The bedchamber was a gilded cage, and I refused to be its songbird. Thick velvet drapes the color of spilled wine swallowed the last traces of daylight, leaving only flickering candlelight to carve shadows across the walls. The air smelled of beeswax and something darker, sweat, leather, the metallic tang of tension that made my wolf stir restlessly beneath my skin.
I stood at the center of it all, naked, my skin pale as marble against the decadence around me. I didn't tremble. Didn't cover myself. My arms hung loose at my sides, my spine straight as a blade, my eyes fixed on the man who owned this room, and, by law, owned me.
But he'll never own my wolf, I thought, feeling her pulse just beneath the surface, a constant reminder of what I truly was. What he could never know.
Larry leane
