Stay here. Don't move, and don't make a sound.

Calla's POV

The knock at the door finally made the man on top of me stop.

He let go of my wrists, but he didn't move off me — as though he had no intention of acknowledging whoever was outside.

Only when the knocking came a second time, and that low voice with it, did he react at all.

Damien looked at the door in irritation, then down at me, and in those grey eyes something still lingered that I did not dare look at directly.

A moment later he seemed to arrive at a decision. His arm hooked around my waist and he lifted me bodily up.

"Alpha—"

The cry escaped before I could stop it, and my hands flew to his shoulders.

The room swung, my feet left the floor, and his palm clamped flat over my mouth and pushed the sound back down my throat.

He offered no explanation. He carried me straight through the sitting room into the bedroom and set me down on the bed against the far wall.

The dark grey silk sheets gave way beneath me in a deep hollow and the thick smell of cedar closed over me at once.

My eyes went wide.

Every servant in the estate knew that Alpha Damien's bed was absolutely off limits. He was fastidious to a degree — the sheets were changed daily and had to be fumigated first, and even the attendant who made the bed wore white linen gloves and was not permitted to leave a single hair behind.

And now I, a human housemaid soaked to the skin and swallowed up in an oversized man's shirt, was sunk into the mattress he slept on.

The next second a heavy velvet quilt came down over me and blotted out the top of my head.

"Stay here. Don't move, and don't make a sound."

Damien's voice was low and flat with warning. Then he straightened, crossed to the wardrobe, and I heard cloth slide over cloth as he pulled on a dark coat and walked to the door.

The outer door opened. A clear, cold woody scent threaded in.

The estate's fourth master. Alpha Julien.

The butler had warned me once, privately, that of the four of them the one I must never cross was him.

My heart climbed into my throat. I clutched the edge of the quilt and pared my breathing down to almost nothing.

"Why are you wearing a coat that heavy this early?" There was puzzlement in Julien's voice.

My ears caught fire before I could help it.

Only minutes ago, with him on top of me, I had felt it plainly — that hard thing already prodding into my body. A thing like that, his thin sleepwear could not possibly have hidden.

Damien didn't take the question. "Is something wrong?"

"Of course." Julien paused. "I thought I heard something in your room just now."

After a short beat he added, "And I caught a very particular smell. Like the smell from that day."

My fingertips curled in.

The smell again.

Since last night every one of them had been saying the same thing. But what was the smell on me?

My mother's warnings back then had not been groundless, and every wolf in this estate carried something close to fanatical obsession and alarm toward that scent.

"I was drugged yesterday." Damien's voice cut across my thoughts. "The residue of the compound hasn't cleared. Don't worry, I'm fine now."

"Keep it quiet for the time being. Something in this estate feels wrong to me."

Outside, a beat of silence.

Julien seemed to let it go. He only told Damien to see the physician for a check later, then turned and left.

The heavy oak door finally shut. Footsteps came across the room and stopped at the edge of the bed.

A large hand with prominent knuckles caught the edge of the velvet quilt and drew it back, and the hard morning light fell across my face.

"Come here."

Damien walked to the oak cabinet with the brass lock and took out a glass syringe filled with a pale, translucent blue compound.

At the cold shine of the needle I shrank back without meaning to.

He seemed to read the tension in me. "Don't be afraid. As long as you've no other ideas in your head, I won't do anything to you again."

"But the temporary mark from last night will keep leaking my scent. This suppressant will hold it down for now, so the others don't find you out."

His tone was so level it was nearly cold, as though everything that had happened last night were merely an accident in need of correcting in good time.

I stared at the syringe, and something I could not put a name to rose in my chest.

He was the pack's Alpha. I was a human bought into the estate as payment for a debt. Between us lay a gulf that could not be crossed, and nothing that fell outside an employer and his hired help had any business growing there.

The only reason he had come near me last night was that strange scent. I should never have allowed myself to feel anything for him that I ought not to feel.

That was how it should be.

I lowered my eyes and held out my arm.

The needle went into the skin, and a faint numbness spread at once along the vein.

"Bear with it. It'll be quick." His voice came down from above me.

"There. You can go and change. And don't forget what I told you yesterday."

The numbness crept out through my limbs. I pushed the mess of my thoughts down and went back to the servants' quarters.

I changed out of a shirt that was not mine and washed my face in cold water, and even then the confusion in me only barely settled.

I was on my way to the storeroom for the day's cleaning supplies when the head housekeeper's voice came from behind me.

"Calla. Wait."

"One of the maids has come down ill and the dining room is short-handed. Go and help."

I looked down at my clothes. The ranking among the estate's maids was strict. A pure-blood human on a debt bond like me was generally kept to sweeping and tidying.

Work that meant being close to the Alphas did not usually come my way.

I had assumed that if I did those jobs quietly and well, I could keep out of their path as much as possible.

Today that plainly was not going to hold.

The head housekeeper pushed a napkin into my hands.

"Fold the spare napkins. If anything runs out, see that it's replaced in good time. Otherwise just watch what the older maids do. Go on, now."

When I walked into the dining room, the four Alphas were already at the long table.

Morning light came through the tall windows and lay across the silver and the crystal. They were talking among themselves in low voices. The atmosphere looked easy, and not one servant dared make another sound.

I kept my steps light and swept the table with a glance. Only Julien had no servant behind him.

I hesitated, then carried the napkins over and took my place quietly behind his chair.

I had barely settled when Damien's gaze came to rest on me, faintly displeased.