The Alpha's Silent Vow

Chapter 5

"Can we please go somewhere more private first?" I ask, my voice barely rising above a whisper.

He studies me for a long moment, his grey eyes searching my face like he is trying to decide whether I am asking out of fear or out of something else entirely. Whatever he sees there seems to satisfy him, because he nods once and leads me into an office further down the hall. He flips a switch by the door and the blinds slide slowly shut on their own, blocking out most of the bright afternoon light, until the room settles into a soft, private dimness.

My heart pounds the whole walk there. I do not know this house yet, do not know which hallways lead to safety and which lead somewhere worse. Every door we pass is closed, every room a mystery, and I find myself counting my steps just to have something steady to hold onto.

My fingers shake badly as I unbutton the front of my dress, just enough to show him the wound underneath. It is four inches long at least, angry and red along both edges, already starting to weep a little at the center.

"See," I say, trying to sound convincing. "It really is fine."

"Stop saying that word to me." His jaw is clenched tight enough that I worry it might actually c***k under the strain.

Before I can stop him, his hands are already pulling the rest of the buttons open one by one, revealing everything I have spent years carefully hiding under loose, baggy fabric. The yellowing bruises stacked one over another. The thin white scars left behind from old whippings. Ribs and hip bones pressing far too close to the surface of my thin skin.

He turns me gently by the shoulders, and I already know without even looking that my back tells the exact same story as my front.

"Who did this to you," he says. It is not really a question anymore. It is an order, plain and simple.

I do not answer him right away.

"Torin?" he presses gently.

I nod.

"Selene? Damon as well?"

I nod again, smaller this time, almost ashamed of the answer.

"Anyone else in that house?"

"The whole pack," I whisper, my voice barely audible. "Because of what they all think I did to our parents so many years ago."

His silence stretches on long enough that I start to genuinely wonder if I have said far too much already. When he finally does speak again, his voice comes out rougher than before, edged with something I cannot quite place.

"I do not believe for one second that you did any of it," he says firmly. "I already told you. Redroot Wolfsbane is not something a six year old simply finds by pure accident lying around. Someone planted that lie right alongside the actual plant itself, deliberately."

He takes me to see his sister Wren, the pack doctor, who examines the wound with careful, gentle hands and a face that grows tighter and tighter with every new bruise she happens to find along the way. The pack hospital smells like clean linen and something sharp and medicinal, nothing like the basement back home where I used to tend my own wounds with whatever rag I could find. Wren works in silence for a while, her fingers light and sure, pausing every so often to press gently at the edges of older bruises hidden beneath the newer ones.

When she gently asks how long the infection has likely been building beneath the surface, I have to admit that I honestly do not know for certain. The beatings all blur together after a while, one running into the next, until they stop feeling like separate events at all and start feeling like just the shape of an ordinary day. Any single day that passes without one almost feels like a small, quiet victory, the kind I never mention out loud because there is no one to mention it to.

Wren's mouth presses into a thin line, and for a moment I think she might say something, but she only reaches for a fresh roll of gauze instead, her hands steadier than her expression.

"Rhea," Silas says, his voice sharp with something that is clearly not directed at me. "You need to tell us the complete truth right now."

"I swear to you I do not know," I say, closing my eyes tightly. "It just happens so often that I honestly stopped keeping any real track of it a long time ago."

Silence falls over the room again. When I finally open my eyes, Silas has already left, phone pressed hard against his ear, his voice low and clearly furious out in the hallway beyond the door.

"You will have to forgive my brother," Wren says softly, smoothing a cool layer of cream over my wound with practiced fingers. "His temper runs quite short whenever it comes to things like this."

"Your brother?" I ask, surprised.

"Cole as well, if you have not already guessed that part yet. I am the only one among the three of us who chose medicine over pure muscle." She hands me a small pot of the cream to keep. "Apply this three times a day, and this infection should clear right up within a few days. Silas is already waiting for you out front, by the way."

I thank her quietly and slide off the exam table, my legs a little unsteady beneath me. Before I reach the door, Wren catches my wrist, gentle enough that I do not flinch.

"For what it is worth," she says, "nobody here is going to hurt you. I know that is not something you have any reason to believe yet. But it is true, and one day I hope you will simply know it without needing to be told."

I do not know how to answer her, so I only nod and slip out into the hallway, her words following me the whole way down the corridor like something warm pressed against my back.