From Pack Slave To Secret Luna

The Crimson Alpha's Dangerous Bargain

MAYA'S POINT OF VIEW!

"Don't make a sound."

I told myself that over and over, standing in the middle of Alpha Trey's office with my head hanging so low my chin almost touched my chest.

Don't breathe too loud. Don't let them see you shake.

Alpha Thiago was watching me. I could feel his eyes moving over me like he was reading something written on my skin. They all watched me like that. Like I was a puzzle they couldn't quite solve, or maybe a problem they hadn't figured out how to get rid of yet.

Nobody ever quite believed it. How could they? How could a girl poison her own parents?

I had stopped trying to explain years ago.

His boots made no sound as he stepped directly in front of me. A rough finger pressed under my chin, tilting my face upward until I had no choice but to look at him.

His eyes were crimson. Not brown, not dark. Red, like burning coals pushed deep into pale skin. They didn't blink.

His hand moved slowly to my throat. He didn't squeeze. He just held it there, warm and heavy, like a question waiting for an answer.

"You poisoned your parents?"

"I was six." The words came out squeaky and small, nothing like the firm voice I had tried to use. "I just made them lemonade. I didn't know what was in the garden."

His crimson eyes slid sideways to my brothers. Something shifted behind them, sharp and calculating.

"Hardly seems fair to blame a six-year-old for that."

Alpha Trey's voice came out hard as stone. "A six-year-old should know the difference between plants."

"Sounds more like a setup to me." Thiago shrugged, dropping his hand from my throat like my skin had bored him. "We all know standard wolfsbane stopped being lethal to us centuries ago. We evolved past that."

The words hit me like cold water thrown straight at my face.

What?

Wolfsbane wasn't lethal? But I had been told since I could walk. Every punishment, every locked door, every bruise had been tied to those two words. Wolfsbane. Killer. Murderer.

"Which only leaves Blood of Wolfsbane." Thiago said it quietly, almost to himself.

"You weren't there." Trey's voice had dropped to something low and dangerous. "It was wolfsbane. Standard. I know what I saw."

"You are right." Thiago nodded once, slow. "I was not there."

My stomach dropped. For exactly one second, I thought he was about to agree with my brother. About to fold and hand me back to the wolves, quite literally.

"But I have one question." His crimson gaze landed back on me, steady as a blade. "Where does a six-year-old girl get Blood of Wolfsbane?"

The silence that followed that question was so thick I could barely breathe inside it.

"I did not bring you here to discuss my slave." Trey's voice cracked through the room like a whip. "Or what happened to my parents."

Thiago reached for his leather jacket draped over the back of the chair. Unlike every other Alpha I had ever seen march through this house, he wore no three-piece suit, no chains of rank, no tattoos crawling up his arms. Just a plain black shirt, dark jeans, and an expression that gave nothing away.

"You are right," he said simply. "And now I have some things to think about."

"We had an agreement."

"Nothing has been signed." He pulled the jacket on smoothly. "I will show myself out."

The door clicked shut behind him and the air in the room curdled immediately.

Both Trey and Beta Kyle turned on me at the exact same moment.

"What did you say to him?" Trey's fist drove into my stomach before the sentence was even finished.

The breath left my body in one sharp rush. I doubled forward, arms wrapping around myself, waiting for the next hit.

"Nothing," I gasped. "He just asked me why I smelled different. That's all."

"Did you tell him?" Kyle was close enough that I could feel the heat coming off his skin. His voice had gone soft in the way that always scared me more than shouting.

I hated Beta Kyle. I had hated him since I was old enough to understand what hatred meant. I had made myself a quiet, private promise years ago that one day, somehow, the balance would shift. One day, I would not be the one on the floor.

"Answer me." Trey's palm cracked against the side of my head.

My vision blurred white at the edges.

"Yes," I whispered. "But I didn't say it was you. I swear I didn't say it was you."

His hand fisted in my black hair and yanked back so hard my neck wrenched and pain shot from the base of my skull all the way down my spine.

"If you have ruined this deal," he said very quietly, right against my ear, "you will not see sunlight again. Do you understand me?"

