MARKED BY THE ALPHA I WAS TOLD TO FEAR

Chapter 4

Wren's POV

I don't work that night.

Talia tells me first, breathless, catching me by the elbow outside the kitchen before I can pick up the tray I've carried every evening for six years. "Garrick says you're off. Says it came from Alpha himself."

"Off," I repeat, like the word might make more sense the second time. It doesn't.

"Off. As in not working. As in, you can sit down somewhere that isn't a floor." She's grinning, but there's worry underneath it, the same worry she gets whenever something breaks the pattern, because in this house, broken patterns have a way of turning into new kinds of punishment later. "What did you do to him?"

"Nothing. I didn't even say ten words to him."

"Well, he said something to you. I heard it through the study door before Garrick's guard shooed me off. He told Garrick you don't work tonight, like it was the term of the contract." She shakes her head, still grinning, still worried. "Wren, an Alpha, does not care whether the help gets a night off. Not unless the help isn't just help."

I don't have an answer for that, because I don't have an answer for any of it, not the way he looked at me in that hallway, not the way his voice went low and strange when he said what that is, not the fact that I am currently standing in a hallway with nothing to do for the first time in longer than I can remember, feeling like the ground under my feet has shifted half an inch to the left and I can't quite find my balance again.

"Maybe he felt sorry for me," I say, because that's easier than the alternative, whatever the alternative is.

Talia gives me a look. "Alphas like that don't feel sorry. They notice things. That's different."

I don't want to think about what he noticed. I've spent six years making sure nobody notices anything about me at all, not my face, not my scent, not the thing under my skin that used to be a wolf before Garrick had it bound out of me the same month our parents were buried. Being noticed has never once gone well for me. Being noticed is how you end up owing someone something you can't afford to pay.

I go to my room instead of the kitchen. It's barely a room, a cot, a shelf, a window too small to be worth boarding but too small to climb through either, which I know because I checked, once, in the first year, before I understood how thoroughly this house had already become the only life I had left.

I sit on the edge of the cot, and I try not to think about the hallway. I fail almost immediately.

There's a knock at my door an hour later. Not Garrick's knock. His is always three sharp raps, impatient, a demand disguised as courtesy. This is different. Slower. Almost careful.

I open it to find Talia standing there, practically vibrating. "He's asking for you," she whispers. "The Alpha. He told Garrick he wanted to speak with him. Alone."

My stomach drops straight onto the floor. "Alone."

"That's what I heard."

"Talia, I can't..."

"You don't have a can't in this house, and you know it." She says it gently, but it's true, and we both know it's true, and there's no version of tonight where I get to say no to an Alpha's request and walk away from it clean. "Just, be careful. Whatever he wants. He doesn't feel like Garrick. But careful isn't the same as safe."

She's right, and it doesn't help at all.

Garrick is waiting in the hall outside my room, arms crossed, and the look on his face is the one I've learned to be afraid of more than any shouting, quiet, calculating, cold. He waits until Talia's gone before he steps into my path.

"Whatever he asks you," he says, low, "you know nothing. You remember nothing. You are exactly as unremarkable as I've spent six years making sure you look. Do you understand me?"

"Garrick..."

His hand comes up fast, not to strike me, just to grip my jaw hard enough that I feel it in my teeth, tilting my face up so I can't look anywhere but at him. "Alpha's curiosity doesn't last, Wren. Mine does. Remember which one of us you'll still be answering when he's gone home." He lets go, straightens his cuffs like nothing happened at all. "Go on. Don't keep him waiting."

My jaw aches the whole walk down the hall, a fresh reminder laid over an old lesson, and by the time I reach the sitting room door my hands are shaking so badly I have to press them flat against my skirt before I knock.

I followed the guard down the halls. I'd cleaned a thousand times and never once walked through anything other than staff, past the good parlor with the good furniture nobody in this house has sat on since our parents died, to the small sitting room at the end where I could already feel that pressure in the air before I'd even opened the door, that same weight I felt in the hallway, low and constant, like standing too close to something that could level a building if it wanted to.

He's standing by the window when I come in, and he turns before the door's even shut behind me, and for a second neither of us says anything at all. Then his eyes drop to my jaw, and whatever softness was in his face a moment ago disappears completely.

"Who did that?" he says. Not loud. Quieter than I expected, which somehow makes it worse.

"Nothing happened," I say, too fast, the lie already falling apart in my mouth.

"Wren." Just my name, and something underneath it that sounds dangerously close to a warning aimed at someone who isn't in the room. "I was gone four minutes."

"Sit," he says, but it doesn't come out as Garrick's orders do. It comes out almost like he's remembered halfway through that it's a request and softened it too late to take back the shape of a command. "Please."

I sit. Old instinct, obedience worn smooth as a river stone, but underneath it something else too, curiosity, sharp and unfamiliar, because nobody in six years has said please to me and meant it.

"You don't have to be afraid of me," he says.

"I'm not afraid of you," I say, before I can stop myself, and it's not even entirely a lie, which surprises me more than saying it out loud.

Something that's almost a smile crosses his face. "No. I don't think you are." He studies me for a long moment, and I make myself hold still under it, because looking away feels like handing him something. "What happened to your parents, Wren?"

The question lands like a slap. I feel my whole body go rigid, feel the old, careful walls slam up so fast they leave me breathless. "Why does that matter to you?"

"Because your brother won't tell me, and he's lying about something, and I think it's connected to whatever I caught in that hallway." His voice is steady, careful, none of the demands he had with Garrick. "I'm not trying to hurt you by asking. I need you to understand that."

"You're a stranger," I say. "An Alpha I've known for exactly one afternoon, standing in my brother's house asking me to talk about the worst night of my life. Forgive me if I don't rush to hand that over."

I expect anger. I've learned to expect anger whenever I push back on anything, however small. It's the one lesson this house has taught most consistently. Instead, he just nods, slowly, like I've made a fair point, and he's actually weighing it instead of brushing past it.

"Fair," he says. "Then let's start smaller. Your wrist."

I go still.

"The bruise, your brother says, came from clumsiness." His eyes hold mine, steady, unblinking. "I don't believe that. I don't think you believe it either. I'm not asking you to trust me with everything tonight, Wren. I'm asking you to stop lying to me about one small thing, so I know there's a version of this conversation where you eventually tell me the truth."

My throat goes tight. I look down at my wrist without meaning to, at the sleeve I've kept pulled low all day, and something in my chest, something old and tired and so, so hungry for someone to simply see the truth without making me say it out loud, cracks just slightly open.

"It's not clumsiness," I say, so quiet I barely hear myself say it.

"I know," he says, gently, certain, like he's been waiting all day for me to admit something he already understood the second he walked in the door. "That's why I'm here."