CH13 The Beast’s Price
1189 Words
THE BEAST MAY NOW CHOOSE ITS PRICE.
The words burned into the courtyard stone between Aric and me.
No one breathed.
The birth band tightened around my wrist, reminding me old law had found skin.
Aric wiped blood from his mouth and stepped between me and the burning letters.
“No,” he said.
The stone answered.
Silver fire cracked across the ground.
Soren lifted one hand, but even his rings trembled. “Lunar Alpha, old law has opened. You cannot silence it.”
“I can silence anything that threatens her.”
The words should have warmed me.
They did not.
Protection had begun to sound too close to ownership.
I stepped beside him.
Aric looked down at me. “Kaia.”
“Do not stand in front of me every time my name appears in fire.”
“This is not pride.”
“No,” I said. “It is habit.”
His jaw tightened.
Let truth inconvenience him too.
The silver letters sank into the stone.
Then Aric’s shadow moved without him.
It stretched across the courtyard and rose at his feet, gathering into the black lunar wolf. Not flesh this time. Not fully spirit.
A verdict made of fur, moonfire, and hunger.
Every wolf bowed their head.
I did not.
The beast looked at me.
Not my wrist.
Me.
Its eyes were silver, but one flickered gray.
Aric was still inside.
Fighting.
The wolf opened its mouth.
No sound came.
Instead, letters carved themselves into the floor.
THE HEIR REFUSED BLOOD.
Another line appeared.
THE BEAST REFUSES DISTANCE.
A murmur broke through the courtyard.
Isolde smiled first. “How intimate.”
Veyra pointed her blade toward her. “Careful.”
Soren stared at the words. “The beast demands proximity.”
Aric’s voice went flat. “It can demand silence next.”
The wolf growled.
The sound rolled under my ribs.
A new line burned into the stone.
UNTIL THE BLACK MOON SETS, THE HEIR SHALL REMAIN WHERE THE BEAST CAN HEAR HER HEART.
The courtyard erupted.
Isolde’s laugh sliced through the noise. “So the moonless girl refuses proof and receives his private wing as reward.”
Heat touched my face.
Not shame.
Anger.
I had been dragged from one public judgment into another.
I looked at the wolf. “No.”
The court fell silent again.
Aric’s head turned sharply. “Kaia.”
I kept my eyes on the beast. “If the price is my body, no. If the price is my blood, no. If the price is a locked room and another man deciding what safety means, no.”
The wolf’s lips lifted.
Veyra whispered, “Moon above.”
I lifted my marked palm. “You hear my heart because I allow it. You stay near because I allow it. You do not take what I do not give.”
The birth band flared white.
For one terrible second, I thought the beast would lunge.
Instead, it lowered its head.
Not kneeling.
Listening.
The letters changed.
THE HEIR NAMES TERMS.
Soren took a step back. “Impossible.”
Aric stared at me as if the courtyard had vanished.
I did not look at him.
Not yet.
“My terms are simple,” I said. “No blood proof. No locked doors. No touching me without consent. No hiding the truth of my mother, my mark, or the Chain Room.”
At the last words, the court shifted.
Some faces went blank.
Others went afraid.
Isolde’s smile thinned.
She had known enough to fear the room.
The wolf looked at Aric.
So did I.
For the first time, the price did not feel aimed at me alone.
Aric’s eyes held mine.
Then he said, “Accepted.”
Soren snapped, “You cannot bind the court to—”
“I did not ask the court.”
The wolf struck the stone with one paw.
Silver fire spread under our feet.
The letters changed again.
TERMS WITNESSED.
A final line carved itself beneath the others.
THE ALPHA SHALL PAY THE REMAINDER.
Aric went still.
The whole courtyard seemed to lean closer.
I looked at him. “What remainder?”
He did not answer.
That was answer enough.
The beast turned toward him.
For a moment, it looked less like his wolf than his judge.
Aric’s face hardened. “No.”
The letters brightened.
TRUTH BEFORE DAWN.
My pulse struck hard.
Soren went pale.
Veyra’s blade lowered by an inch.
Isolde stopped smiling.
Whatever truth the beast demanded, every important person in the courtyard feared it.
Aric looked at the wolf. “You do not command me.”
The wolf stepped closer.
Aric did not move.
But the birth band tightened around my wrist, and through it I felt the strain inside him.
Not anger.
Panic, buried under discipline.
I touched his sleeve before I could decide not to.
He froze.
So did I.
The contact was small. Fabric only. Nothing intimate enough for the court to gasp over.
Still, the mark on my palm answered him.
His breath changed.
“You told me strength can become a cage,” I said quietly. “Do not build one out of silence.”
For a heartbeat, he looked at me as if I had reached the one place he had never armored well enough.
Then the door closed.
His expression became Lunar Alpha again.
“The heir will be housed in the east watch chamber,” he said. “One wall from mine. Veyra will guard the outer door. The inner door remains unlocked.”
Isolde stepped forward. “And me?”
Aric did not look at her. “You will return to the guest wing.”
“I am your promised bride.”
“You were a political arrangement.”
“I am the reason House Varyn’s soldiers hold your eastern border.”
“And I am the reason they are still breathing.”
Her face went white.
The threat was quiet enough to be elegant.
Soren recovered first. “The council will convene at dawn.”
“No,” Aric said. “At noon.”
“The law says—”
“The law can wait until she has slept.”
The courtyard turned toward me again.
Slept.
As if sleep were possible after my mother’s ghost, a birth band, a beast’s price, and half a court watching my wrist like it might crown me by accident.
I almost laughed.
Instead, I said, “Noon.”
Soren’s eyes narrowed.
He was not used to being answered by girls who had entered his keep bleeding and afraid.
Good.
Veyra came to my side. “This way.”
Aric moved with us.
The wolf-shadow followed at his feet.
Isolde waited until we reached the archway before speaking.
“Ask him before dawn, Kaia.”
I stopped.
Aric did too.
Isolde’s voice softened into poison.
“Ask him what Seren begged him to do the night she died.”
Aric went cold beside me.
Not angry.
Ruined.
The birth band pulsed once.
And from somewhere deep inside the east wing, my mother’s lullaby began again.
- Writer