He didn't wait for an answer.

He dragged me by my hair out of the office and down the hallway toward the basement door. My feet scrambled against the floor, trying to keep up with the pace so he wouldn't tear the hair clean from my scalp.

"Please," I begged, hating myself for it even as the word left my mouth. "He is an Alpha. He asked me a direct question. I had to answer him. You know I had to."

Trey grabbed the basement door handle and wrenched it open hard.

And stopped.

Alpha Thiago was standing on the other side.

He was leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his chest, completely still, like he had been waiting there for exactly this moment. His crimson eyes moved from my brother's face down to the fist still locked in my hair, and then back up again.

Slowly.

Trey's hand released me. The pressure vanished from my skull so fast my knees almost buckled.

"Alpha Thiago," Trey said, voice shifting instantly into something smooth and controlled. "I thought you had left."

"I said I would show myself out." Thiago pushed off the wall with one easy motion, unhurried. "I thought I had found the door. Instead, I found a basement. And the entire hallway is soaked in your sister's scent." His eyes didn't leave my brother's face. "Is this how you treat your family?"

"As I made clear," Trey said, spine stiffening, "she is responsible for the deaths of my parents. What she receives is what she has earned."

"Stay out of another pack's affairs." Kyle stepped forward, jaw tight.

Thiago looked at him the way you look at something mildly interesting on the bottom of your shoe.

Then he laughed. Quiet, controlled, utterly without warmth.

"If I agree to this deal, everything in your territory becomes my concern. So let us be clear with each other." His gaze swept over me once, head to foot, slow and assessing. "No food. Dark circles under her eyes. Bones showing through her skin. For a girl who shares blood with an Alpha, she is certainly not living like one." He paused. "Regardless of what she allegedly did when she was still a child."

"She did it." Trey's voice had gone flat with fury. "And she has no place in this negotiation."

"That," Thiago said softly, "is for me to decide."

His eyes moved around the hallway like he was cataloguing every detail for later use.

"Where is your mate? I would very much like to know how your Luna feels about all of this."

Every muscle in my body locked up. I pressed my eyes shut, begging silently for my brother not to call her. Luna Cassandra made Trey look patient by comparison. She made Kyle look gentle.

"On second thought," Thiago said, before anyone could speak, "do not bother. I am quite certain she matches you perfectly."

My eyes opened.

He was looking directly at me when he said it. Not at Trey. Not at Kyle.

At me.

Like he already knew exactly what I had survived inside these walls, and he wanted me to know that he knew.

I did not understand why. I was nobody. I was the pack slave, the girl who killed her parents by accident at six years old and had been punishing herself, and been punished, every single day since. There was no reason in the world for an Alpha like him to waste a single breath defending someone like me.

And yet.

"I have a new term to add to this agreement," Thiago said, turning back to my brother with an expression of perfect calm.

Trey's mouth tightened. "The terms were finalized."

"Then allow me to unfinalize them." Thiago clasped his hands behind his back. "You will either accept this new condition, or I will walk out of your territory tonight and return as your enemy instead of your ally. I think you already know which of those two outcomes you can afford."

Kyle shot a look at Trey. Trey said nothing.

"Your new condition involves her." It was not a question. Trey's voice had the flat, barely contained fury of someone who already knew they were losing ground.

"It does." Thiago did not even glance at him as he said it. His red eyes were on me. "She comes with me. Back to my pack. That is the new term. Accept it, and you have your deal."

The room went completely silent.

Me.

He wanted me.

I could not make sense of it. I stood there while my brother and Kyle exchanged a look I could not fully read, and all I could think was, why? What could someone like him possibly want with the girl everyone in this pack had spent ten years stepping on?

"Deal." Trey thrust out his hand.

Thiago looked at the outstretched hand for a long moment and did not take it.

"I will have the paperwork prepared and return tomorrow morning." He stepped forward and before I could move or speak, his hand was at my face, thumb pressing lightly against my bottom lip, tilting my chin up so our eyes met. "Make sure you are packed and ready." His voice had dropped low enough that only I could hear it clearly. "Everything you want to bring with you."

