Broken Crown

CHAPTER 2

"If you said a single word to him that you weren't supposed to…"

"He asked me why I couldn't scent him." I keep my voice flat. Steady. "I answered. That's all."

Luca's hand closes around the back of my neck and he walks me backward until I hit the wall. Colt watches from across the room. Neither of them hides what they are doing. They stopped hiding it years ago.

"He asked about your binding." It is not a question.

"Yes."

"And you told him."

"I told him the short version. That it happened as a punishment. Nothing else."

His grip tightens. "If this deal falls through because you couldn't keep your mouth shut…"

"He is the one who asked questions. Would you prefer I told an Alpha of his rank to be quiet?"

The silence that follows is a mistake. I know it the moment the words are out. I have said too much. I could count on one hand the number of times in my adult life I have said too much, and every one of them cost me. This is the thing about surviving, you study your own patterns until you know exactly where the line is, and then something slips, and you cross it before you can stop yourself.

Luca's open palm catches me across the ear. The ringing starts immediately.

"Basement." He says it quietly, which is worse than shouting. "Tonight."

He releases me and walks away. Colt follows without a word.

I stand against the wall and breathe through my nose.

Not yet. I will fall apart later, somewhere private, where no one can see and no one can use it.

I push off the wall, pick up the tray from the table, and go back to the kitchen.

I don't end up in the basement that night.

Not because Luca changes his mind. Because Alpha Drayden does not leave.

I find this out the hard way, when I am being walked down the hallway by Colt's hand locked in my hair, and I look up, and there he is.

Standing at the far end of the corridor, arms crossed, back against the wall. Still. Watching.

Colt stops moving.

"I thought you left." Luca appears behind me, his voice careful in a way it never is when it is just the three of us.

"I said I would show myself out." Drayden pushes off the wall and walks toward us at a pace that is not hurried and is somehow, because of that, more threatening. "I got turned around. Found your basement door instead of your front door." His eyes move around the space. Then they land on me. "Interesting smell coming from below."

"That has nothing to do with…"

"It has everything to do with whether I sign anything tomorrow morning." He stops a few feet from us. Colt's hand has fallen from my hair. "How long has she been living down there?"

"She lives where I put her." Luca's voice is starting to lose its control.

"And what were you about to do to her just now?"

"That's pack business. You're a guest here."

"Which means if I sign this contract, your pack becomes my business." Drayden looks at me properly now. Not around me or past me, but *at* me, the same way he did in the office. "When's the last time you ate a real meal?"

The question shocks me so much I almost answer it honestly.

"She eats fine," Colt says.

"I wasn't asking you."

The weight of three men's stares presses down on me. I know this game, answer wrong and face consequences from Luca. Answer right and face them later, in private, where there are no witnesses. I have learned to choose the punishment that comes later over the one that comes now, because later gives me time to prepare.

I say nothing.

Drayden looks at me for a long moment and then turns to my brother. "I have a condition I want added to our agreement."

Luca's jaw tightens. "We already negotiated terms."

"Then add one more. Or lose the alliance." He says it without heat, like he is reading something off a list. "I'm taking her with me."

The air in the hallway changes.

I am very sure I did not hear him correctly.

"She is not part of any deal." Luca's voice has dropped to something dangerous.

"She is now. I take her, you get your alliance, your territory protection, everything you asked for. You refuse, I walk, and I make sure every neighboring Alpha knows what I found in this compound." He lets that sit for a moment. "Your choice."

Luca looks at me. It is not the look of a brother who is weighing his sister's future. It is the look of a man doing math. And I know, from the way his face settles, which number wins.

"Take her," he says.

Just like that.

Sixteen years of my life dismissed in two words.

Drayden turns to me. He steps close enough that I have to tilt my chin up to see his face properly. His eyes are so dark they are almost frightening.

"Pack what you have," he says. "I'll be here at nine tomorrow morning."

"Why?" The word falls out before I can swallow it. "Why would you…"

"Because no one should be treated the way you've been treated." He says it simply. Not dramatically. Like it is just a fact. "That's enough reason."

He looks at Luca once more, a long, flat look that says everything he is choosing not to say out loud, and then he walks down the hallway and out the front door.

Luca grabs my arm. His fingers dig in hard. "If you say one word to him tomorrow that makes me look worse than you already have…"

"You told me to be quiet," I say. "I'll be quiet."

He releases me and I walk up the stairs to my room.

I sit on the edge of my mattress in the dark, staring at the wall.

It takes me less than four minutes to pack everything I own.