ELARA POV
"Don't move."
That's what the guard said when he shoved me through the doors.
Like I had somewhere to go.
The smell hit me before anything else did. Burnt metal and something underneath it that felt older. Wetter. My stomach turned before my brain even caught up with what I was seeing and then I saw her and my chest did something I can't explain.
Sloane.
She was on her knees in the center of the room. Both wrists tied behind her back, and even from where I stood I could see the rope had already cut into her skin. Her hair was all over her face and she was breathing fast … short, panicked little bursts that I knew. I'd heard that breathing before. When she was scared. When she was trying really hard not to fall apart.
There was a blade pressed to her throat.
"Elara." Her voice cracked on my name.
I took a step forward without thinking.
"Stay where you are." The man holding the blade didn't even look at her when he said it. He was looking at me.
Julian Thorne. High Commander of the Council. He had a face that looked kind … soft edges, careful eyes … and he smiled at me the way people smile at you when they're delivering bad news and they've already decided there's nothing you can do about it.
"Elara Vance." He said my name slow, like he'd been holding it. "Thank you for coming."
I didn't come. They pulled me out of bed and dragged me here. But okay.
The Chamber was packed. Grey-robed council members lined every single wall, hands folded, faces blank. Still. Like they weren't real. None of them were looking at Sloane. None of them cared that she was bleeding or that the stone floor had to be killing her knees.
They were all watching me.
"What did she do?" I asked. My voice came out steady. I don't know how.
"The charge is treason," Julian said.
"She didn't do anything."
"The charge…"
"She's nineteen." I felt my jaw go tight. "She is nineteen years old and she didn't do a single thing and you know that."
Julian tilted his head. Just a little. The smile stayed exactly where it was. "Treason doesn't really have an age limit, I'm afraid."
I wanted to cross that room and hit him. I really did. My hands were already shaking and I pressed them flat against my sides so hard my nails dug into my palms. I breathed through my nose. Looked at my sister instead of him.
Sloane shook her head at me. Tiny. Barely anything. She mouthed the word.
*Don't.*
Don't argue. Don't make it worse. Don't give them a reason.
I heard her. I just couldn't listen.
"What do you want?" I asked.
Julian stepped to the side.
Behind him was a table. Long, black stone, cold-looking even from far. And on it … a document. Old paper, brown at the edges, covered in writing I couldn't read. At the bottom there was a blank line. Next to it, a small glass vial filled with something dark.
Blood-ink.
My stomach dropped all the way to the floor.
Everyone knew what blood-ink was. Once you signed with it, the agreement was real. Sealed. The magic didn't care if you understood what you were agreeing to, it didn't care if you were scared, it didn't care about anything except the signature on the line. You couldn't take it back after. Not ever.
"The Vessel Pact," Julian said. "The terms are simple. You carry the Vane heir. You stay in the Spire until the child is born. After that, Sloane walks free. Your entire family walks free. No charges. No consequences."
Silence.
The torches on the walls crackled. Somewhere behind me a guard shifted his weight and the sound of it felt too loud.
"You're asking me to carry his baby." I said it out loud because I needed to hear how completely insane it sounded. "You want me to carry the Cursed Alpha's child."
"Alpha Vane has already signed his portion of the agreement."
"He agreed to this?"
"He agreed to an heir. The vessel was the Council's selection."
The vessel. Not Elara. Not even a name. Just … a vessel. A thing to put something in.
I looked back at Sloane.
The blade still hadn't moved. Her eyes were wet now, shining under the torchlight, and she was biting the inside of her cheek the way she always did when she was trying not to cry. I knew that. I knew every single one of her tells. I'd spent nineteen years learning them.
Three days ago she threw a piece of bread at my head across the dinner table and we laughed so hard we couldn't breathe. I told her to grow up. She stuck her tongue out at me.
Three days. That's all the time it took for everything to become this.
"And if I don't sign?" I asked.
"The charge stands."
He didn't say the rest of it. He didn't need to. We both knew what treason meant in this world. There was no appeal. No real trial. Just the charge and then after that, nothing.
My hands wouldn't stop shaking.
I walked to the table.
Up close the document was worse. The writing on it was old … older than anything I'd ever seen … and even though I couldn't read a single word of it I could feel it. This low, strange pressure behind my eyes that started the second I got close. Like the paper already knew I was standing there. Like it had been waiting.
I picked up the vial.
The blood-ink smelled sharp. Like burnt coins and something electric all at once. It made my back teeth ache.
I knew it was stupid. I knew Julian's clean simple terms were going to turn into something messy and complicated the second that ink touched paper. I knew that. Fear just … it makes you do things that don't make sense. It makes you sign documents you can't read in a room full of people who want to watch you break.
I didn't look at the paper. Didn't try to make sense of the words. What was the point.
I pressed the vial to the line and signed my name.
The ink spread normal at first. Dark and wet, sinking into the old paper the way ink does. But then it kept going. It curled back on itself and moved along the letters of my name and then…
It glowed.
Gold. Warm and bright and alive-looking. Like someone had lit something up from inside the page.
I yanked my hand back. The vial knocked off the edge of the table and hit the floor and shattered. The sound snapped through the whole room.
Nobody moved.
Every single person was staring at my signature.
"That's…" One of the grey robes started and then just stopped. Forgot how to finish.
Julian's face had gone completely still. That careful smile was gone.
"What is that?" My voice cracked right down the middle. "What just happened? What did I do?"
Nobody answered.
Then the room changed.
Not the walls. Not the light. Just … the feeling of it. Like when a storm is coming and the air gets heavy before the first drop falls and your body knows before your mind does. A presence. Heavy and cold and wrong in a way I felt in my chest before I understood it anywhere else.
I turned around.
He was tall. That was the first thing. Tall and built like someone who had never once in his life been told no and didn't plan to start. All black … no armor, nothing ceremonial, like he'd come from somewhere else entirely and hadn't bothered to dress for this room. Dark hair. Sharp jaw.
And his eyes were wrong.
Grey, like winter sky, like ash. But behind them something moved. Something that didn't stay still. Like smoke caught behind glass. Like whatever lived inside him was wide awake right now and looking directly at me.
Alpha Silas Vane.
He walked past Julian like Julian wasn't there. Past the council members. Past all of it. Stopped at the table and looked down at my signature, still glowing gold on the old paper.
The muscle in his jaw moved.
Then he looked at me.
Really looked. Slow. Like he was checking something, measuring something I didn't have a name for. I don't know what he found but something shifted in his face.
I didn't look away.
I should have. Every piece of me was screaming drop your eyes, make yourself small, be nothing … that was what Omegas did, that was how we stayed safe … but I was too far gone for that right now. Too scared. Too angry. Too tired of today.
So I looked back at him.
Something moved across his face. Gone before I could catch it.
He leaned down. Slow and deliberate. His mouth was close to my ear, and his breath was cold … actually cold, like standing next to an open window in the middle of winter … and when he spoke his voice was low. Not soft. Just quiet in the way that doesn't need to be loud to hit you.
"Don't think this makes you a wife."
One beat of silence.
"You're a cage for my monster. Nothing more."