Reborn to Reject the Alpha Who Betrayed Me

The first time Vesper asked her husband to open the door, she still believed he would. "Dacre." She pressed the intercom again. Its green light reflected against the narrow gold band on her finger. "Something’s burning. The lock won’t release." Smoke slipped beneath the door leading to the corridor. It smelled of scorched varnish and something sharper. She had smelled it earlier on the sleeve of the man who serviced the security system. Dacre had told her it was cleaning fluid. She pulled at the handle. The bolt held. This room had been his anniversary gift. A private study for the work he said she should return to, with shelves for her father’s books and a window overlooking the river. The window did not open. "Dacre, answer me." The speaker crackled. For one relieved second, she closed her eyes. Then Sabine spoke. "Are you sure she can’t get through the other door?" Vesper’s hand stopped against the intercom. She knew that voice as well as her own. Sabine had sat beside her at her mother’s funeral. Sabine had brought soup when grief made swallowing difficult. Sabine had helped choose the pale blue dress Vesper wore tonight. "The outer lock is engaged," Dacre answered. He sounded close to the microphone. Unhurried. "And the staff?" "Gone." Vesper looked at the smoke collecting above the shelves. Her wolf stirred weakly inside her. For weeks, that presence had been little more than a distant ache. Exhaustion, Dacre had said. Grief. She had believed the physician he selected when he told her to rest. Now her wolf pushed against her ribs with a sudden, desperate urgency. 'Move.' Vesper stepped clear of the desk and reached for the change. Her wolf could break the lock. She had splintered thicker wood before. She pushed toward the familiar shift of muscle and bone. Pain tightened her back. Her fingers curled, then went slack. Nothing changed. She tried again. Her wolf strained with her, unable to gather strength. The physician had promised his treatment would help her sleep. Since taking it, she had barely felt the urge to run. Vesper braced herself against the desk. Whatever was wrong, she could not wait for it to pass. Vesper seized the chair behind the desk and dragged it toward the window. Through the speaker, Sabine said, "You told me the transfer was enough." "It was enough while she kept signing." Vesper lifted the chair. Her arms shook under its weight. She swung anyway. Wood struck a glass with a report that hurt her ears. The window shuddered. One chair leg snapped and fell at her feet. The glass remained whole. Dacre continued speaking. "She called the records' office this afternoon. Tomorrow she would have called the council." Because a woman from Aldercrest had asked why the river road was closed. Because Vesper had found her own name on an authorization she did not remember signing. She had meant to ask him after dinner. Her husband had kissed her forehead and suggested she wait in her new study. Vesper dropped the broken chair. "Dacre." This time she said his name into the speaker with all the steadiness she could gather. The voices stopped. "I can hear you." A small click followed. Then his voice came through clearly. "Get away from the door, Vesper." She stared at the little green light. "You locked me in." "You should have left the records alone." The marriage mark beneath her collarbone tightened painfully. She had once welcomed that sensation, proud of the chosen bond they had sealed before both packs. Now she pressed her palm over it as if she could tear his claim out of her skin. "Open it." He sighed. She knew that sigh, too. He used it when she questioned a household account, when she asked to visit someone he disliked, when he wanted her to feel foolish for making him explain himself. "Please don’t make this harder." For a moment she could not draw breath. Not because of the smoke. Because she had slept beside this man. Reached for him in the dark. Defended him when her mother asked why every decision seemed to end in his favor. "Look at me," she said. A black camera sat above the door. "Look at me while you do it." Silence. Then the light on the intercom went out. Vesper slammed her hand against the button until pain shot into her wrist. Nothing. Her phone lay beside the books she had been sorting. She snatched it up, called emergency services, and gave the address between coughs. Locked room. Fire. Send help. The operator asked where in the house. "Lower floor. Riverside." The signal broke. Vesper tried again. The call failed. She pulled up the pack link, reaching toward the familiar minds she had once known so easily. Nothing opened. She had withdrawn from most of them herself, one small concession at a time. Dacre had wanted privacy. Sabine had said other people were using her. Her mother had warned her. Vesper swallowed hard and opened her messages. The last one was from Romilly, sent eight months ago. If you ever want to talk, the number hasn’t changed. Vesper typed the address. Fire. Locked inside. Dacre did it. She pressed send. A circle turned beside the message. She left the phone on the desk, facing upward, and dropped to her knees. There was clearer air near the floor. Her wolf pushed again. 'The wall.' Vesper crawled toward the shelving. 