Contracted To The Alpha King

FAULT LINES

Sera's POV

Isla passed me the small jar of ointment with precise instructions — morning and night, two days minimum, the herbal pouch in warm water every evening for the hand. I listened and nodded and tried to look like someone whose mind was present.

"Thank you," I said softly.

"Don't thank me." She waved it off, arranging her instruments with the habitual precision of someone who needed her hands occupied. "Wolves don't fall sick. Injuries seal before I can do anything useful. The last time I actually practiced was a silver-laced wound two years ago." She glanced at me. "You've made me feel needed again. So if anything, thank *you.*"

I offered a half-smile that wasn't convincing anyone.

Isla looked at me for a moment. Then, carefully — "Don't think too much about what Rhea said. She has a habit of making things sound worse than they are." A pause. "Nicklaus isn't a bad person."

I looked at my bandaged hand. "Back in my pack they called him the devil." I kept my voice even. "They were terrified of him. Even our Alpha." I looked up. "Were they exaggerating too?"

Isla was quiet for a moment.

"People fear what they don't understand," she said finally. "And even the devil has his friends."

"The devil?" Rhea's voice came from across the room, her back still to us as she restocked the cabinet. "The devil actually wishes he was Klaus."

I looked at the back of her head.

I didn't know what to do with that statement. I turned it over, examined it, and arrived at the only conclusion that made sense — that Nicklaus was something beyond what even the word *devil* could contain. Something worse.

The clinic door opened.

"Speaking of the devil," Rhea said pleasantly, still not turning around, "and he shows."

Nicklaus stepped in. He looked at Rhea with one raised brow — brief, unhurried — then moved his eyes across the room. Isla. Me.

"Are you done?"

"Mostly," Isla said. "She needs rest. And food."

"A lot of food," Rhea added. "Unless snapping in half works for you."

Nicklaus nodded once. His eyes returned to me and stayed with that steady, assessing quality that had no warmth in it.

"Let's go," he said.

I looked at Isla. She gave me a careful smile full of sympathy and nothing else. I looked at Rhea. Rhea finally turned from the cabinet and met my eyes with the composed expression of someone who had already said everything she was going to say.

I gathered the ointment and the cloth pouch and followed Nicklaus out.

---

The corridor was quiet. Not the loaded quiet of my brother's pack house after dark — every closed door a variable, every footstep requiring identification. Just quiet. Simple and unweighted, the quiet of a place that wasn't afraid of itself.

I stayed two steps behind him and kept my eyes moving — exits, doors, the layout of the building. Mapping everything automatically, the way I always had in unfamiliar spaces. The way you do when you've always needed to know where the way out was.

"How are you feeling?"

His voice, without preamble, into the quiet corridor.

"Fine," I said. Reflexive. The word I gave when the truth was too complicated.

"Then why is your heart beating so fast?"

I said nothing.

He didn't slow. Didn't look back.

"Are you scared of me?"

I stared at the back of his head and thought about lying and thought about how pointless that was when he could apparently hear my pulse.

"Shouldn't I be?" I said.

He stopped.

Turned around slowly and looked at me — really looked, the way he had in my brother's office, that quality of attention that felt like being taken apart and catalogued — and then he said:

"Have we met before?"

My heart stopped.

"Something about your eyes." His head tilted slightly. "They seem familiar."

The corridor blurred at the edges. Behind my ribs everything was loud and wrong and I was thirteen years old in the mud and he was standing over me and—

He has killed and hurt so many people, I thought, with a bitterness so sharp it nearly choked me, that he cannot even remember their faces.

My head stayed down. My voice came out steady.

"I don't think so."

"Interesting." A pause. "I would remember." His eyes hadn't moved from my face. "I don't forget faces."

The lie sat between us.

He looked at me for one more moment. Then he nodded, once, slowly — not convinced, not unconvinced, simply filing it — and turned back down the corridor.

"Sera."

I looked up.

"You don't need to be afraid." His voice was even. "No one will hurt you here. You have my word."

I looked at the back of his head and I thought about Rhea's words. About the other girls. About *most don't make it past the cat's paw.* And underneath all of it, underneath every layer of fear and hatred, one thought rose clean and cold.

I bet you said the exact same thing to all of them.

"Come," he said.

I followed.

---

He stopped outside a door and opened it.

Too nice. Too warm. A real bed, clean linen, heavy curtains. A bathroom through a half-open door. Everything a person might need, arranged by someone who had thought about it.

A closed door behind us.

I kept my bag against my chest and stayed near the entrance.

"This is your room," Nicklaus said. "Bathroom through there. Food will be brought shortly." He moved toward the window, adjusting the curtain, speaking without looking at me. "Make sure you eat all of it."

I stared at the floor and said nothing.

He turned to leave.

"Why." The word came out before I could stop it.

He stopped. Turned.

"Why what?"

The real question lived behind my teeth — why were you there, why were they all dead, why were you standing in the middle of them — and I couldn't say it. Not yet. Not without a plan, not without something in my hands.

"Why did you bring me here?" My voice was steadier than it had any right to be. "To your pack. Why me?"

"They were killing you slowly," he said. "And calling it justice."

"That's not an answer." The words surprised even me. "Why does it matter to you what they did to me? I'm nothing to you. You don't know me. So why —"

He moved.

Not quickly — nothing he did was quick — but he crossed the space between us and stopped close enough that I had to tilt my chin up to keep his face in view. His hands found my arms, light, not restraining, just — there — and the contact sent every nerve in my body into immediate alarm.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

Braced.

Waited.

"Why do you think I did it?" His voice was quiet. Almost soft. "What is it you think I want from you?"

I couldn't breathe. Couldn't speak. Couldn't find a single word in any language I knew because his hands were on my arms and my heart was slamming against my ribs and seven years of nightmares had hands and a voice and was standing close enough that I could feel the warmth of him—

I opened my eyes.

He was already gone.

The door clicked shut behind him, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the room with my arms still braced and my pulse roaring in my ears.

A moment later, another knock sounded. A maid entered wheeling a food cart, the rich smell of warm meat and fresh bread filling the room.

She froze when she saw me, eyes widening. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude—” She quickly looked away and began arranging the plates.

When she was done she took her leave while I still stood there at that spot shaking, eyes fixed on the cart. On the silver eating knife resting beside the plate.

My hand moved before my mind caught up. I snatched the knife, gripping it tightly, the edge pressing against my wrist.

Better this than him touching me.

The thought was cold and clear. I pressed the blade harder against my skin.

Then—

Mother. Father at the tree line. Lyra’s ribbon in the mud. Calla. Demi.

Their faces flashed through my mind, sharp and unforgiving.

No.

I couldn’t die here. Not like this. Not before I made him pay.

I slipped the knife under the pillow on the bed, hiding it from view. My hands were still shaking as I sat down at the cart.

I will avenge them.

I will kill him.

I picked up the fork and started eating, forcing every bite down even though my stomach rebelled. I needed strength. All of it.

For what was coming.