Chapter 3

Vivienne had spoken. Cael made sure it happened.

He stepped past the apprentice and drove the witch's hands harder toward me himself.

"She deserves whatever happens to her."

The spell surged. My Wolf Soul screamed against it. My body stopped being mine — pain that absolute takes everything with it.

A new memory tore through.

The image showed me in a back room at Crescent Bay, a thin silver chain around my neck. Not decorative. The kind the resort used on She-wolves who hadn't cooperated — enough silver to keep the wolf suppressed at all times. I'd had it on for three weeks by then.

Two of the resort's men stood over me. They wanted me in the lounge. I refused. They knew how to hit in a way that didn't show.

Someone in the hall recognized it immediately.

"That chain is silver-threaded. It blocks shifting entirely. She couldn't have fought her way out."

The wolf next to them: "She was a prisoner. She had to be."

Immediately from the other side: "She was performing for us five minutes ago. This is the same thing."

Cael's hand closed around my throat.

"You think showing me this means anything? You think I feel sorry for you?"

"You're still protecting whoever did this. Everything you suffered, you chose."

The memory shifted.

Me in front of the resort mirror, in the uniform they gave us. The uniform left nothing to the imagination. I was putting on what they required.

The hall erupted.

"There it is. She got comfortable. She stopped being a victim the moment it suited her."

"A few bruises and she was back in front of the mirror. Didn't take long at all."

I shook my head. The vision lurched.

New image: Isolde held down, crying, bruised across her arms and ribs. The resort manager stood to the side, unhurried.

"She's sick. HIV, active stage — she's worthless to me like this."

He looked at me.

"Cover her share. Every client she can't take, you take. Do that, and I'll keep a medic on her."

"Otherwise she goes out the back tonight."

I threw myself between them and Isolde. My voice broke apart.

"Get her a doctor. I'll pay for all of it. Whatever she needs — I'll cover it."

The memory bled into a rapid sequence.

Room after room. Client after client. Whatever they wanted, however long it took.

Then dragging myself to the manager's office after — still in the uniform, still bleeding somewhere — asking for better medication for Isolde. Better care. Anything.

The hall went quiet.

"She was covering Isolde's medical bills herself. Out of what she earned in there."

"She didn't protect the trafficker. She was trying to keep Isolde alive."

"The Hargroves have been torturing an innocent She-wolf this whole time."

Vivienne grabbed me by the shoulders and shook.

"It's staged. Every frame of it."

"If she actually cared about Isolde, she would give us the name. This is a performance — she's calculating every second of this."

"Look at her. She's still upright. A She-wolf who genuinely suffered through all of that would have broken completely. She hasn't broken at all."

The crowd swung back. The brief doubt collapsed under a fresh wave of anger.

Cael's face had gone grey. He stared at the memory hanging in the air above us like he could force it to change.

Then something broke open in his expression and he turned on me.

"Who are you protecting that's worth all of this?"

"I married you. I gave you everything I had."

"Why isn't it you lying in that room instead of her?"

He wiped his face once, fast. Then he looked at the witch.

"Keep going. Don't stop until we have a name."

The apprentice moved in front of him.

"She's at her limit. Her Wolf Soul is starting to fragment — if the extraction continues at this level, it won't be reversible—"

Cael looked straight past her.

"She helped the wolves who trafficked Isolde into that place."

He pressed the witch's hands back toward me.

"If she dies, she dies."

The spell drove deeper. My body convulsed against the chair.

Above the hall, the memory fractured — and then kept going.