Chapter 3

　　Avery's POV

　　My heart was so loud in my ears I could barely hear anything else. I pressed my back against the wall. My tied hands scraped against the floor. I had nowhere to go and I knew it but my body moved anyway, instinct overriding logic.

　　"Stay still," Father hissed. "Do not embarrass me."

　　The tapping stopped.

　　Right in front of me.

　　I could feel him there. The particular quality of attention from a person standing close in the dark. Then something touched my knee. The end of the stick, light as a question. Then his hand slowly, and deliberately reached toward my face.

　　His fingers found the edge of the blindfold.

　　And pulled it down.

　　The light hit me all at once and I blinked, eyes burning, vision swimming. And when it finally cleared, when the blur finally sharpened into something real, I saw him for the first time.

　　And whatever I had imagined Lucian Draveth to be, it was not this. I had built him wrong in every way that mattered.

　　The whispers had painted him old. Weathered. A war relic kept upright by power alone. But the man standing before me was none of that.

　　He was tall, broad through the shoulders, dressed in black so dark it seemed to absorb the torchlight rather than reflect it. Late twenties? Maybe early Thirties?

　　His eyes were open. Dark, deep-set, fixed at a point just past my shoulder. They did not move with the searching quality of someone trying to see.

　　His cane rested against his palm. He was not leaning on it.

　　He was reading the room with it. Reading me.

　　The silence stretched.

　　Every second I sat on this floor he was cataloguing my breathing pattern, the way my weight shifted on the tile, the sound my hands made when I pressed them flat to stop the trembling.

　　He was building a picture of me without a single glance.

　　I made myself breathe evenly. It cost me more than it should have.

　　His hand moved again. Hands calloused. His rough fingers brushed my cheekbone making a mark down my face.

　　I flinched, twisted my head and tried to shove him off with my shoulder.

　　His tightened without warning. Hard fingers clamped around my jaw, forcing my face up, keeping me still as if I were nothing more than a disobedient animal.

　　"Stubborn," he murmured, his voice low and rough like he admired the fight in me but fully intended to crush it.

　　Then he released me and stepped away. The steady tap of his cane echoed through the room as he moved. Slow, precise, controlled, toward the massive chair in the center. A throne.

　　He lowered himself into it smoothly, without pause. One hand rested along the armrest. The other held his cane loosely, the tip touching the floor.

　　The cane wasn't just something he leaned on; it was an extension of him, a symbol of command. Each tap felt deliberate, as though he could map the entire room by sound alone.

　　And when he spoke again, his voice sliced through the silence.

　　Cold.

　　"So…" he drawled, his voice slow and edged with boredom. "From her scent and what I felt she seems bruised. Pale… so underfed."

　　He tilted his head slightly. "I was under the impression your youngest daughter was healthy. A little more… well-fed."

　　The last words dripped with sarcasm, a clear jab at my father's earlier attempt to sell a lie.

　　I swallowed hard, my throat tight.

　　I didn't lift my eyes, but I felt the shift in the air. My father had gone rigid.

　　He stammered, "Alpha Lucian, I–I promise you, she is my youngest. She just—"

　　Before he could finish, Lucian's Beta, Raith bent close and murmured something into his ear.

　　Lucian lifted one hand. A simple gesture.

　　My father snapped his mouth shut instantly.

　　His fingers twitched. Just once. That small, involuntary movement like his wolf had reached toward something and pulled back before it could finish the thought.

　　Then he turned his head at a precise angle toward my father. The movement of a man who had already arrived at a conclusion and was now simply deciding how to present it.

　　"Dorian."

　　My father straightened. "Alpha Lucian, I—"

　　"This one," he said coolly, "does not smell like the daughter you described."

　　The room went deadly quiet.

　　My heart slammed against my rib so hard.

　　Father laughed. Thin, fractured, the laugh of a man watching the bridge collapse under his feet. "Alpha, she has been travelling. The rain, the cold, her scent is disrupted, she was kept near silver bolts for months, that alone would—"

　　"I am aware of what silver does to a wolf's scent," Lucian said. Flat. Final. "I am also aware of what it does not do."

　　He stood slowly and unhurried.

　　The cane found the floor and he rose to his full height and the temperature of the room seemed to drop several degrees without anything physically changing.

　　He turned his face toward my father fully now and his voice came out quiet in the way that meant it would not be quiet for much longer.

　　"So I will ask you once, Dorian. Just once."

　　A beat.

　　"Is this your youngest daughter?"