'What wall?' An image struck her: bare stone, water-dark seams, the shape of a crescent carved around an open hand. She had never seen it. Still, her fingers went to the narrow space beside the lowest shelf. Cold air touched her knuckles. The bookcase had been built in front of something. She pulled books free. Her father’s old atlas struck the floor open, pages bending beneath her knees. Behind it, a thin decorative panel covered rough stone. Vesper hooked her fingers into the seam. It tore loose. Beyond it, half-hidden by timber framing, lay a shallow recess. A crescent curved around an open hand. Her wolf gave a sound that was almost recognition. From somewhere beyond the house came a crash, and Vesper froze. Footsteps struck the stairs. "Vesper!" A man’s voice. Low, rough, furious enough to cut through the noise of the fire. Not Dacre. She scrambled toward the door, coughing. "Here!" Something struck the other side. "Get back." She knew who it was before the bolt shrieked under the next blow. Stellan Rook. The Alpha Dacre had called a butcher. The man Sabine said would take everything Vesper owned if she ever let him close. He had sent flowers when her mother died, but she had thrown them away. "Back from the door, Vesper." She crawled behind the desk. The frame splintered. A third impact tore the lock free, and Stellan came through the opening with smoke rolling around his shoulders. His coat was gone. Soot streaked one side of his face. The cuff of his shirt had burned away. He found her immediately. "Can you stand?" She tried, but her legs folded. He reached her before she hit the floor, one hand supporting her back, the other beneath her knees. The scent of cold pine reached her through the smoke. Her wolf surged toward it. Not weakly now. With such longing that Vesper caught his shirt in both hands. Stellan went still for half a breath, and then he lifted her. "Stay with me." "How—" "Your call reached dispatch. They put the address out on the emergency channel. I was coming back from the regional meeting, just past your gate." He adjusted his grip beneath her knees. "The fire crews are coming from town. I couldn't wait." He carried her toward the doorway. The corridor beyond it glowed orange. Stellan stopped. Vesper felt his chest expand beneath her cheek. He looked left, then toward the ceiling. A length of burning timber dropped across the passage. He retreated as sparks sprayed through the doorway. "There’s a service stair," Vesper managed. "Past the kitchen." "Blocked." "The window." "I’ll try." He lowered her beside the desk and pulled it toward the glass. She tried to help, but her hands slid uselessly against the wood. "Save your breath." He drove the corner into the window. A c***k spread across the pane. Again. The c***k widened, but a wire mesh held the glass in place. Vesper stared at it. Dacre had called it storm protection. Stellan pulled at the fractured pane. A narrow piece came away, admitting a strip of cold night air. He bent close to the gap and shouted for help. Somewhere outside, a voice answered. Too far away. A siren rose beyond the trees. Vesper tried to crawl toward the air, and her arm collapsed. Stellan caught her, crouching with her against his chest. "Vesper, look at me." She looked. His eyes were gray. She had thought them black at council meetings, where she always sat beside Dacre and never let herself stare. "You can hate me later," he said. "Just keep breathing." "I don’t." The words surprised them both. She gripped his wrist. "I don’t hate you." His expression changed. A sound came from beneath the floor, a deep c***k followed by the scrape of shifting stone. The recess behind the broken panel began to glow. Stellan turned toward it. Vesper’s wolf pressed forward so fiercely that for an instant she felt paws beneath her hands. 'There.' She shook her head. Stellan lifted her again, trying to get her closer to the broken window. Her lungs refused the next breath. She understood then that he might die with her. "Go," she whispered. His jaw hardened. "No." "There’s space. The window. You can—" "No." It should have frightened her, another man refusing to listen. Instead she saw his hand against the broken pane, testing the gap, trying again to widen it. He was still working. Still looking for a way to carry them both out. Vesper touched his cheek, and he looked down. "I believed them." "We’ll talk about it outside." "I’m sorry." His grip tightened. "Tell me when we’re outside." She wanted that. More than she wanted Dacre punished. More than she wanted her name cleared. She wanted morning. A room with an open window. Her mother’s voice. A chance to answer Romilly’s message. She wanted to know the man holding her. Her wolf reached toward the stone. 'Give me your hand.' Vesper did not know whether the words belonged to her wolf or to something waking beneath them. She extended her fingers. Stellan followed her gaze, carried her to the recess and knelt. Her palm met the carved hand. Cold moved through her skin. For one startling instant she smelled wet earth instead of smoke. A voice formed inside her, close enough to be her own. 'Would you choose again?' 'Yes.' The answer came without hesitation. She would question the signatures, keep her friends, and listen to her mother. Also, refuse the man who had shut the door. Beneath her hand, stone warmed. Stellan said her name. Vesper tried to turn toward him, but light filled the recess and spread across his wrist, where he was still holding hers. His mouth moved, but she could no longer hear him. Her last thought was that she had finally found someone who came back. And she had found him too late.