Chapter 5
Viola
He turned to the desk by the window, pulled open a drawer, came back with a fistful of cash, and threw it down on the piano lid.
The bills spread out. A few slid off onto the carpet.
"Take it."
I looked down at the money.
One bill had landed by my shoe, its corner caught in the carpet.
I didn't bend down for it.
Something turned over hard in my chest, and it wasn't sadness, and it wasn't even humiliation — it was simpler than that. It was the understanding that he had already decided what I was worth, priced it, and put the number on the lid of a piano.
"I don't want it."
I pushed myself up off the bench.
My knees were weak enough that I had to hold on to the piano to stay upright.
He looked at me with no patience in his face at all.
"Take the money and get out."
I raised my head.
I wanted to throw the money in his face.
But I knew what position I was in. I had no wolf soul. Nothing that could hold him back. I couldn't even get to the door without holding myself together. I couldn't promise myself what would happen if I pushed him.
But at the very least, I didn't have to take his money.
"You think this closes it?"
My voice was shot. Every word scraped going out.
He didn't answer.
I stared at him, my fingers locked on the strap of my bag.
"You'd better hope," I said, "this money actually buys you some sleep."
His face didn't change. He just watched me, as if nothing I could say was worth moving an eyebrow for.
It came to me suddenly that the most ridiculous thing I could do was keep standing there.
So I stopped looking at him. I bent down and picked up the manuscript from the piano lid, checked the pages one by one, and when I was sure none were missing I put it in my bag.
The money was still spread across the lid.
I didn't touch a single bill.
I wasn't even sure I'd be able to walk into a classroom tomorrow as though nothing had happened.
But one thing I had already decided.
From now on, I was staying away from Professor Crawford.
As far as I could get.
Alistair
I didn't follow her. I stayed at the window and watched her cross the courtyard instead, where the rain had her soaked before she was halfway to the gate, and she didn't stop and she didn't look back. When her figure finally dissolved into the dark at the end of the drive, I took my eyes off the glass.
I should have been satisfied. She had turned down my money and she hadn't stayed to make trouble, and so long as she told no one what she had seen tonight, the accident would not touch my life. Yet the last notes played in the piano room seemed to still be hanging in the air behind me, and my wolf was quiet in a way that was not natural.
For seven years I had been used to fighting my own wolf. As each blood moon drew closer, the restlessness worsened — senses too sharp, an appetite for violence I couldn't clamp down on, instinct that could slip its leash at any moment — and all of it had to be kept behind a cold, composed exterior. Medication and discipline were barely holding the line. Even my private physician had no idea how far it had deteriorated.
And the family could not know. Inheritance in the Crawford family had never been a matter of blood alone; before a successor was confirmed, the Council of Elders assessed his wolf-soul, his capacity for combat, his control. An Alpha who could not govern his own wolf-soul had no business governing the pack. My final review was nearly upon me.
Once the Council found out the curse was getting worse, they had every right to freeze my claim and hand the Alpha seat to another qualified candidate. My rivals didn't need to know the truth about the curse. They only needed the Council to watch me lose control once, before the blood moon. That would be enough.
Which was why, all these years, I had never let anyone near the secret. The drugs, the training, the day after day of restraint — all of it existed to guarantee that nobody discovered I was losing my grip. I could not lose. I would not let an accident destroy a life I had already carried this far.
Viola's appearance was never supposed to be the exception. At the banquet, when she sat down at the piano and played, I noticed for the first time that my wolf had gone still. The change was brief enough to be a mistake of the senses; the moment the music stopped, the restlessness came back. I assumed it was chance, exhaustion, or the thin calm just before the medication failed.
Then she wandered into the piano room. By then I could no longer hold myself the way I usually did. Her arrival didn't restore my reason; it made a situation already close to the edge worse. Later, when she came back for her score, I still took her to the piano room myself. I told myself I wanted to verify what I'd found. Her playing did press the wolf down again. For a moment I felt something close to relief I hadn't had in years.
And that was the moment I understood the situation might be more dangerous than I had assumed. If her music could affect my wolf-soul, she had become an unpredictable variable. She might help me understand what was wrong with the curse, or she might draw exactly the kind of attention neither of us could afford. I should have sent her away at once. Instead my wolf wanted more.
Afterward, I used her unawakened wolf-soul to humiliate her. I threw money at her and tried to turn the whole thing into a transaction that could be closed out, to buy her silence, because there is no problem money cannot solve. Only she didn't take it. All her eyes held was fear and anger. She asked me for nothing except to leave, as fast as she could.
I should have been glad she went so cleanly. Instead my wolf was unnaturally quiet. I looked down at my hand: no tremor, none of the familiar restlessness that wanted to tear my reason in half. Some time had passed since she left and my wolf-soul still hadn't snarled with impatience. The music had stopped. She was gone. By seven years of experience, that quiet should not have lasted this long.
Unless the music hadn't been the only thing doing the work. The thought had barely formed before my wolf lifted its head somewhere deep in my awareness. Find her.
I frowned. "What?"
"Find her. She's ours."
Cold climbed my spine. "No."
My wolf didn't give ground. When it spoke again, the words arrived nothing like a suggestion.
"She is our fated mate."
The room seemed to go quiet all at once. Fated mate. I was silent for several seconds before I found my voice again. "You're out of your mind."
Viola? A student whose wolf-soul hadn't even awakened?
