The Alpha Who Let Me Go

Chapter Two

Rhea POV

I close my eyes and wait for the blow. My whole body has learned, over years of practice, to brace itself the instant Torin's voice hits that particular pitch. I don't even need to see his hand coming anymore. I just know it's on its way, the same way you know rain is coming from the smell in the air before the first drop ever falls.

But it never lands.

"I wouldn't do that," a deep voice says, calm as still water on a windless day.

I open my eyes just enough to see Alpha Silas standing now, tall and unhurried, his hand wrapped tight around my brother's wrist, holding it frozen in midair. He is taller than Torin by a full head. Broader through the shoulders too. Standing beside him, my brother a man who has controlled every corner of my life since I was six years old suddenly looks small, almost boyish, the way a bully looks once someone bigger finally steps between him and his target.

"Rhea," Silas says my name slowly, almost like he's testing the shape of it in his mouth, "was kind enough to show me to your office, since you weren't here yourself to greet me as we'd arranged."

My heart slams against my ribs. That isn't what happened at all. He is covering for me, lying smoothly to my own brother's face, and I cannot understand for the life of me why a stranger would ever bother doing that. No one lies for me. Not once, not ever, in sixteen years.

Torin yanks his wrist back the second Silas releases it, his jaw so tight I can see the muscle jump beneath his skin. "My apologies, Alpha Silas. My sister shouldn't have bothered you with her presence."

"She didn't bother me," Silas says simply, settling back into his chair like nothing at all just happened. His grey eyes flick to me one more time before sliding away, unreadable. "Shall we begin discussing the terms of our arrangement?"

Torin waves a hand at me without even looking in my direction, already composing himself, already smoothing his shirt like a man preparing to sell something valuable. "Get out. Bring refreshments for our guest."

I hurry from the room on legs that don't feel steady, my whole body trembling from adrenaline that has nowhere left to go. In the kitchen, I fumble two glasses onto a tray, my hands shaking so badly that I nearly drop one against the counter. I press my palm flat against the cold marble and force myself to breathe until the shaking slows enough to carry the tray without spilling everything across the floor. My reflection catches in the dark kitchen window pale, thin, eyes too big for my face. I look away from it quickly.

When I return to the office, Silas is speaking in a low voice about trade routes and border patrols, his tone businesslike now, nothing like the careful, curious way he'd spoken to me only minutes before. I set his glass down a fraction too hard, and a small amount sloshes over the rim and onto the tray. Torin's eyes cut toward me instantly, a warning as clear as a shout. I will pay for that later, once our guest has gone.

"Rhea," Silas says, and I nearly drop the entire tray at the sound of my name coming from him a second time. "Is Torin your only family?"

"He is my brother," Torin answers before I can open my mouth, his voice flat with something close to disgust, as though the word brother tastes bitter in his mouth when it's connected to me.

"I asked her," Silas says, and this time he doesn't even glance at my brother while he says it.

The room goes utterly silent. I have never, in all my years in this house, heard anyone speak to Torin like that inside his own walls. I keep my eyes fixed on the tray in my hands, terrified to look up and see what expression is on my brother's face right now.

"Why does she flinch every time you raise your voice?" Silas asks, and now his sharp grey eyes have shifted fully onto my brother, studying him the same careful way he studied me a moment ago, like he's cataloguing every small thing that doesn't add up.

Torin's mouth twists into something ugly. "She was responsible for our parents' deaths. She has been... corrected... ever since, as any responsible Alpha would see fit to do in my position."

My whole body goes cold, the way it always does when someone says those words out loud. I hate hearing it. I have hated it every single time for the last sixteen years, and I don't think that particular kind of hate ever really fades.

"Corrected how?" Silas's voice drops low, and there is something dangerous woven through it now, something that makes the small hairs along my arms rise without my permission.

"She served them Wolfsbane in their evening tea," Torin says, folding his arms across his chest like a man laying down a winning hand. "When she was six years old."

The room falls into a silence so complete that all I can hear is my own heartbeat pounding, loud and frantic, in my ears. I keep my gaze fixed on the floorboards, waiting for whatever comes next, because it always, always comes. Some new question, some new judgment, some new reason for someone in this room to look at me the way everyone always has since that terrible night.

I chance one small glance upward, just enough to see Silas's face. His jaw has tightened. His grey eyes have gone darker, sharper, and for one strange, unsteady moment, I cannot tell whether that anger is aimed at me, or at my brother, or at something else entirely that I haven't even considered yet.

Torin clears his throat, eager to move past the subject now that he's said his piece. "As you can see, the matter has long since been dealt with. There's no reason for it to affect our arrangement here today."

Silas doesn't answer right away. He simply studies me a moment longer, in a way that makes my skin prickle, before turning his attention back to my brother with a slow, deliberate calm that somehow frightens me more than shouting ever could.

"No," he says finally. "I don't imagine it will affect our arrangement at all."

Something about the way he says it makes my stomach twist. It doesn't sound like agreement. It sounds like a promise pointed somewhere I can't quite see yet.