ya's

I have counted every meal they slid under the door - s

ray I ignored on principle. By the third I was hungry enough to stop being dramatic, and the fourth and fifth I ate sitting on the floor with my back against the bed because

ng by the door right no

child to hand over something they shouldn't have. I gave it to him because the alternative was watching him take it, and I wasn't going to

ceiling still has that water stain shaped like a crooked hand. My books are still on the shelf, lined up in the order I arranged them when I was

ya was an idiot. But

to a cell with a bedspread. It's the silence. Three days of it, pressing against the walls like something physical, filling th

foot

d toward the door, my ears straining for a sound that isn't coming. Footsteps on the hall floorboards. His particular rhythm -

ening fo

ives me something to focus on that isn't the door. White crescents appear in my skin. Four on each hand. I stare at them until they fade, and then I pres

d not

like a table I keep walking into. I wake up and there they are. I eat and there they are. I lie

d not

y sentence. It wraps the whole thing up in a bow - no loose ends, no questions, no room for the kind of doubt that eats y

re's th

e my eyes - thick and wrong, the kind of smoke that doesn't come from accidents. And the question that lives under

entence and plants it in the quiet the way you plant a seed in wet earth, and three days of nothing

t all the way down. But enough that when I press my nails into my palms, I'm not sure anymor

vening, the bo

ply productive use of my time. The click of metal and then the creak of hinges and then Gar

Because my body has spent three days in a space the size

an

eard

em, dirt still under my nails from when I clawed at the ground while they dragged me. I look like a woman w

snacks can make whatever is about to happen feel civilised. Derek sits on one side. Garrett on the other. The chair at th

don't tou

, barely visible, but I see it and I understand it. Derek is not allowed t

. He looks at the table, at the biscuits, at his own hands folded in front of hi

feel the ripples spread outward through my chest, through my stomach

eone calmer. Someone who is watching this happen from across the room ins

it the way he pushes through everything - with force and no finesse. "A real Alpha, Sanya. Bl

p it, and I see Garrett's jaw tighten the way it do

rents' legacy. For the reputation they spent their l

He's invoking

ot once, not for a single day of her life - lost her posture. My father who served her first at every meal. M

hat they would have wanted their daughter sold to a stranger bec

he boy who made up songs about dragons and taught me to whistle with two fingers. I look for him - really look, the

d not

. The boy who braided my hair on school mornings because our mother was alre

th

nts' names to justify decisions that my parents would have burned this house down before making. These are strangers w

him," I say. It'

Briefly. At a council gat

ress

positioned. The

arrangement? The dowr

ctising the art of looking like nothing affects him, and he has perfected it to the point where I sometimes wonde

says. "You'd be his Luna.

hing. I said I'm a perso

rboard settles somewhere overhead. The biscuits

hair because I have nowhere else to go. My brothers control the pack structure. No other pack will take in a she-wolf who publicly defies her guardians - that'

nails into my palms. The cr

s in her early marriage. She cleaned and cooked and served and endured, and through all of it she kept her back straight and her chin level and she

l not

seen, beside a man I have never met, I will do it with my chin up and my should

e,"

settles, something tightens, something closes. I feel it the way you feel

alise. Genuinely holding his breath, as if the possibility of my refusal was something his lungs co

f I've confirmed a delivery time or agreed t

face is the blank, carefully composed face I have been practising since I was old eno

n now - they didn't lock it behind me.

g is still shaped like a crooked hand. The books are still

somewhere in the part of me that I have just locked from the inside - there is a porch. A crooked porch that leans to th

nd proud at t

eet

serves to be shut away, but because carrying it into whatever comes

tone of the B

ure hu

have n

he rice cold, because she-wolves eat last