The Basement Wolf

Chapter 15. First Act

The walls sweated with heat, though the fire in the grate had died an hour ago. Shadows from the candelabras dragged across the plaster like claws. Sandra clawed too—at the sheets, at the earth that wasn’t there, at any fragment of control her body refused to give back.

Pain tore her open in ribbons. It didn’t come in waves anymore; it was the tide itself, relentless, salt in her lungs. Every breath was a broken blade. The air tasted of iron and something sweet—dried roses rotting in a vase. Someone was humming, low and tuneless.

The midwife bent over her hips, hands slick and steady, face glowing with the kind of zeal people usually saved for churches. “Good girl,” she crooned, as if the words could swaddle bone-deep agony. “One more push, and you’ll give the world a prince.”

Prince. The word scraped down Sandra’s spine like wire. Her fingers fisted the sheet until the weave bit crescents into her palms. She wanted to scream, but the scream had burned away two hours ago, leaving only a raw rasp that tasted like rust.

A hand touched her temple—a hand cool as stone, smelling faintly of tobacco and clean leather. Clyde. He’d been there since the second hour, unhurried, a silhouette in a tailored vest, watching like a director who’d memorized every cue.

“Steady,” he murmured. His thumb traced the edge of her damp hairline, gentle as a lover, wrong as a lock clicking shut. “You were made for curtain calls like this.”

“Go to hell,” she gasped, though it came out shredded.

His smile brushed his mouth, never reaching the still lakes of his eyes. “Hell is amateur theater. I prefer classics.”

Another surge hit—white, volcanic. The midwife’s voice sharpened into a blade of cheer. “Push. Push now.”

Sandra bore down. Reality fractured into heat and tearing and the sound of her own breath detonating in her skull. Then—release. A wet rush, a cry like torn silk.

The room cracked open.

“It’s a boy,” the midwife sang, voice bright enough to blind. She lifted the child into the amber light like an offering to something that didn’t deserve worship. Tiny limbs flailed, slick and perfect, a heartbeat outside of hers for the first time.

Sandra’s chest convulsed. Her arms lifted before she knew they could. “Give him—” Her voice cracked like glass. “Give him to me.”

“Easy.” Clyde gestured lazily, and the midwife hesitated just long enough to remind Sandra who held the script. Then the small weight settled against her chest, damp heat soaking through the gown. A sound ripped from her throat—not a sob, not a word, just a raw animal prayer.

He was warm. He was real. His breath fluttered like moth wings against her collarbone. She pressed her lips to the wet crown and whispered promises that tasted like blood: “I’ve got you. I swear it. No one will—”

The door sighed open.

The air shifted, thickening like syrup. Boots hushed against the rug. Power entered wearing cologne and a smile cut with diamonds. Stefan. His shadow arrived first, long and certain, then the man himself—immaculate in a suit blacker than the corridor beyond, hair slicked like oil on water. The smile on his mouth could have sliced bread.

“Well,” he said softly, and the single syllable filled every corner. “History arrives on time.”

Sandra’s grip tightened around Liam until her arms shook. “Don’t,” she rasped. “Don’t you touch him.”

Stefan’s gaze slid down her body, the sheen of sweat, the fists of pain still clenching her spine. He drank in her defiance like a cordial, then set the glass down with a sigh. “You look divine when you threaten,” he said. “But threats without teeth are prayers, my dear.”

He moved closer. The midwife bobbed a curtsey so deep her spine might snap, then scuttled back like a shadow unpinned. Clyde didn’t move. He only watched, smile coiled like a cat’s tail.

Stefan bent, slow, savoring, until his cologne was a noose around her throat. “A king,” he murmured, brushing a knuckle over the child’s damp hair. “Not bad for your opening act.”

“He’s mine.” The words were shards. “You can’t—”

“Oh, I can.” His hand slid under the baby with the obscene ease of a man lifting a crystal goblet. Sandra clamped down, muscles screaming, but her body was treason, wrung out and empty. The tug broke her hold. Liam’s warmth peeled from her skin, leaving an Arctic hollow.

“No!” Her cry scalded the rafters. She lurched, half-risen, blood slick on her thighs, vision strobing with black stars. “Give him back—”

Clyde’s palm pressed her shoulder with the gentleness of velvet draped over steel. “Stay, little flame,” he said. “Or you’ll burn out before the second act.”

Stefan rocked the infant with a predator’s tenderness, smile slicing wider. “Hush now,” he cooed—not to the child, but to Sandra. “Think of this as an intermission. He’ll be raised where power teaches its first words. You’ve…contributed beautifully.” He turned, voice trailing like perfume. “A king should be raised by kings.”

The door swallowed him. Liam’s cry frayed down the corridor until it was thread, then nothing.

Silence fell like curtains.

Sandra sagged back against the pillows, chest cleaved open, breath tearing at the seams. Her arms still curved in the shape of what they’d held, a grotesque pantomime of cradle and void. The room smelled of iron and lilies, of milk that would never feed him.

Clyde adjusted his cufflinks, leisurely, like applause that hadn’t decided whether to start. Then he spoke, his tone a velvet rope closing around her throat.

“And so,” he said, “the first act concludes.”

Sandra turned her head. Her eyes were coals drowned in salt. “You think this is theater?”

“Oh, it’s opera.” He stepped closer, the light catching on the lacquer of his shoes, his teeth. “Tragedy sells better when the costumes bleed.”

Her voice cracked to powder. “Why? Why me?”

He crouched so their eyes nested, his smile a secret she’d never want to read. “Because some bloodlines are sheet music. And some wombs,” he said softly, “are instruments worth tuning.”

Horror sluiced through her veins, cold and slick. “You used me.”

“Not ‘used.’” His head tilted, and for an instant he looked almost tender. “Celebrated. The audience adores an ingénue.”

“I’m not your play—”

“Oh, darling.” His laugh was low, indulgent, cruel. “You’re the stage.”

He rose, brushing an invisible crease from his sleeve. “When you’ve healed, we’ll raise the curtain on Act Two. And I promise…” His gaze flicked to her belly, then higher, hooking her like a fish. “…the next scenes won’t waste time wondering whether to buy pink or blue.”

The words hit like ice water sluicing bone. Sandra saw it all then—the blueprint behind the velvet, the arithmetic of flesh and power. Not a mother. A mechanism. A well to draw heirs from until her body was a ruin draped in silk.

Her stomach knotted, but something hotter ignited in its pit. Rage, raw and phosphoric, catching on every nerve. They wanted a stage? She’d burn the theater.

Clyde leaned closer, just enough for his breath to ghost her ear. “Rest, little flame. Tomorrow we write new lines.”

Then he straightened, signaled the midwife with a flick that cracked like a conductor’s baton, and strode for the door. It closed on a hush of air, leaving Sandra alone with the smell of blood and lilies and the echo of Liam’s cry ghosting the corridors like a lost hymn.

She stared at the ceiling until its cracks mapped a vow across her vision. Her body throbbed, hollowed and aching, but inside the hollow something gathered—hard, molten, patient.

“They think I’m a stage,” she whispered to the dark, voice splintering, soldering, sharpening. “I’ll be the fire that burns their theater down.”

And the dark—wise, merciless—held her words like kindling.