The heavy doors creaked open, spilling golden light into the night. I stepped inside, blinking against the brilliance.
The entrance hall stretched vast and endless, floors polished to a mirror-shine, chandeliers dripping crystals that scattered light like stars in the sky. The air carried a faint scent of cedar and something darker and spicier.
Servants moved with silent precision. A woman in a black dress dipped her head politely, her eyes skimming over me with curiosity before she whispered to another. Their voices vanished as quickly as they rose, but I caught one word: Luna.
Heat rushed to my face. My grip tightened on the strap of my bag as two attendants guided me deeper into the manor. Every hallway gleamed, every wall adorned with portraits of his family, men, women and some children.
"This way, miss," a servant girl said, leading me up a grand staircase.
At the end of the corridor, a door swung open to reveal a room larger than the entire floor of my old house. A canopy bed stood draped in silk, a fireplace already burning low. Purple velvet curtains framed tall windows, the moonlight spilling in silver beams across a rug soft enough to swallow footsteps.
"This is your chamber." The attendant placed my suitcase carefully near the wardrobe, as if it contained treasure. "The Alpha asked that you make yourself comfortable."
I nodded stiffly, throat too tight for words. When they left, silence fell heavy, broken only by the crackle of the fire.
I crossed the room slowly, fingertips grazing the velvet curtains, the carved posts of the bed. Everything was beautiful—too beautiful. It's a cage with silk bars, my mind whispered.
A soft sound behind me made me whirl.
He was there, leaning against the doorframe as if he had been part of the room all along. Shadows curved around him, but his eyes burned steady, catching the firelight.
"You're here," he said softly, almost like a promise. "Right where you belong."
He filled the doorway like a shadow that had learned to wear a shape. Up close, his voice lost its edge and became quiet, private—intent on only me.
He crossed the room with the easy confidence of someone who had walked these halls a hundred times and found everything in them to be his.
I kept my back to the fire and the bed. "I'm here because you told me to be," I said, because truth felt safer than fabrications now.
He smiled—gentle for a fraction—and stepped so the light cut across one side of his face, casting the other in shadow. "And yet you look like you'd rather be anywhere else." His gaze dropped to my hand on the windowsill, to the knuckles white with pressure. "Tell me, what does 'anywhere else' look like to you?"
The question should have been simple. Instead, it dug at the bruise under my ribs. My voice came out small. "Quiet. Ordinary. A life where I answer to myself and no one else."
"Ordinary can become lonely," he said. "And quiet can be dangerous in ways you don't expect. I offer protection—company—an end to the scraping and the scrounging." He moved closer, and the scent of him—cedar, something like warm apple spice—rolled over me.
"I didn't ask for your protection." My words trembled but didn't break. I turned to face him, and for a second something like pity flickered across his features, then vanished like a candle snuffed.
"You didn't ask for a fate either," he murmured. "I didn't ask for one, at least not before I knew you." He studied my face as if trying to map an expression that would tell him whether I would be a war or a lullaby. "Do you think I like this? Forcing proximity? For the games and the politics?" His voice sharpened, a different instrument. "No. I want you—because you chose to be mine, because you were caught by a law older than either of us."
The room tilted around his words. Age-old law. Fate. The things that had felt abstract in ballrooms and whispered in libraries suddenly had teeth.
"You keep saying you'll 'release me' if you fail," I said, because I needed the anchor of bargaining. "What does failure look like to you? What's the measure?"
He leaned his hip against the dressing table and considered that. "Change your mind," he said simply. "That's my measure. If you choose me—not because you are trapped, but because you want me—then I keep you. If not… I will break what binds you."
A cold prickle crawled along my spine. "And if you refuse?" I pushed. "If you never let me choose at all?"
His expression softened into something I couldn't read. "Then you will make me that I am not, and I will become cruel out of necessity. I do not want that—for either of us." He stepped forward until the space between us was measured in heartbeats.
For all his talk of law and choice, he reached out and tucked a loose curl behind my ear, the action intimate enough to steal breath. "Tonight," he said, softer still, "we begin, not by force, but by company. We will see if proximity breaks what you think you want out of life."
I tasted the words before they landed: we begin. Not you begin, not I take. We.
The manor seemed to inhale around us, patient and watchful. I could feel the weight of portraits, the hush of servants' footsteps far away, the slow ticking of the silver clock that hung up on the wall.
"I don't trust you," I said finally, voice low and honest.
He smiled with no malice this time. "Good," he said. "Distrust keeps you alive. For now." Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, "Sleep. You need to be rested."
When he left the room, the door clicked shut with the finality of a verdict. I slid to the chair by the window and let my head fall back, the ceiling spinning with possibilities and threats braided together.
Behind the curtains, the estate whispered. Ahead—what he called company—waited like a patient predator out to bite me.
Sleep didn't come. I curled on the chair by the window, blanket drawn tight around me, watching the fire sink into embers. The manor breathed differently at night—too still, as if the shadows themselves were listening.
It must have been well past midnight when muffled voices reached my door. I froze, every muscle tensing.
"…she is skittish," his voice said, low but unmistakable.
Another man answered, deeper, edged with impatience. "Skittish or not, my lord, you're wasting time with patience. Wooing, soft words—they'll only drag this out. Bed her, claim her, and the bond will seal. You're running out of time."
My breath hitched.
Silence, then the Alpha's reply, sharp as flint. "I will not force her. She is mine by fate, not by chains. If she comes to me, it will be her choice."
The other man gave a humourless laugh. "Choice? Forgive me, but you speak as though you can afford it. Every day that passes, the risk grows. You know the consequences."
The floor seemed to tilt beneath me. Consequences? Risk of what?
The Alpha's tone dropped, clipped and final. "Enough, Dorian. I said I will win her properly. If I fail, then fate itself will pay the price."
Footsteps shifted, then retreated down the hall. The silence returned, heavier now, as if the walls themselves had swallowed the conversation.
I pressed a hand to my mouth, heart racing. My thoughts tangled, questions clawing at me. What could he be running out of time for? What was this risk that even his Beta feared?
The fire had gone out, leaving the room in shadows. I shivered, suddenly colder than before.
One thing became clear as I got into bed and pulled the blanket tighter around me: whatever trap I had stepped into, it was not only about fate, or bonds, or even him. Something else was at play, something I was too blind to see yet.
And time—his, or mine—was slipping away.