The Alpha's Silent Vow

I scrub the office floor on my knees, even though it is already clean. Beta Damon told me to do it twice, so I do it twice. That is the rule. Do not argue. Do not ask why. I learned that rule so many years ago that I no longer remember what it felt like to question it. "Where is she?" I hear him yell from the hallway. I know he means me. I am the only servant in this house, so there is never any real mystery about who he wants. I get up fast, grabbing my cleaning basket, and walk out to meet him before he comes looking for me himself. That is always worse. His hand cracks across my cheek before I even say a word. I do not flinch anymore. I stopped flinching years ago, back when flinching just seemed to make them hit harder. "Alpha Torin is expecting an important guest," he snaps, straightening his jacket like the sting he just gave me cost him something too. "The office better be spotless. Do you understand me?" I nod. My fingers grip the basket handle so tight my knuckles turn white. For one wild second I think about swinging it at his head, about what it would feel like to finally hit back. I never do. I am smaller than him, and hungrier, and I already know exactly how that fight would end. It would end with me in the basement for a week, maybe longer, and no lemonade jokes would save me that time. "This is Alpha Silas of Obsidian Crest," Damon says, like the name alone should make me stand up straighter. "The biggest pack in the region. If your brother messes this up, it is on you." I do not understand how any of it could possibly be on me. I have never met Alpha Silas. I have only heard the whispers, the ones the older wolves trade back and forth when they think I am too invisible to be listening. He does not lose fights. He does not forgive debts. Men twice his rank are afraid to look him in the eye, or so the stories go. I have learned to take pack gossip with a grain of salt, since half of what gets said about me is just as far from the truth. Damon shoves me toward the office door with the toe of his boot. "Go finish. Now. And do not let him see you." I slip inside and close the door softly behind me. The office already looks perfect, not one paper out of place, the desk polished until it gleams under the lamp. I lean against the door and let my eyes fall shut for one second, just one, before I have to go back to being invisible again. Someone clears their throat. My eyes snap open so fast my neck aches. In the corner chair, tucked half behind the bookshelf where I had not thought to look, a man sits with one leg crossed over the other, a glass of something dark cradled loosely in his hand. His hair is cut short and black. His eyes are the color of steel left out in the rain, pale grey, and they are already fixed on me like he has been waiting there just for this. I press my back flat against the door, my heart slamming against my ribs. "Is that how you greet every Alpha?" His voice is low and slow, like he has all the time in the world and none of it belongs to anyone but him. "I am sorry," I whisper, straightening up as best I can. "I thought I was alone." He does not tell me his name. He does not have to. I can already feel something rolling off him, heavy and still, the kind of quiet that sits right before a storm breaks loose. "Come here," he says. My stomach drops straight to my feet. If my brother walks in and finds me talking to his guest without permission, I am done for. But an Alpha's order is not something a wolf like me gets to refuse, even a wolf with no wolf at all locked somewhere deep inside her. I step around the corner where he can see me properly and stop, eyes down, waiting for whatever comes next. I have learned to brace myself for the worst before it arrives, so it never catches me fully off guard. "You smell strange," he says. "You are a wolf. Yet I did not scent you the moment I walked into this room. How is that possible?" I say nothing. I have learned, through years of practice, that silence gets me hurt less often than honest answers do. "I asked you a question." His voice sharpens, just slightly, enough to make the hair on my arms rise. "Look at me when I speak to you. Has no one ever taught you manners in this house?" Slowly, I lift my eyes. Not all the way. Just enough to see the shape of his jaw, the line of his mouth pressed thin. "My wolf is bound," I say, so quiet I am not sure he even heard it over the hum of the lamp. His jaw moves, just once, like he is chewing on something bitter he cannot quite swallow. "Why would anyone do that to a wolf?" I do not answer that part. If this really is the Alpha my brother needs so badly to impress, I could ruin everything with the wrong word, and I have already ruined enough in my life. "It was a punishment," I say instead. It is not a lie. It is just not the whole truth either, and I hope he does not push further. The door bursts open before he can ask anything else. "Rhea, what the hell are you doing in here?" My brother Torin's voice cracks through the room like a whip snapping across bare skin. He turns to the stranger, his whole face rearranging itself into something smooth and pleasant, the mask he wears for anyone with money or power. "My apologies, Alpha Silas. My sister has a habit of wandering where she should not." Alpha Silas. So the rumors finally have a face, and it is watching me from across the room with an expression I cannot read at all. Torin's hand shoots toward me. I close my eyes, waiting for the sting I know is coming, bracing my whole body against it out of pure habit. It never comes. I open my eyes just enough to see Alpha Silas standing now, tall enough that he blocks out most of the light from the window, his hand wrapped completely around my brother's wrist, stopping it cold in the air between us. "I would not do that," he says. Calm. Almost bored, like this is a small thing to him and not the first time in sixteen years someone has stopped my brother's hand before it landed. "Not in front of me."