Chapter 5 ACCUSED
VELVELA POV
The air between us grew thick.
Heavy. Suffocating.
His face darkened and he chuckled .. low, dark, nothing close to safety. "Too bad. Death is your sick fate."
His eyes bled red.
The water around us spiked.. I felt it before I understood it, the sudden scalding heat crawling up my skin. Then it clicked. The rigid tension in his body. The way his breathing had shifted. The hunger bleeding through the red of his irises.
He was in his rut.
Shit.
Before I could move, his hand shot out and locked around my neck..not choking, worse than that, pulling me in, and my breath left me as my chest pressed flat against his. My boobs pressing on his exposed chest.
His lips gmash ony nipples before I could think, latching on with an aggression that was all heat and no mercy, and the worst part.. the shameful, traitorous part..was the wave that rolled between my legs in response.
"Stop!" I yelled, even as warmth pooled low in my belly, even as the water between my thighs was no longer just the spring.
"You signed your death the moment you stepped here," he growled against my skin.
"Get away from me." I shoved. I pushed with everything I had, and he didn't move. Not even a fraction. My strength, the same strength that had made grown wolves step back, that had held a pack together at sixteen, it meant absolutely nothing against him.
I felt the hard press of his dick nudging against my pussy and my panic surged sharp and cold through the heat.
Velvela. Think. Think.
My mind scrambled. My body was betraying me but my mind … my mind had kept me alive when nothing else would. I forced my voice steady, even as it trembled at the edges.
"Is this what you do?" I asked. "Do you make it a habit of forcing yourself on strangers who are powerless against you?"
Silence.
His body went rigid. Not the tension of rage, something colder. Something that cracked through him like a fault line. He pulled back just enough to look at me, and what I saw in his face wasn't fury.
It was something worse. Something fractured and dark, like I'd pressed on a wound he didn't know was open.
"Get out of here." His voice dropped to a rasp. "Run."
His hands released me.
I didn't wait.
I launched out of the water, feet hitting wet stone, my whole body shaking as I yanked my clothes over my soaked skin. Fabric clung everywhere. I didn't care. I ran.
I didn't get far before a wall of solid muscle blocked my path.
A guard. Tall, thick-armed, with the kind of sneer that men like him kept ready for women like me.
"Where are you coming from?" His eyes moved over me, dripping, dishevelled, breathing too hard.
"A walk," I said.
He stared. Then he laughed, short and ugly. "A walk." He let the word rot in the air between us. "Maids aren't permitted to roam. Not at this hour. Not even the able ones." His gaze dropped, slow and deliberate, dragging over my body. "Certainly not fat, weak ones."
My jaw tightened. Every instinct I had screamed to hold his gaze, to let him feel exactly who he was speaking to.
I dropped my eyes and walked past him.
Not yet, I told the Alpha still living somewhere inside me. Not yet.
I found Esme near the maid quarters, arms folded, expression caught between relief and irritation.
"Why would you leave?" she hissed, keeping her voice low. "Do you want*trouble?"
"I couldn't sleep."
"Sleep or not, you stay in your bed." She softened only slightly. "Rest. Tomorrow the work starts, and it won't be gentle."
It wasn't the work that woke me.
It was the bell.
One violent clang after another, tearing through sleep like a blade. I sat upright, disoriented, every muscle in my body registering the hard bed beneath me as punishment for existing.
A girl across the room was already on her feet. She looked at me with calm, dark eyes.
"I'm Bella. Your roommate." She pulled her uniform straight with practiced efficiency. "That's the emergency bell. Something's gone wrong. We can't be caught late."
I moved on instinct, Alpha reflex, even stripped of the title. We were out the door in under a minute and nearly walked into Esme, who took one look at us and whispered, “Oh no."
The Great Arena was filling fast. Every maid, every lower-rank worker, shuffling in with their heads down, fear shimmering off them like heat off stone. I followed, tucking myself into the crowd, keeping my face neutral.
I had never been good at bowing.
Four years of ruling had made it a foreign motion. But I bent my neck slightly when the others did, survival over pride, for now and from the corner of my eye I caught the moment the room shifted.
A girl entered.
Crimson uniform. Aura like a blade unsheathed. The high-rank officials nearest the door stiffened, their deference involuntary, visceral. Even hardened wolves looked smaller.
The Lycan's sister. Princess Danika.
I let out a quiet breath. No wonder.
She didn't speak immediately. She let the silence do its work, the way powerful people always did, and then her voice came, clear and unhurried.
"In the law of Bloodcity, discipline is the first motion."
Murmuring rippled through the crowd. Bodies pressed together. I felt the fear thickening the air like smoke.
"Someone has disobeyed it." Her eyes swept the assembled rows slowly. "My Emerald necklace has been stolen." She paused. Let it land. "If I do not find it, every guard on duty last night will be slaughtered."
The whispering erupted, then cut off.
Then… a voice. Small. Shaking.
"I saw a maid. Sneaking at night. She stole it."
My heart stopped. As if life hasn't mocked me enough.
The guard.The very one I had met after leaving the spring.His finger slowly lifted.
Pointing directly at me."Her."
The crowd parted.Every eye landed on me.Every head turned. The path between me and Princess Danika cleared like the earth itself was stepping aside. I lifted my chin before I could stop myself, four years of command, it lived in my bones.
"I didn't take it."
She didn't blink.
Two trainees came from nowhere, hands clamping down on my shoulders, forcing me to my knees. The stone was cold and unforgiving. I hit it hard.
Danika stepped closer. Her eyes moved over me the way the guard's had, but with less contempt and more something I couldn't name. She leaned in slightly.
"Fat ass. Weak thief."
My fists balled at my sides.
I knew what was coming. I could feel it the way I'd always felt impending attacks, the air changing shape around me. The only one who could put me in that pool at the hour the guard had seen me, the only one who could clear me entirely..Was the man from the river. And I had no way of reaching him, no name, no standing, nothing.
My eyes searched the arena desperately.
Please.
Her fingers pressed to my neck. My Breathing thinned.
Then the great hall doors pushed open.A sudden silence swept through the crowd.
A scent drifted in , faint, but I knew it. Something in my wolf, the wolf that had gone quiet since the sword, since the forest, since everything.. stirred.
My eyes lifted slowly.
He stood at the threshold, A terrifying aura filling the room before he fully entered it.
