Silver Oath

Chapter 3

LYRA

Silence after the hall felt cruel, like a held breath that never got released.

My hand throbbed, the faint silver thread under my skin was twitching like a thing half awake. I kept it hidden inside my sleeve because whatever it was, it was not meant for eyes.

Mark-less wolves don't have marks like this, this is strange and I'm sure it'll put me in trouble if I ever reveal this.

What's this?

Aunt Maren hovered nearby, her hands were folded like she was in a prayer. I could feel like her pity stuck to me like a damp cloth and I badly wanted to rip it off.

Bonding myself to a man who hated me. Becoming the wife of the Alpha who had just offered me my own death like it was a glass of water and it feels like a torture.

“Rest,” she said in a soft and small voice. “Lay down, your father will come in the morning.”

“Your father.” stuck my heart like a bullet yet I nodded even though I didn't believe the word “rest”. Rest was for people who had the luxury of time. I have a wedding to run from and a life to lose or sell depending on who you asked.

She closed the door gently and left me with the shadows. The room smelled like cedar and old laundry.

A single candle guttered on the dresser and painted my walls with moving black. The light made the silver thread under my skin look louder, as if even the flame could see it

I tried to breathe though that panic but the panic dug its nails in and would let go.

I pressed my thumb gently against the place where it pulsed.

Then I heard someone knocked, it was a slow knock unlike my father's.

I wondered who it was because Aunt Maren wasn't going to come back anytime soon.

“Who is it?” I called, trying to keep my voice level.

A silence, thicker than the night answered me before a flat oily voice slid under the door.

“Open, Lyra. We have business.”

My heart dropped instantly. I recognize that voice.

I had been warned about councilwoman Hesa before, her face always stuck in my memory like a bruise. She was the one who measured people for guilt before a word could leave her lips.

Hesa liked thin knives and thinner smiles, if she was outside my door at this hour, it was not a visit.

I wrapped my cloak tighter, hiding my hand against my chest. The silver thread burned faintly through the fabric.

“Don't-” I started, but the knock came again, this time harder than the first knock.

A voice I knew and fear cracked the night “Lyra, open. The council demands it.” I could detect that my father's patience was gone.

There is a corner in a girl's chest where hope hides and it's always tiny and stupid but mine shrank until it was nothing when I realized how easy it would be for them to year me open in front of people and inspect what I had been given without permission.

I crossed the room in three steps and opened the door.

Councilwoman Hesa stood in the corridor like she had been carved out of Shadow, her robes were perfect, her hair was pulled tight then her eyes scanned me like a blade's edge and behind her, there were two of my father's men, they looked stiff with a face that screams loyalty to the Voss pack. Their hands were hovering near their belts.

“Councilwoman.” I said with a dry mouth.

She didn't even spare me a courtesy nod. “Lyra Voss,” she said instead, like someone stating an accusation. “You will come with us to the council chamber.”

“I…” I glanced past her, toward my father's room. He stood in the doorway, his face was unreadable and he gave me only a single nod, a cold one.

Hesa’s lips curled, and she took one step forward. “We witnessed an anomaly tonight,” she said. “The Alpha's mark reacted, this was an unusual reaction.The whole pack saw it, and you are Voss, so it is your body they suspect.”

What?

My heart tripped. What an easy target I am.

“Suspected what?” My voice came out weak.

“A stain.” she replied “A foreign thing we can't identify and it's something that shouldn't be on a mark-less bloodline.” her gaze was sharpened, and the corridor seemed to hold its breath. “The council will inspect you, we'll determine if you are a danger or not.”

I scoffed. A danger? I'm suddenly a danger now?

Not just a mark-less wolf but a dangerous mark-less wolf that needs to be eliminated.

I felt my throat swell. “You can't-”

Hesa cut me off with a hand raised, “We can do whatever keeps the pack safe.”

I saw my father shifted his weight, he has always been a man who paid cost in silence but now?

His silence felt like a blade, betrayal.

“Please.” I said to him, but it was useless against men who had already made decisions.

Hesa gaze went to my hand and then she saw it.

The strange faint glow that refused to leave me after I touched Kael. I saw her face changed into something cruel the moment she caught the glow leaking through the sleeve.

She smiled thinly making my legs tremble “We’re not barbarians, Lyra but the council has precedence. Which means we must me certain.” Her smiled vanished like a candle snuffed. “Stand aside.”

One of the men stepped forward and lowered the blade in a causal motion and my father did not stop him.

I felt all the air leave my lungs.

“Strip.” Hesa said plainly in a cold voice.

“Excuse me?” My voice felt my throat.

“We must see what the Alpha touched.”

My breathing became rigid and for a second, I felt the corridor spin in circular motion. The merciless word replayed in my head.

Strip. Strip. Strip.

I felt everything single thing in me grew cold.

I clutched at the cloak, at the thread itself, at the pulse under my skin. “You can't-”

Hesa's eyes bored into mine. “Step forward.” She ordered “ Now.”

The men behind her shifted like dogs that were about to feed on their prey.

I thought of Kael's dagger, the way he offered me death earlier maybe I should have choosed to die then.

Looking at now, it's better to die in his hand than in the hands of my pack member would had been looking for a way to get rid of me completely. Not through a marriage but through death.

How do I escape this?