Sold To The Alpha Who Hated My Bloodline.

SUSPICIONS

"Explain."

One word. Ice-cold, cutting through the courtyard like a blade.

I opened my mouth and found nothing waiting there. What was I supposed to say? That the man who'd just kissed me had no business being on Nightshade land? That admitting anything at all could get Kieran killed?

"There's nothing to explain," I said instead.

Damaris stepped out of the archway, and even in the dim light I could see the muscle working in his jaw. "There was a man in my courtyard. In the middle of the night. Inside guarded territory he had no right to enter." His eyes moved over me — the coat around my shoulders that wasn't mine, the color still high in my cheeks. "And you're telling me there's nothing to explain."

"It's not what you think."

"Then tell me what it is." His voice had gone dangerously quiet. "Because from where I stood, it looked like the woman I own was meeting someone in secret, on my land, after dark."

"He's no one."

"He didn't look like no one when he kissed you."

I flinched. He'd seen more than I realized.

"Who is he?" Damaris asked again, slower this time, like he was giving me one last chance to answer honestly before he stopped asking nicely.

"A friend. From home."

"A friend."

"Yes."

"Friends don't sneak onto Alpha territory in the dead of night to kiss someone who supposedly means nothing to them." He crossed his arms. "Try again."

My mind raced. If I told him the truth — that I'd loved Kieran for years, that Kieran had risked his life to see me — I had no idea what Damaris would do with that information. Punish me for it. Hunt Kieran down for trespassing on pack land. I couldn't risk either.

"It doesn't matter who he is," I said carefully. "He's not a threat to you or your pack. He came to make sure I was alive. That's all."

"That's all," Damaris repeated flatly. "You expect me to believe a man crossed into hostile territory, risking his life, just to check that you hadn't been thrown in a cell somewhere."

"Believe whatever you want. It's the truth."

His eyes narrowed, studying me the way he had that first night in the hall — like I was something he hadn't decided whether to trust or destroy. "You're a very bad liar."

"I'm not lying."

"You're leaving things out. That's a different skill, but it still isn't honesty."

I said nothing. There wasn't a version of this conversation that ended well for me, so silence felt like the safest option left.

Damaris studied me a moment longer, then something shifted in his expression — not softer, exactly, but colder in a different way. Controlled. Deliberate.

"Whoever he is," he said, "if he sets foot on my land again, I won't ask questions before my guards deal with him. Do you understand me?"

My stomach dropped. "You can't—"

"I can do whatever I want within my own borders." His voice hardened further. "This is not a negotiation, Lara. It's a warning. The next man I find sneaking through my courtyard in the dark doesn't get a conversation. He gets a grave."

"He wasn't hurting anyone."

"He was trespassing on my land" Damaris's voice dropped lower, rougher. "Do you have any idea how that looks? A stranger meeting secretly with the woman I've taken in as payment for her father's debt, inside my own walls, where I'm supposed to be keeping watch over exactly this kind of risk?"

"This has nothing to do with the debt or my bloodline. This is just—" I stopped myself before I said the word *love* out loud, terrified of what it might cost.

"Just what?"

"Personal," I said instead. "It's personal. That's all you need to know."

Something in his face changed again — quick, unreadable, gone before I could name it, the same way it had the first night in the hall. For one strange moment, I thought I saw something almost like hurt cross his features. Then it hardened back into the same controlled mask he always wore.

"Fine," he said. "Keep your secrets. But understand this — you live under my protection now, whether either of us wanted that arrangement. Anything that happens on this land reflects on me and my pack. I won't have my authority undermined because you can't resist sneaking around with old friends in the dark."

"I wasn't trying to undermine anything."

"Intentions don't matter here. Consequences do." He turned to leave, then paused, glancing back at me with an expression I couldn't quite place. "Give the coat back to Otillie in the morning. You shouldn't be wearing another man's clothes inside my territory."

"It's cold."

"Then I'll have proper ones brought to your quarters." His tone made it clear this wasn't kindness — it was control, plain and simple. "You represent this pack now, whether you like it or not. I won't have you looking like you belong to someone else."

The words landed strangely, heavier than I think he intended them to. I watched him walk away, disappearing back through the archway toward his private quarters, and I stood alone in the courtyard for a long time afterward, Kieran's coat still warm around my shoulders despite everything Damaris had just said.

---

I didn't sleep. I lay awake replaying the night — Kieran's hands in my hair, the desperate honesty in his voice, and then Damaris's face in the shadows, unreadable and furious and something else underneath that I still couldn't name.

By the time Otillie knocked at dawn, I'd barely closed my eyes.

"You look terrible," she said, stepping into my room without waiting for permission. "Rough night?"

"Something like that."

Her sharp eyes flicked over the coat still draped across my bed. "That's not pack material."

"It's not important."

"Everything is important here, girl. You'd do well to remember that." She picked it up anyway, folding it over her arm. "I'll dispose of it. Trust me, it's safer that way."

I wanted to argue. I wanted to hold onto that coat like it was the only proof last night had actually happened. But arguing would only draw more attention, and attention was the last thing Kieran needed right now.

"Fine," I said quietly.

Otillie studied me a moment, something almost like sympathy flickering across her usually stern face. "Whoever he is," she said, lowering her voice, "you'd best convince him to stay away. The Alpha doesn't make idle threats, and he's already watching you closer than he watches most."

"I know."

"I don't think you do." She headed for the door, pausing just before she left. "Because from where I was standing this morning, watching him ask half the guard whether anyone saw a stranger on the grounds last night, I'd say you have no idea how closely."

She left before I could respond, the door clicking shut behind her, and I sat alone in the gray morning light with a sinking feeling settling low in my stomach.

Damaris hadn't just been angry last night.

He'd been asking questions. Quiet ones. Careful ones.

And somewhere in that fortress of black stone, I had the distinct, chilling feeling that the Damaris who claimed to hate me had just started looking for Kieran himself.