In love with my StepSon

Chapter seven

Melissa

Draven's phone rang before I even set my fork down, and he had it pressed to his ear before the second buzz.

"Hold them off till I arrive," he ordered into the receiver, already pushing back from the table.

He stood and straightened his jacket with the calm efficiency of a man who had spent decades making violence look like administration, and then he turned to me with eyes that left absolutely no room for interpretation.

"You will stay put till I return," he told me.

I said nothing.

He turned to Briston next, pointing at the chair his son had already begun to rise from. "Sit back down."

Briston's jaw tightened but he lowered himself back into the seat without a word, and Draven walked out of the dining hall with his entourage trailing behind him like obedient shadows.

The silence he left behind was thick enough to suffocate in.

I looked across the table at Briston and decided that sitting across from another person in complete silence was more unbearable than the risk of being ignored.

"So," I started carefully. "How long have you lived here."

Briston did not look up from his plate.

"I am talking to you," I pressed, keeping my voice even.

He finally lifted his eyes to mine and what was in them was not anger exactly, it was something colder and more deliberate than anger.

"I have no business discussing anything with whores," he said flatly, and then he stood, pushed his chair in with measured control and walked out of the dining hall without looking back.

I sat there for a moment with his words sitting on my skin like something corrosive, and then I stood and walked back to my chambers before the burning behind my eyes could turn into something I refused to give this house the satisfaction of witnessing.

I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall.

I needed to do something, needed to think, needed to move, because sitting still in this room meant sitting alone with every thought I was not ready to face yet, I was not doing that, I refused to do that.

I got up and walked out.

The castle was enormous in a way that stopped feeling impressive very quickly and started feeling like a trap, corridor after corridor lined with closed doors and high ceilings and the kind of silence that only existed in places where people had learned not to make noise.

I walked without any particular direction, letting my feet carry me, and then I turned a corner into a long gallery and forgot entirely what I had been thinking about.

The paintings covered every inch of wall from floor to ceiling, portraits and landscapes and abstract pieces that had no business being this arresting. I moved from one to the next without meaning to, leaning close to read the signatures at the corners, tilting my head at the ones that seemed to shift when I changed my angle, completely and entirely somewhere else in my own head.

I did not see her until I walked directly into her.

The collision happened fast, my shoulder caught the maid mid-turn, her bucket swung wide on the impact, and I watched her feet go out from under her on the wet marble at the top of the staircase and grabbed her arm on pure instinct before she went over the edge.

I yanked her back hard and we both stumbled sideways into the wall, the bucket left her hand entirely, spinning down the full length of the staircase and shattering at the bottom in an explosion of dirty water and broken plastic that spread across the entire lower landing.

We stood there pressed against the wall breathing hard.

"I am so sorry," I told her immediately. "I was not watching where I was going, are you hurt?"

The girl looked at me with enormous eyes and shook her head quickly. "Luna, please, I am fine, please do not report me, please."

"Sasha," I read from the small name tag on her uniform. "I am not going to report you, I am the one who nearly knocked you down a staircase, come on, where is the cleaning supply room."

She stared at me like I had said something in a foreign language.

"The mop," I told her. "Where do you keep the mop, we need to clean this before the Alpha gets back."

We worked fast, Sasha and I, moving from the bottom landing upward, and she kept glancing at me sideways the entire time like she was waiting for me to change my mind and become someone else.

We were halfway through when I heard the cars.

The front doors opened before we reached the top landing and Draven walked in with four men in suits behind him. He stopped dead when he saw the water still streaking the lower marble and the broken pieces of the bucket pushed to the side wall.

The temperature in the room dropped immediately.

"Who did this," he demanded.

Sasha stepped forward before I could open my mouth, and I moved in front of her.

"It was my fault," I said clearly. "I walked into her and knocked the bucket down the stairs, she was cleaning up my mess."

Draven looked at me with an expression I had not seen on him before, something past anger, something that made the air in my lungs feel suddenly very scarce. Then his hand connected with my face so hard that I tasted blood before I even registered the pain, my head snapped sideways from the force of it.

"You are my property, that's what I brought you here for." he hissed, his voice dropped to something that was somehow worse than a shout. "Not a servant."

He turned past me. "Whip her," he ordered, pointing at Sasha. "Twenty lashes."

"Please," I begged, I did not care how it sounded, as blood kept running from my nose onto the marble floor. "Please, she did nothing, it was me, punish me if you have to but please leave her alone."

Draven did not even look at me.

The guard moved toward Sasha and she made a sound that I felt in my back teeth, small and terrified, and then someone’s voice came from the upper landing.

"Enough."

Everyone looked up.

Briston descended the stairs with his eyes fixed on his father and his jaw set in the particular way that told me he had made a decision he was not walking back from.

"She is a servant doing her job," Briston stated, reaching the bottom landing and positioning himself between the guard and Sasha. "The Luna explained what happened."

"Move," Draven told him quietly.

"No," Briston replied.

What happened next did not happen like anything I had ever seen in my life.

Draven's hands changed first, the fingers elongated and darkened as claws tore through his skin in a way that was nothing like a clean shift, nothing like the wolf changes I had grown up watching.

It was something fractured, wrong and terrifying. His face contorted as the partial change tore through him without completing, and before I could process what I was seeing he crossed the distance to his son in two steps and drove him into the wall.

Briston hit the floor hard and Draven was on him, his claws opened a gash across his shoulder, his teeth closed on his arm as the young man groaned and fought to stay upright.

I screamed before I knew I had opened my mouth.

"Stop, please stop, stop it!"

Draven pulled back, panting. The claws retracted slowly as whatever had taken hold of him receded by degrees. He stood over his son breathing like he had run ten miles, staring down at Briston who was sliding down the wall leaving a red streak behind him.

Was that the curse?

He straightened, adjusting his jacket.

"Next time," Draven said, his voice was completely level, "you will mind your damn business."

Briston's eyes closed and he hit the floor.