Sold to the Alpha King

Chapter 7 — The Blood Moon

The first howl rips through the walls like a living thing. I flinch, dropping the book I was holding—some leather-bound history of the Volkov bloodline I found on his shelf, desperate for anything that might tell me who he is. The spine cracks against the hardwood floor. I don't pick it up.

Outside, the compound has gone silent. Not the silence of peace—the silence before a slaughter. I've been in the bedroom for three hours, since Gareth locked the door from the outside, since he pressed his palm flat against the wood and said, *"Don't open this. No matter what you hear. No matter what I say."*

I didn't answer. I wanted him to hear how little I cared about his suffering.

But that was before the howling started. Before the screaming.

Another howl—closer now, rattling the window panes. The glass vibrates in its frame. I move to the window, press my face against the cold pane, and see nothing but darkness and the silver edge of the moon, fat and swollen, spilling pale light across the frozen courtyard below.

The compound is empty. No guards. No servants. No movement.

Just the sound of wolves, and somewhere in this building, my husband screaming like he's being torn apart from the inside.

I leave the window and cross to the door. The lock is old brass—a deadbolt, nothing electronic. I could probably pick it if I had a paperclip and twenty minutes. But Gareth didn't just lock me in. He chained himself in the adjoining sitting room. I heard the iron grate against the floorboards before he closed the connecting door.

*Don't open this. No matter what you hear.*

The screaming stops.

Silence replaces it, heavy and wrong. I hold my breath, counting seconds. One. Two. Three. Ten. Twenty.

Then a crash—furniture splintering. Something heavy hitting the wall. A sound that could be a man or could be an animal, low and guttural, torn from a throat that's forgotten how to form words.

I walk to the connecting door and press my palm flat against the wood.

The surface is warm. Fever-warm. I imagine him on the other side, bleeding, broken, something monstrous wearing his skin and howling at the furniture. I imagine him naked and feral, claws gouging the floorboards, teeth bared at shadows only he can see.

I saw the chains when I passed through earlier. Thick iron. Bolted into the wall. They looked old—not because they were rusty, but because they were worn smooth from use. How many Blood Moons has he spent chained to that sitting room? How many nights has he locked himself away from the one creature he's supposed to trust?

*You're not a wife,* I remind myself. *You're a knife waiting for the right rib.*

I should feel satisfied. The Alpha King, the Butcher of Blackmoor, reduced to an animal chained in his own home. The man who killed Sera, who signed her death warrant, who has her blood on his hands—he's suffering. I should be drinking it in.

But my palm stays pressed to the wood. And my eyes sting.

I hear him before I understand what I'm hearing. A whisper. Broken and wet, like he's crying through a throat full of glass.

*"Elara."*

Not Lyra.

*Elara.*

My real name. The name I haven't heard since Sera's funeral. The name I buried with her. He doesn't know that name. I never told him. No one in this compound knows that name.

He's mumbling now, words I can't make out, but the name keeps surfacing—*Elara, Elara, Elara*—like a prayer, like a confession, like he's begging someone who isn't there to forgive him.

Another crash. I step back from the door.

Then I hear the chains rattle. The scrape of iron against floorboards. A wet, ragged breath that sounds like it's being dragged across broken teeth.

I should stay here. I should let him suffer. I should plan my vengeance and sharpen my knife and dream about the day I drive it through his heart.

But his voice breaks on my sister's name—*Sera, I'm sorry, Sera, I tried*—and the sound goes through me like a blade I didn't see coming.

I sink to my knees on the floor, back against the door, and sit there while the full moon climbs higher and the compound drowns in wolf-song.

On the other side of the wood, the Alpha King screams himself hoarse.

I don't open the door.

But I don't leave, either.

When the sun finally breaks over the mountains and the howling fades to silence, I'm still there—knees curled to my chest, hands folded in my lap, wedding ring cold against my finger.

I don't know what I feel.

But I know it isn't hate anymore.

And that terrifies me more than he ever has.