Sold to the Alpha King

Chapter 14 — The Digging

The corridor outside Gareth's study is silent in that way old houses get — not quiet, but *listening*. The kind of silence that holds its breath. I press my palm flat against the oak door and it swings open without resistance. He doesn't lock his study. Of course he doesn't. Who would be stupid enough to steal from the Alpha King?

Me, apparently.

The room smells like cedar and old paper and something metallic I can't place. A fire smolders in the hearth, casting long shadows that stretch and curl like living things. His desk is massive — dark wood, scarred at the edges from what might be claws or knives. I don't let myself wonder which.

The key ring is in the top drawer. I know because I watched him put it there three nights ago, watching me from the corner of his eye like he was showing me on purpose. Testing me.

I take them anyway.

---

The staircase to the catacombs spirals down through the foundation of the estate, stone steps worn smooth by centuries of feet. My torch catches glints in the walls — mica, maybe, or salt. The air gets colder with every step, wetter, carrying a smell like copper and wet fur and something underneath that makes my stomach turn.

*Sera came down here. She wrote about it. She died for it.*

I count fifty-three steps before the tunnel levels out. The ceiling is low enough that I have to hunch, the walls close enough to brush my shoulders. Water drips somewhere ahead, the sound echoing in a way that tells me there's a larger chamber beyond.

The cell is at the end.

I smell her before I see her — sweat and sickness and the sharp chemical tang of unwashed skin. The torchlight reaches through the bars and finds a figure huddled against the far wall, chains hanging from her wrists to iron rings set deep into the stone.

She's thin. Too thin. Her hair is matted, dark, falling past her shoulders in tangled ropes. Her clothes are rags that might have been grey once or might have been white. When she lifts her head, her eyes catch the light and I feel my breath leave my body.

Silver. Pure silver, like mercury poured into human irises.

"Another one," she says. Her voice is cracked from disuse, rough as gravel. "Sera's blood. I can smell it on you. You're her sister."

I grip the bars. "Who are you?"

She laughs — a broken, hollow sound. "I was the Alpha's wife. Before Gareth. Before the current line. I've been down here so long I don't remember what moonlight looks like." She tilts her head, studying me with those silver eyes. "Sera found me. Tried to free me. That's why they killed her."

The words hit me like a physical blow. I feel them settle into my chest, heavy and cold. "Who killed her?"

The woman opens her mouth to answer—

The lights go out.

Every torch along the corridor extinguishes at once, plunging us into absolute black. I hear the woman gasp, hear chains rattle. Behind me, footsteps. Deliberate. Slow. The sound of boots on stone, echoing through the darkness.

I spin around, adrenaline flooding my veins, hands raised in a useless defensive posture. My back hits the cell bars. I can't see anything. Can't run. Can't hide.

The footsteps stop.

A hand closes around my wrist.

---

Gareth's grip is iron. He drags me up the stairwell without a word, his boots echoing against the stone with a rhythm that sounds like counting — judgment, maybe, or the seconds before he decides what to do with me. I stumble trying to keep up, my shoulder screaming where he holds me, but he doesn't slow down.

He smells like pine and smoke and fury. The air around him is cold enough to raise goosebumps on my arms.

We emerge into the ground floor corridor and he doesn't stop. Through the great hall, past the vacant stares of the night guards, up the main staircase. He throws open the door to his chambers — *his*, not mine, I realize with a lurch — and shoves me inside hard enough that I catch myself on the footboard of his bed.

"Stay." His voice is low, controlled, more terrifying for how contained it is. "*Here*. And pray I don't find out what you're really doing in my territory."

He pulls the door closed. The lock clicks.

I stand there, breathing hard, trembling from head to foot. My fingers are still wrapped around the key ring I stole from his desk — I never let go. I press them to my chest, the metal biting into my palm through the fabric of my shirt, and let myself process what just happened.

He locked me *in*.

Not the dungeons. Not a holding cell. His bedroom. His personal quarters.

He locked me in the safest room in the entire estate.

*He didn't hurt me.*

I sink onto the edge of his bed, the sheets smelling like him — sandalwood and something wild, like a forest after rain. My hands are shaking. My heart is pounding so hard I can hear it in my own ears.

But underneath the fear, something else is taking root. Small. Sharp. A seed of understanding that I don't want to plant but can't stop from growing.

Gareth Volkov is afraid.

Not of me. *For* me.

And I have no idea what to do with that.