MARKED BY THE ALPHA I WAS TOLD TO FEAR

Chapter 2

Wren's POV

Nobody moves for a second that stretches out too long.

My wrist is throbbing where Garrick grabbed it, a fresh ache laid over the old one, and I keep my arm pinned to my side like if I don't look at it, nobody else will either. It doesn't work. Alpha Blackwood's eyes are still on it.

Garrick recovers faster than I expect, because Garrick always recovers fast. It's the one skill servitude never managed to take from him. "Forgive me, Alpha. I forget myself sometimes with the staff. It's difficult, keeping order in a house like this." He laughs, thin and brittle. "Wren, apologize to the Alpha for the disruption."

"I'm not the one who needs to apologize," Alpha Blackwood says, and something in his voice makes the whole hallway go quiet again.

I should go. Every instinct I've built over six years says go, now, before he decides you're worth his attention for one more second. But Alpha Blackwood hasn't looked away from me, and I can't make my feet cooperate with the going part.

"Kitchen staff," he repeats, like he's testing the words for a lie and finding one.

"Yes," Garrick says.

"With that bruise."

It isn't a question either. My hand moves on its own, tugging my sleeve down over my wrist, and I hate how fast the motion is, how practiced, like my body has been rehearsing this exact cover-up for years, which, fine. It has.

"She's clumsy," Garrick says. "Drops things. Bruises easy."

That's such a specific, well-worn lie that it comes out smooth as anything, and I realize with a small, sick feeling that he's used it before. On other people. About other bruises.

Alpha Blackwood's eyes cut to Garrick for the first time since I stepped out of the shadow, and whatever he sees there doesn't seem to impress him. "Is that right?" he says, and there's something dangerous folded into how quiet it is.

"Alpha, truly, I don't think a servant's clumsiness is worth..."

"I didn't ask you," He says it without heat, which somehow makes it worse. Then his attention comes back to me, and it's like standing too close to a fire. You feel it before it touches you. "What's your name?"

I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. I haven't been asked my own name by someone with actual power in longer than I can remember. People with power don't ask. They already know, or they don't care enough to.

"Wren," Garrick answers for me, impatient. "As I said. Kitchen staff. She has nothing to do with our business today, Alpha, I really must insist we..."

"I wasn't talking to you." He hasn't raised his voice once this entire conversation, and somehow that's scarier than if he had. "Wren."

My name, in his mouth, sounds like it belongs to someone else. Someone whose name is worth saying carefully.

"That's me," I manage. My voice comes out smaller than I want it to.

Something crosses his face, not quite a frown, not quite anything I have a name for. He takes a step closer, and I feel Talia tense somewhere behind me, and I feel every single person in this hallway hold their breath at once.

He stops maybe six feet away. Close enough that I can feel the weight of him, the sheer physical fact of an Alpha in a room, pressing against the air like a held note.

"You're bleeding," he says.

I blink. "What?"

"Your knee. You hit it on the stairs." His eyes flick down, just briefly, then back up to my face, and there's something careful in the way he does it, like he's making a point of not looking anywhere he hasn't been permitted to look. Which is new. Nobody in this house has ever asked permission for anything.

"It's fine," I say automatically. It's the thing you say. It's fine, I'm fine, everything's fine, the reflex is so deep it doesn't even require thought anymore.

"It's not fine. It's bleeding on your brother's floor." A pause. "The floor you were cleaning, I assume, given the rag in your friend's hand."

Garrick's jaw tightens. I watch him do the math. How much this is costing him, how much worse it could get if he pushes back on an Alpha in his own foyer. "Wren, go clean yourself up now."

I don't need to be told twice. I turn to go, grateful for any excuse to get out of that gaze, and I make it two steps before his voice stops me cold, low and even and certain.

"Wait."

I stop. Of course I stop. What else do you do?

I hear him move closer, not fast, not threatening, just closer, close enough that the heat coming off him reaches me before he does, close enough that I have to tip my head back to keep looking at him and some traitorous part of me doesn't want to look away first. I feel the moment he's near enough that whatever he's been chasing since he walked into this house finally clicks into place, because his breath catches, actually catches, audibly, as something surprised him even though nothing about an Alpha his size should be capable of being surprised by a servant with a bloody knee.

"What," he says, very quietly, like he's talking to himself and not to me, "is that?"

"What's what?" Garrick says, too fast, too sharp, and there it is again, the fear under the charm, thicker this time.

Alpha Blackwood doesn't answer him. He's still looking at me, but not at my face anymore. Somewhere lower. Like he's trying to place a scent he's never smelled before and can't stop trying.

"Nothing," I say, panic climbing up my throat even though I don't fully understand what I'm panicking about yet. "It's nothing, I should get back to..."

"Thornhollow." His voice cuts through the hall like a blade, and for the first time he looks away from me entirely, straight at my brother, and whatever expression is on his face makes Garrick actually take a step back. "We need to talk. Now. Privately."

"Of course, Alpha, whatever you..."

"About her." He glances at me one last time before he turns for the study, and what he says next isn't for Garrick at all. "Said Wren. If he touches you again before I've had that conversation with him, you scream. Loud enough for me to hear it through a wall. Do you understand me?"

I don't answer. I can't. Because nobody has ever said something like that to me in this house, not once in six years, and I don't know what to do with the sudden, dangerous urge to believe him.

The words land in the hallway like a dropped glass, and I feel every single person in the room go still at once, and somewhere underneath my ribs my heart is beating so hard I'm sure he can hear it, and I don't know what he caught, what he smelled, what he saw, but I know, with the specific dread of someone who has spent six years being invisible on purpose, that whatever it is, my life just changed, and I wasn't given a vote.