“You want to talk about plans.” My fingers found the knife handle. I pulled the blade free and aimed the point at his chest. “Here’s mine. Take me to my brother. Right now.”
Calvin’s jaw locked. His eyes dropped to the blade.
“Lillian -“
“Take me to Ronan, or I drive this through your neck and then through mine, and you explain to the King why his Luna Princess bled out in your bedroom.”
Something shifted behind his eyes. He searched my face for the bluff. He didn’t find it. en minutes, “he said through his teeth. He yanked the door open and barked at the guard in the hall. “Take her to the basement. Ten minutes. Then bring her straight back.”
The basement smelled like mold and damp stone.
A single lantern hung from a hook, throwing weak light across a cell barely wider than a closet. Ronan was curled on a thin mattress on the floor. He’d lost weight. His arms were thin, and his skin had a grayish color that made my chest clamp shut. The boy who used to race me around the yard and beg to arm-wrestle at dinner looked like he’d been emptied out from the inside.
He lifted his head. His whole face split open.
“Lily!”
He scrambled to the bars, and I caught his hands through the iron. His fingers were freezing. His grip barely closed around mine.
“I’m getting you out.” Low. Fast. The guard stood six feet behind me, bored, picking at something under his thumbnail. “When I say run, you go for the back courtyard. Don’t stop. Don’t look back.”
Ronan’s eyes went wide. He pressed his lips tight and nodded.
I spun and drove my elbow into the guard’s temple. He folded. I grabbed his keys, unlocked the cell, pulled Ronan out by the wrist, and we ran.
Up the stone stairs. Through the service corridor. Past the kitchen where two Omegas looked up and froze. Out the side door into the open air.
Calvin was already standing in the courtyard. Six warriors flanked him. He didn’t look surprised.
“That was cute,” he said. He had his arms folded and his head tilted, like a man watching a puppy try to climb a fence.
They grabbed us in seconds. A warrior caught Ronan by the collar and yanked him off his feet. My brother bit the man’s hand, and the warrior backhanded him across the mouth. Ronan crumpled into the dirt.
Something snapped inside my chest. I threw myself at the warrior, clawing, biting, screaming my brother’s name. Two more pairs of arms caught me and pinned me down. A knee pressed into my spine. My face hit the dirt.
My father walked into the courtyard with his belt already wrapped around his fist.
“I warned you.” His voice shook with fury. “I told you exactly what would happen.”
They dragged me to the whipping post in the yard and tied my wrists above my head. The rope scraped the skin raw. Ronan was on his knees in the dirt, sobbing, begging them to stop, and not one person in that courtyard looked at him.
The first lash split my tunic and carved a stripe of fire from my shoulder to my hip. I bit down so hard I tasted copper.
The second crossed the first. The pain whited out everything the yard, the sky, my own name.
I braced for the third.
It never came.
A boot connected with my father’s chest and launched him into the dirt. The whip flew from his hand and landed the dust.
I twisted against the ropes. The Prime Beta stood behind my father, four royal soldiers spreading out at his back, every weapon drawn.
“The Luna Princess belongs to the Crown.” His voice carried across the entire yard. “Touch her again, and I’ll remove the hand that did it.”
The Prime Beta’s soldiers cut me down from the post and wrapped a cloak around my shoulders. The fabric pressed against the lash wounds and I hissed, but I didn’t pull away. My legs barely held.
My father was still on the ground where the boot had put him. Calvin stood at the edge of the courtyard, face carefully blank, his warriors already stepping back. Neither of them spoke. The Prime Beta didn’t look at either of them.
“The surrogate is returning to the Royal Territory.” He said it to the yard in general. Flat. Final. “Any further interference with her will be treated as an act against the Crown.”
They loaded me into the escort car. Through the rear window, I watched Ronan being dragged back inside by a guard, and something inside me cracked – a clean, sharp break, like bone.
I pressed my forehead against the cold glass and did not cry. The car smelled like leather and metal polish, and underneath it, faintly, the cedar scent that clung to everything in the royal pack. My wolf curled tight inside my chest, trembling.
I’d failed him. I’d come with a knife and a plan and I’d failed him, and now he was back in that cell, alone, getting weaker. The thought sat in my stomach like a swallowed stone.
Grayson was sitting up in bed when the Prime Beta deposited me in the chamber. Not pretending. Not performing. Just sitting there, jaw tight, his wolf’s blue shimmer pulsing brighter than usual at his side.
He was angry. I could feel it pressing against the air – heavy, electric, suffocating.
“I’ve had people watching you since you left.” His voice was quiet. The dangerous kind of quiet. “Your escape attempt lasted four minutes. If Calvin’s guards hadn’t caught you first, mine would have.”
I stood in the doorway, the cloak draped over my torn tunic, blood soaking through the fabric at my back. My wrists were raw from the ropes.
“You were watching.” Something hot and bitter rose in my throat. “You watched them tie me to a post. You watched them whip me.”
“I sent the Beta.”
“After two lashes.”
My voice cracked. I didn’t care.
“This is your fault. All of it. If I wasn’t trapped in this palace playing dead man’s wife, my brother wouldn’t be locked in a basement with wolf toxin in his blood.”
Something flickered across Grayson’s face. His jaw worked once. Then his expression sealed shut.
“Come here.”
I didn’t move.
He stood. Crossed the room in three strides and grabbed the back of my collar. I flinched – the movement pulled the cloak against the lash wounds, and a sound escaped my teeth that I couldn’t stop.
His hand closed around my throat. Not squeezing. Holding. His palm was warm against my pulse, and his eyes were inches from mine – dark, flat, unblinking.
“You want someone to blame.” His thumb pressed against the side of my neck. “Fine. Blame me. But the next
CTE time you run, I won’t send someone to save you. I’ll let them finish.” He released me. “Stay away from Calvin. Stay away from your father. And stay in this room until I say otherwise.”
He turned to the Prime Beta. “Tell the household the Prince’s condition has worsened. The surrogate is needed at his bedside. She doesn’t leave this wing.”
The Prime Beta nodded and left. The door shut behind him.
I stood in the middle of the room with blood drying on my back and Grayson’s scent filling my lungs with every breath. Cedar. Frost. Clean skin underneath. My wolf pressed toward him – toward the warmth, toward the steady heartbeat, toward the only person in this palace who hadn’t tried to use me as a stepping stone. Not yet, anyway.
He’d choked me thirty seconds ago. He’d threatened to let them kill me.
And my stupid, traitorous wolf still wanted to curl up at his side.
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