Chapter 20
732 Words
Vivian’s pov
The candlelight flickered when Vespera opened the door, and my heart stopped.
She saw me curled under Dominic’s furs. She saw his bare chest. She saw everything she needed to destroy me. She knew I had been with him in the tunnels. But finding me curled up under the Alpha’s personal furs, in the exact center of his private bed, made her lose her composure.
For a moment she just stared. Her beautiful face twisted into something I’d never seen before—pure unfiltered rage mixed with something that looked like betrayal.
“What is this Solari wench doing in your bed?” Vespera repeated, her voice rising to a high pitch. She dropped the edge of the pelt as if the fur of the pelt itself had burned her.
My heart hammered against my ribs. I scrambled backward across the large mattress, pulling my thin linen tunic tightly over my knees. Kael’s guards stood just outside. If Vespera screamed, they would drag us both into the courtyard before Dominic could even get out of bed.
Dominic didn’t flinch. He just sat up slowly, fever-flushed skin catching the firelight, and when he looked at Vespera, something cold slid across his face.
“Lower your voice, Vespera”, Dominic commanded, his tone so flat and void of emotion it sent a chill down my spine.
“Lover my voice?”She hissed, pointing a trembling finger at me. “My father just staked his reputation to protect this tower for you! I knew you were using her to track the chemist, Dominic, but this? You bring the traitor’s daughter into your sheets?”
“She’s here because she knows poisons”, Dominic said flatly. “She cut the bolt out of my shoulder. The efforts drained her. She collapsed”.
The lie was perfect. He delivered it like he’d rehearsed it a thousand times. Like the thought of me made him sick. And maybe it did. I was a Solari, after all. Maybe his wolf was just confused by the bond, and his human side knew the truth:I was disposable.
“She was under your furs”, Vespera said, though her voice had lost some of its edges.
“Because the girl is half-starved and freezing”, Dominic replied, and now there was disgust in his tone—directed at me. “She crawled under them where I was unconscious. I would have broken her neck if you hadn’t interrupted”,
The words hit like a blade. My wolf whimpered, confused and hurt.
Vespera was studying him now, trying to read if he meant it.
“She shouldn’t be in this tower”, she finally said, adjusting her white fox fur collar like she was regaining control. “If the guards saw her—“
“Then remove her”, Dominic cut her off. He turned his head to look at me, and his eyes were ice. “Her magic is burned out. She’s useless to me. Put her in the kitchen with other omegas. I’m done looking at her”.
The finality in his voice made something inside me crack.
Vespera’s smile spread slowly and viciously across her face. She’d won.
“Get up rat”, Vespera purred, watching me with gleaming eyes, “ you are going to earn your keep now”.
I swallowed the heavy agonising lump. I pushed myself off the edge of the mattress, my bare feet hitting the cold stone floor.
I didn’t look back at the bed. I wrapped my thin around myself and walked out of the warmth of the high tower, stepping into the freezing, torch lit corridor.
Two dozen heavily armed Northern guards turned their heads.
“Take this down to kitchens”, Vespera ordered the nearest guard, her voice dripping with disdain. “The Alpha is finished with it.”
The guards dragged me down the spiral stairs, away from the warmth and light, towards the kitchen that reeked of blood and lye.
I didn’t cry, I’d learned that lesson long ago. But as the cold stone embraced me and the mate bond stretched thin between us, I felt something shift.
Dominic had chosen his pack.
He’d chosen survival.
The question now was whether I would survive in the kitchen long enough for him to change his mind.
- Writer
