard's boot hit her ribs before he even finished talking. Marie had been curled on the floor for a while, arms over her head, waiting for the other women to get bored and back off. They usually did. "She started it," one of them said, wiping blood off her knuckles on her pants and edging toward the wall. Marie didn't bother arguing. It never made a difference. She pushed herself up, felt the new bruise settle in next to the old ones, and reached inward for her wolf, more out of habit than any real hope. Nothing. Same as it had been for eight months now. She wasn't even surprised by it anymore. Just scared. "Winston." The guard said her name like he didn't enjoy saying it. "You're being released." She waited for the catch. There was always a catch. Nothing came. "Why?" "Don't know, don't care. Papers came this morning." He jerked his chin toward the hallway. "Gate's waiting." They took her through three checkpoints before anyone handed back her old clothes.

"You can't be in here." The voice caught Marie before she'd even crossed the threshold, but she didn't answer right away. She was still looking at the room. She'd woken before dawn, the way she always did now, her body still keeping prison hours even with a soft bed under her. The house was quiet, the kind of quiet that came before a big day, everyone saving their energy for the King. She'd walked the halls without really deciding where she was going, and her feet had taken her here anyway, down the east corridor, past the old servants' stair, to the glass-walled room that used to smell like soil and crushed mint. She and Isolde used to spend whole afternoons in here. Isolde teaching her which roots eased fever, which leaves calmed a racing heart, the two of them elbow deep in dirt while Isolde talked about nothing in particular, just talked, the way mothers do when they want their daughters to feel safe enough to talk back. It was the one place in this house that had never belong

"You don't have to pretend with me," he said. "I know exactly what you did to Sera." Marie set down the glass she'd been polishing and finally looked at him properly. She didn't know his name yet, only that he carried himself like someone who'd never once had to doubt his own version of events. He had the kind of certainty that came from never being challenged, the kind that mistook conviction for fact. "I don't know you," she said. "Doesn't matter. Everyone who matters in this pack knows what happened. Sera's told me herself, more than once, what it cost her to watch you take everything from her and never once say sorry for it." His jaw tightened. "And now here you are. Playing servant. Making everyone feel sorry for the poor broken girl fresh out of prison." He gestured at the linens, the silver, all of it, like the sight of her doing honest work was itself an insult. "It's a good trick. I'll give you that." "I'm not playing anything." "Then apologize. Right now. Tell me what y