Chapter 2: Take Her
1364 Words
(Nova POV)
Don't make a sound. Don't make a sound.
I repeat it like a mantra while Drake stands directly in front of me. Everyone who hears the story reacts the same way — that particular mix of disgust and disbelief that settles on their face before they decide who I am.
His hand comes up slowly. One rough finger tilts my chin up, forcing me to meet those impossible crimson eyes. Then his hand wraps around my throat — not squeezing, just holding. Like he's taking my measure.
"You poisoned your parents?"
"I was six." The words come out in a rush, squeaky and desperate. "I made them lemonade. I didn't know what was in it."
His eyes cut to Travis. "Seems like a stretch, blaming a six-year-old for that."
"A six-year-old should know the difference between plants," Travis snaps.
Drake drops his hand from my throat and shrugs, like the whole conversation bores him. "Sounds more like a setup to me. Besides — standard wolfsbane doesn't even affect us anymore. Hasn't for centuries. We evolved past it."
I go completely still.
What?
That couldn't be right. I had been told my whole life that wolfsbane killed them. It had been the foundation of everything — every punishment, every locked door, every week without food. If standard wolfsbane wasn't lethal—
"Which leaves Blood of Wolfsbane," Drake says quietly, almost to himself.
"You weren't there." Travis's voice is tight, controlled. "It was wolfsbane. End of story."
Drake nods once. "You're right. I wasn't." He reaches for his leather jacket draped over the chair — plain black, no logos, no pack insignia. No tattoos on his arms either, which was unusual. Most Alphas wore their history on their skin.
Drake looked like he kept his somewhere else. "But tell me this — where would a six-year-old get Blood of Wolfsbane?"
"I didn't bring you here to talk about my servant," Travis says, biting off the last word. "We had a deal to finalize."
"And now I have things to think over."
"We agreed—"
"Nothing's been signed." Drake picks up his jacket. "I'll show myself out."
* * * * * * * *
The second Drake clears the doorway, Travis's fist drives into my stomach.
I fold, gasping, one hand shooting out to catch the wall.
"What did you say to him?" Travis demands, his voice low and furious. "Before we got in here. What did you tell him?"
"Nothing." I straighten up, pressing a hand to my ribs. "He asked why I smelled different. That's all."
Cole steps in close, and I can feel the heat radiating off him. "Did you tell him?"
My head moves before my brain catches up. A nod.
"Well?" Travis's open hand cracks against the side of my head.
"I told him my abilities were bound," I say, forcing my voice steady. "I didn't say it was you."
It didn't matter. Travis's hand fists in my hair and yanks, and the pain shoots from my scalp all the way down my spine.
He starts pulling me toward the hallway, toward the basement door, and I'm stumbling to keep up because the alternative is worse.
"Please—" My voice breaks. I hate that it breaks. "He's an Alpha. I had to answer him."
"If you tanked this deal," Travis says, wrenching the basement door open, "you won't see the outside again."
He pulls the door wide.
Drake is on the other side of it.
He's leaning against the wall, arms crossed, watching us with an expression that could cut glass. Travis's grip on my
hair goes slack immediately.
"Alpha Drake." Travis recovers fast, but not fast enough. "I thought you'd left."
"I said I'd show myself out." Drake's eyes move over the hallway, slow and deliberate. "I thought I found the door.
Turned out to be a basement." A pause. "Smells like her in there."
The silence is suffocating.
"Is this how you treat family?"
"She's responsible for my parents' deaths," Travis says. His voice doesn't waver. He's had years of practice saying it.
"So yes. This is what she deserves."
"Stay out of pack business," Cole adds.
Drake laughs — a short, humorless sound. "If I sign this deal, your business becomes my business." His eyes travel
over me without apology. "No food. Locked up. Regular beatings. That about cover it?"
"We don't—"
"I already stopped you from hitting her once tonight." Drake's voice doesn't rise. It doesn't need to. "She's underfed.
Look at her eyes — exhausted. For a sister of an Alpha, she's not exactly being treated like one." His jaw shifts.
"Regardless of what she allegedly did when she was a kid."
"She did it," Travis says. "And she has nothing to do with our arrangement."
"That's for me to decide." Drake glances down the hallway. "Where's your Luna? I'd like to hear her take on all this."
I close my eyes. Please don't call Celeste. Please.
Celeste was worse than both of them put together on her best day.
"Actually—" Drake seems to reconsider before Travis can answer. "Never mind. I think I can guess."
When I open my eyes, he's looking at me again. Still steady. Still unreadable. I couldn't figure out his angle. I was no
one — a pack servant with bound abilities and a reputation that made most wolves cross to the other side of the room.
There was nothing useful about me, nothing worth protecting.
And yet here he was.
"I have a new condition," Drake says, turning back to Travis.
Travis stiffens. "We already settled terms."
"I'm adding one. Accept it, and you have your deal. Reject it—" Drake lets the pause do the work— "and you don't just
lose the alliance. You make an enemy. I don't think that's a position you want to be in."
Travis's nostrils flare. "This is about her."
"It is." Drake doesn't blink. "Let me take her back to Black Ridge. You do that, and we have a deal."
The hallway goes quiet enough that I can hear my own heartbeat.
Take me. He wanted to take me to his pack. I couldn't wrap my head around it. What possible use did the most
powerful Alpha in the country have for a wolf with no abilities and a murder charge she couldn't shake?
Travis and Cole exchange a look. Whatever passed between them, it was quick and it was ugly.
"Deal."
Travis extends his hand. Drake doesn't take it. He looks at it for a moment, then shifts his gaze back to me. His hand
comes up and cups my face, thumb dragging once, slowly, across my lower lip.
"Have everything packed," he says quietly. "I'll be back tomorrow with paperwork."
Then he walks to the far end of the hallway and straight out the front door without hesitation. He knew exactly where it
was. He'd known the whole time.
Travis rounds on me immediately. "Get out of my sight."
* * * * * * * *
My room takes less than three minutes to pack. That's how little I have — a few changes of clothes, nothing else. Four
years and I could carry my entire life in a backpack.
I sit on the edge of the narrow bed and stare at the wall.
Drake's words keep looping in my head. Standard wolfsbane doesn't affect us anymore. We evolved from that. Which
meant whatever killed my parents — it wasn't something a six-year-old could have gotten on her own. It wasn't something that grew in a backyard garden.
Blood of Wolfsbane.
I'd never heard those words before tonight.
By the time gray morning light starts creeping under the door, I haven't slept once. I don't know what Drake wants with
me. I don't know what Black Ridge is like or what happens to me when I get there.
What I do know is that somewhere out there is the real answer to what happened to my parents — and for the first time
in sixteen years, someone with enough power to find it is asking the right questions.
- Writer
