The washroom door opened. The Prime Beta filled the frame. In his hand was a syringe – small, clinical, amber liquid inside.
Some here,” he said.
“No.” I pressed back against the wall. “No please -“
He grabbed my arm. I twisted, fought, but he was three times my strength. He yanked me into the chamber and pinned my wrist against the table. The syringe hovered above the vein in my forearm.
“Enough.”
Grayson’s voice cut through the room. Not loud. Sharp.
The Prime Beta stopped. Looked at his prince.
“She’s more useful alive,” Grayson said. He didn’t look at me. “The palace expects a surrogate in my bed. If she disappears, people ask questions. Questions lead to investigations. Investigations threaten the operation.”
He said it the way someone discusses moving a piece on a game board. No warmth. No mercy. Just strategy.
The Prime Beta held my gaze for two more seconds. Then he released my arm. The syringe disappeared back into his coat. He stepped away from me without apology, without acknowledgment, like he’d been interrupted while swatting a fly.
I stood there shaking, the ghost of his grip still burning on my skin, and understood something I should have understood from the beginning.
I wasn’t a person in this room. Not to the Prime Beta. Not to the doctor. Not to Grayson.
I was cover. A prop. A warm body in a dead man’s bed to stop people from looking too closely.
The moment I stopped being useful, the syringe would come back.
I had to get out. I had to find a way out of this palace before the math changed and a dead surrogate became more convenient than a living one.
And I had to take Ronan with me. Calvin had my brother. My father had my brother. Every person who claimed to care about me was holding a twelve-year-old boy hostage to keep me obedient.
I was done being obedient.
A knock interrupted my planning.
“Luna Princess?” An Omega servant bowed through the cracked door. “You have a visitor. The future Alpha of Shadow Creek requests an audience.”
Calvin again. My stomach dropped.
Grayson’s eyes flicked to me. Something passed across his face – a micro-expression I couldn’t decode – before it went blank again.
I straightened my tunic and walked out.
Calvin was waiting in the receiving room with flowers.
White lilies. My mother’s favorite. He knew that. He was holding them with both hands, his expression carefully arranged into something soft and worried and brotherly. The performance was flawless.
“Lily.” He stepped forward, concern dripping from every syllable. “I heard you’ve been having a hard time adjusting. I wanted to check on you.”
He was testing me. Searching my face for any sign that I’d told someone about the drug, the cloth, the locked door.
I kept my expression flat. “I’m fine.”
“You look pale. Are they feeding you enough? I could talk to the staff -“
“No.”
“Has anyone been giving you trouble? I heard there was an incident at the training grounds.” His eyes searched mine. Still probing. Still measuring whether his name had left my mouth. “If anyone is mistreating you, I have influence here. I could -“
“Don’t.”
He blinked. The softness flickered.
“I don’t want you to visit me anymore, Calvin.” I said it evenly, holding his eyes. “We’re not together. We have nothing to discuss. Please don’t come back.”
His jaw tightened. The flowers lowered an inch.
“Lily -“
“We’re done.”
I turned and walked back toward the corridor. His voice followed me – controlled, pleasant, pitched for the servants to hear.
“Of course. I understand. Take care of yourself.”
CALVIN
He watched her disappear down the corridor with the white lilies still in his hands.
The bitch had gotten brave.
He’d pushed too hard last time. The drug, the locked room – he should have been smoother. He should have played the long game, the way his father taught him. Now she was on guard, and every wall between them had doubled.
But walls could be torn down. Especially when you held the right leverage.
Her brother was still in the basement back home. Weak, sick, pumped full of enough wolf-toxin to keep his shift suppressed for months. Lillian would do anything for that kid. She’d proven it a dozen times.
The problem was access. Here in the royal pack, she was surrounded by servants, guards, and the Prince’s household staff. He couldn’t isolate her.
He needed her back on his territory. Back in Shadow Creek, where his word was law and her protests meant nothing.
Calvin set the lilies on the side table and walked out.
Phad a plan to make.
Taree days after I told Calvin to leave, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d gotten exactly what he came for.
Not information. Not access. Something worse – a read on me. He’d watched my face when I said we’re done, and instead of pushing back, he smiled at the servants and strolled out like a man without a care in the world. Calvin didn’t accept rejection. He stored it and planned around it.
I knocked Grayson’s water pitcher off the nightstand during the morning massage. The metal cap rolled under the bed, and I dropped to my knees to fish it out.
“That’s the third thing you’ve dropped today.” His voice was flat. Eyes closed.
I stood and set the pitcher back. My gray palace tunic had ridden up when I crawled under the bed, and I tugged straight. The sleeves were still too long. I’d rolled them twice and they still slipped past my wrists, making me look like a child wearing her father’s clothes.
“Sorry.”
I pressed my thumbs back into the muscle along his shoulders. His skin radiated warmth through the thin sleep shirt that cedar-and-frost scent filling my lungs, pooling low in my chest, making my wolf lean forward with a pull I couldn’t explain and didn’t want to examine. My palms lingered a beat too long on the ridge between his neck and shoulder. I jerked them back and wiped them on my trousers.
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