The Alpha's Silent Vow

Chapter 2

Torin freezes, his hand still trapped in Silas's grip, his knuckles going white from the pressure. I have never seen anyone stop my brother mid swing before. Not once, not in sixteen years of living under his roof.

"She was showing me to your office," Silas says, letting Torin's wrist go at last, "since you were nowhere to be found at the front door like you promised me you would be. Lucky for you, someone in this house understands how important today is supposed to be."

That is not what happened, not even close. He is covering for me, and I do not understand why a man like him would bother. I am nobody to him. I am nobody to anyone in this house except a pair of hands that do not stop moving.

Torin's eyes cut to me, sharp enough to draw blood without ever once touching my skin. I already know I will pay for this later, once the door closes and no one important is left to witness it.

"Go find Beta Damon," Torin grits out between clenched teeth. "Tell him our guest has arrived and that I expect him downstairs immediately."

I nod and hurry from the room before either of them can decide I have overstayed my welcome standing there.

I find Damon in the dining hall, a newspaper spread wide in front of him, a cup of coffee steaming at his elbow. "Alpha Silas is here," I say quietly, keeping my eyes on the floor the way I always do. "Alpha Torin wants you."

His dark eyes land on me like I have committed a crime just by opening my mouth to speak first. He folds the paper slowly, deliberately, taking his time on purpose because he knows it unsettles me, and walks past me close enough that his shoulder knocks mine hard.

"You are lucky he sent you to fetch me," he mutters, not stopping his stride. "Otherwise you would not be seeing sunlight for a week, understand?"

I keep my head down and stay busy, far from the office, for as long as I possibly can manage. Scrubbing pots that are already clean, folding towels that do not need folding. It does not last.

"Rhea!" My brother's voice cracks down the hallway, echoing off the high ceilings.

I paste something like a smile onto my face before I open the office door again. Torin does not look at me directly, never does when there is company. "Bring champagne. We are celebrating something wonderful today."

I hurry to the drinks cabinet, pour with careful, steady hands so nothing spills, and carry the tray back into the room. Silas watches me the entire time, the way you would watch weather rolling in over distant hills, patient and completely unreadable. No one has ever watched me that closely before in my whole life. It makes the back of my neck prickle with something I cannot quite name.

He takes the bottle straight from my hands before I can even finish filling his glass properly. "I can manage on my own," he says. Not unkind. Just certain, like the words cost him nothing at all.

Heat crawls up my cheeks, not from embarrassment exactly. From knowing precisely what this small mistake will cost me later tonight. I should have filled the glasses faster. I should have moved quicker. I should have.

"She is your sister?" Silas asks Torin, like the thought has only just now occurred to him for the first time.

"She is," Torin says, disgust curling thick around the two small words.

"Why do you treat her this way?"

The room goes very still, so still I can hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears. No one has ever asked my brother that question out loud before, not once. Everyone who has ever hurt me has done it with an audience too afraid, or too entertained, to ever say a single word in protest.

I do not move. I cannot move, even if I wanted to.

"Rhea," Torin says, voice flat and cold, "is responsible for our parents' deaths."

I shut my eyes tight.

"Responsible how?" Silas's voice has changed completely. Lower now. Harder, like a stone dropped into still water.

"She fed them wolfsbane."

The words land the way they always do, like something is being carved out of me one more time with a dull, familiar knife. I keep my head down, waiting for the disgust, the laughter, the same reaction I have received my entire life whenever this story gets told.

"I was six," I whisper before I can stop the words from spilling out. "I made them lemonade. That is all I remember doing that whole summer."

A rough finger tips my chin up gently. Silas is standing in front of me now, his hand loose around my throat, not squeezing, just holding, warm against my cold skin. "You poisoned your own parents at six years old?"

"A six year old should know the difference between plants," Torin snaps, his voice rising.

"Hardly seems fair to blame a child that young," Silas says, and something in his tone makes it sound less like a passing opinion and more like a fact he has already quietly decided is true. His eyes flick over to my brother. "Sounds to me like she was set up by someone."

"You were not there," Torin says through gritted teeth.

"You are right. I was not." Silas lets go of my throat, gentle even in that small motion. "But ordinary wolfsbane has not hurt a full grown wolf in centuries. We evolved past that a long time ago, all of us. Which only leaves one real possibility. Redroot Wolfsbane. Fed on our own blood before it is even grown. Rare. Expensive. Not something that just sprouts on its own in a garden bed."

I did not know any of that. No one had ever bothered telling me that detail before.

"Where," Silas asks quietly, almost gently, "would a six year old find her hands on something like that?"

Torin's jaw works like he is grinding glass between his back teeth. "I did not invite you into my home to discuss my slave, Alpha Silas."

Silas reaches for the leather jacket draped over the back of his chair. Up close, I notice he dresses differently than the other Alphas who have come through this house over the years. Plain black shirt, no heavy rings, no ink covering his arms, nothing loud announcing exactly what he is to the room. He does not need to announce it. Everyone already knows.

"You are right," he says simply. "And now I have a few things to think over before tomorrow."

"We had a deal," Torin says, sharper now, real panic finally bleeding through his practiced calm.

"Nothing is signed yet." Silas is already moving toward the door. "I will show myself out, thank you."

The second the door clicks shut behind him, both my brother and Damon turn on me at once, like I am suddenly the only safe thing left in the room worth hitting.