Then he turned, walked to the far end of the hallway, and pushed open the front door without a single moment of hesitation.

He had known exactly where it was the whole time.

He paused in the doorway without turning around.

"If I discover that any one of you has touched her between now and tomorrow morning," he said clearly, to the hallway, to the house, to no one in particular, "the contract will be the least of your problems."

The door shut behind him with a clean, quiet click that somehow felt louder than a slam.

"Get out of my sight," Trey hissed.

I did not need to be told twice.

I moved up the stairs fast, not running, because running showed them they had won something, and I refused to give them that. My room was at the end of the second hallway, small enough that you could cross it in four steps. A narrow bed. A single window with a broken latch. A few folded clothes on a shelf.

Everything I owned would fit into one bag.

Less than a minute to pack ten years of survival into something I could carry.

I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall.

Thiago's questions had followed me up the stairs and they were still circling now, pulling at something I could not name.

Where would a six-year-old get Blood of Wolfsbane?

I had never heard that phrase before today. Not once in ten years of being told I was a murderer. Blood of Wolfsbane. Not regular wolfsbane. Something specific. Something that had to be obtained deliberately.

And he had said standard wolfsbane was no longer lethal to wolves. That they had evolved past it centuries ago.

If that was true, and some quiet, surviving part of me believed that it was, then what had actually been in that lemonade?

And who had put it there?

I lay back on the thin mattress and stared at the ceiling, watching the shadows shift as the hours dragged toward morning.

Sleep did not come.

What I could not stop thinking about was not the deal, not the basement I had almost been locked into tonight, not even the bruises already forming where Trey's fist had connected.

What I could not stop thinking about was the way Thiago's thumb had pressed against my lip.

Not rough. Not threatening.

Like a question he had not asked out loud yet.

And the way his red eyes had stayed on my face just a second too long, as if he was looking for something specific and was not yet sure whether he had found it.

By the time pale gray light started creeping under the door, I had packed my bag, folded the three changes of clothes I owned, and was sitting on the edge of the bed with my hands flat on my knees.

Ready.

But ready for what, exactly?

Because a man like Alpha Thiago did not rearrange deals and insert himself into other packs' business over sympathy. He was not the kind of man who did things without reason.

So what was his reason?

A knock hit my door, sharp and impatient, before it swung open without waiting for a response.

Beta Kyle filled the doorframe, eyes hard, mouth set in a thin line. He looked at my packed bag on the floor and something moved across his face that I could not quite read.

"He is here," Kyle said flatly.

I stood up. Picked up my bag. Looked Kyle directly in the eye without flinching, which I knew he hated.

"Then I am ready," I said.

Kyle's jaw worked like he wanted to say something else. Something that would remind me of my place, remind me that even if I was walking out that door today, I would always carry this pack's mark somewhere underneath my skin.

He said nothing.

I walked past him into the hallway, bag over my shoulder, chin level, back straight.

And at the bottom of the stairs, standing in the entrance of the house that had swallowed ten years of my life, was Alpha Thiago.

He looked up when he heard my footsteps.

His crimson eyes moved from my face to the single bag in my hand and back to my face again.

Something shifted in his expression. Barely visible, just a fraction of movement at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. Something closer to confirmation, like he had already calculated exactly how little I had been given to survive on, and the bag was simply the final proof.

He said nothing.

He turned and walked toward the door, holding it open without looking back.

And just before I stepped through into the cold morning air, I heard my brother's voice behind me, low and clipped and stripped of everything except one last attempt at control.

"Remember what you are, Maya. No matter where you go."

I did not turn around.

I stepped through the door.

And Alpha Thiago's hand came up behind me, pressing flat and firm against the small of my back, guiding me forward in a way that felt nothing like any touch I had experienced inside that house.

Then he leaned down slightly, just enough that his voice landed right beside my ear, so quiet that no one behind us could possibly have caught it.

"I know exactly what you are," he murmured. "The question is whether you do."

What did that mean?

What did he know about me that I didn't?