Claimed By The Cursed King

Chapter4

Chapter Four: Gilded Bars

By the end of my first week, I had mapped every inch of Ashveil Castle that I was permitted to enter.I did it methodically, the way I had done everything in my life — because when you have no wolf, no status, no protection, information becomes the only currency that matters. Know the exits. Know the patrol rotations. Know who owes whom and who hates who and where the fault lines run. Ashveil had fault lines everywhere, if you knew how to look.The kitchen staff feared Mara but adored her, which told me she was the kind of hard worker that came from caring too much rather than too little. The guards rotated every four hours and changed pattern on the third day of every week — predictable enough for someone paying attention. Dax ran security with the kind of precision that left no obvious gaps, which meant if there were gaps, they were deliberate.And everyone, without exception, watched Cael like he was a weather system they had learned to read for their own survival.My new friend was Lena.She was nineteen, an omega rank who had come to Ashveil from a small northern pack three years ago. She had bright eyes and a nervous laugh and brought me extra food from the kitchens when she thought Mara wasn't looking — Mara always knew, but seemed to have decided to let it go."You're not scared," Lena told me on the fourth day, watching me eat the contraband pastry she'd smuggled from the kitchens. "Everyone who comes to Ashveil is scared. At least at first.""I've been scared my whole life," I said. "You get used to it."Lena considered this. "The last sacrifice they sent wasn't like you."I looked up. "There was another one?""Two years ago." Lena's voice dropped. "A girl from the eastern pack. She cried for three days straight and then one morning she was just — gone. Nobody said where." She paused. "But the King didn't — he wouldn't have—""She ran," said Mara from the doorway, making us both flinch. She came in and began straightening things that didn't need straightening — her version of occupying her hands while she talked. "She made it to the outer boundary and a rival pack found her before our guards could." A pause. "It did not go well for her."The room was quiet."I'm not running," I said.Mara looked at me. "No," she said. "I don't think you are." And something in her voice was almost, almost approving.---The locked door.I found myself standing in front of it every day, sometimes twice. It was set at the end of the lower corridor, past the last torch, in a section of wall that had no windows and no other doors. The stone around it was different from the rest of the castle — older, darker, fitted together with a precision that felt less like construction and more like intention.The humming was always there. Low, steady, like a heartbeat.I pressed my palm flat against the door once, quickly, when I was sure no one was watching. The humming moved up my arm and into my chest and settled there like a note held too long, vibrating in the hollow where my wolf should have been.I pulled my hand back. Stared at it.Nothing visible. No mark, no change. But the hollow in my chest felt different for the rest of the day — fuller, somehow. Like something had leaned toward it from the other side of the door and recognized it.I told no one.---"You're staring at the door again."Dax appeared at my shoulder without any warning whatsoever, which I was beginning to believe was a deliberate skill he practiced in his private time."I'm standing in a corridor," I said. "The door happens to be there.""The door happens to be off-limits." He didn't look at me, just at the door. "I'd strongly suggest not touching it.""I wasn't—""You were." Still no judgment in his voice. Just fact. "I saw you three days ago as well. And the day before that."I turned to look at him properly. "What's in there?""Nothing you're ready for.""That's the second non-answer I've gotten about that door."Something shifted in Dax's expression — the closest thing I'd seen to a c***k in his professional surface. "Some things in this castle have been waiting a very long time," he said carefully. "They don't need to be disturbed until the right time." He looked at me sideways. "The right time is not yet."He walked away before I could ask what that meant.I turned back to the door.*The right time is not yet.*The humming continued, patient and steady, like it had all the time in the world.