Fated to the enemy

Chapter Three: What the Walls Remember

Elena's pov

My day started with Alpha Damon barely looking at me.

"Tea right now, no sugar." He didn't glance up from the papers on his desk when I entered, and I told myself that was good.

The kind of Alpha who forgot his maid existed the second she left the room was exactly the kind of Alpha I needed.

I set the tray down without a sound.

" Elena Wilson." He said without looking up, testing the name again like he had yesterday, like it didn't sit right in his mouth.

"Alpha?" I replied

"Which pack are you from?"

My pulse spiked. I kept my hands steady on the tray.

"The human world, I don't belong to any pack." I felt my anger building up, my fist clenched, his father is the reason I became packless .

He finally looked up. His stormy gray eyes, unreadable.

He studied me a bit too long, the same way he had in the courtyard, like he was trying to read something written in a language he'd never learned.

“You smell different Wilson”, he said standing up and walking towards me.

Fear gripped me, my heart pounded.

“I don't understand Alpha” I replied feigning surprise.

He tilted my jaw with his fingers, looking into my eyes like I was mystery. I felt my wolf move, and it surprised me more because it hasn't moved in years, due to the herbs.

“Get lost” he said going back to his seat.

I left before he could ask another question I didn't have a safe answer for.

Elijah the pack’s gamma and Helen’s brother, the guy who’s been watching me found me twice more that day. Once in the corridor outside the kitchens, watching from a doorway until I noticed him and he simply walked away without a word.

Then near the stables, close enough that I felt his eyes on the back of my neck for a full minute before he finally spoke.

"You're careful," he said. "Too careful. Most maids fumble things. Drop trays, flinch at raised voices but you don't."

"I will take that as a complement."

"It's an observation." He tilted his head. "I make a lot of those. It's my job." He said smiling.

"Lucky me." I replied.

"Be Careful,maid," he said again, quieter this time, and walked off before I could decide if it was a warning or a threat.

I didn't sleep well that night either. I lay on my cot with my eyes open, listening to the pack house settle around me, footsteps in distant corridors, a door somewhere closing, the low murmur of warriors changing shifts outside. Every sound in this house felt like it was cataloguing me the same way I was cataloguing it.

Near midnight, I heard something else.

A loud shout coming from the east corridor, past the laundry room, near the old wing nobody used during the day.

I told myself to stay in bed. I told myself this wasn't the night to test how far the rules stretched.

But my curiosity got the best part of me.

The old wing was cold in a way the rest of the house wasn't, stone unwarmed by fire or bodies, dust thick enough to swallow footsteps.

I moved through it the way Caroline had taught me, close to the walls, weight forward, breath shallow. I didn't know what I was looking for.

I only knew that somewhere in this house there had to be proof of what Vincent Blackwood did fourteen years ago, and proof didn't live in rooms people used every day.

I found the door because it was the only one with fresh scuff marks on the floor in front of it.

I found what was behind it because I was stupid enough to open it.

The room was small, windowless, lit by a single lantern that threw more shadow than light.

In the corner of it, chained to the wall by both wrists, was a boy who couldn't have been older than seventeen. His head hung forward. His shirt was gone.

What was left of his back told me everything I needed to know about.

He lifted his head when the door creaked. His eyes found mine, glassy with pain, and for one long second neither of us moved.

"Please," he rasped. "Please, help me I haven't eaten for days."

"What did you do?" My voice came out steadier than I felt.

" I said the wrong thing about the old Alpha and somebody heard, I don't know who but, I was just joking I didn't mean it."

His eyes went past me, toward the door, toward the corridor beyond it, and something in his face went from pain to pure terror.

"You need to go. If he finds you here…"

"If who finds her here," said a voice behind me, "what happens?"

I turned slowly, my heart pounding in my chest.

Vincent Blackwood stood in the doorway, a cup of wine in one hand, exactly as calm as if he'd found me refolding linens instead of standing over a chained, bleeding boy in a room that clearly wasn't meant to exist.

"you haven't learnt your lesson yet" he said to the boy who clearly looked scared.

"Sir," My voice didn't shake. I made sure of it. "I heard a noise. I thought someone needed help."

"Did you?" He stepped into the room, and the boy in the corner flinched so hard that the chains rattled.

Vincent didn't look at him. He looked at me, the same slow, assessing look he'd given me in the courtyard yesterday, the look of a man turning a coin over, checking both sides for a counterfeit. "You have a habit, it seems, of finding things you shouldn't."

"I didn't mean…"

"I don't much care what you meant." He took a sip of his wine, unhurried, and somehow that unhurried quality was worse than if he'd shouted.

"What I care about is why a new maid, three days into her service, keeps ending up exactly where she shouldn't be."

My blood went cold.

"I don't understand…"

"You will." He smiled, cutting me off and , looking awfully dangerous.

“I've lived a long time, little maid. So don't think you can outsmart me."

He stepped closer. Close enough that I could smell wine and iron and something colder underneath both.

He looked scary, but I didn't bulge. Sooner than later his sins would end him.

"I haven't placed you yet," he said, almost gentle now, almost intimate, and that was the most frightening part of all.

"But I will, and when I do, I promise you, that boy in the corner will look like mercy compared to what I will do to you."

Behind him, in the corridor, I heard footsteps approaching fast, and a voice calling his name with urgency sharp enough to cut glass.

Vincent didn't turn. His eyes stayed on mine, patient, certain, already counting down to a truth I wasn't ready to lose.

"Run along, little maid," he murmured. "For now.”