Chapter 21
Jul 4, 2025
The chains bit into my wrists the whole way back. Iron links carved deep against raw skin, tight enough to bruise bone. Every tug sent white-hot sparks up my arms, but I didn’t flinch. I didn’t scream. What was the point when no one was listening?
The guards didn’t speak either. Their silence was worse than insults—cold, mechanical, like I was a crate being delivered, not a person. I didn’t ask where we were going, because I already knew. Some truths don’t need words.
The moment the wind shifted and I caught the scent—cloying smoke, old pine, and wet earth—I knew.
Valen’s estate.
The gates loomed ahead, tall and jagged, black iron twisted into cruel shapes. Rust bled down the bars like dried blood. The scent of rot and old stone burned my nose as they creaked open. The guards dragged me through gravel and dead leaves. No one met my eyes. They didn’t have to. Their silence was its own kind of cruelty.
They didn’t unchain me. Didn’t even pretend I was human.
They dragged me down a corridor beneath the main hall—lower than the dungeons, deeper than any prison I’d known. The air turned thick and sour, each breath like swallowing mold. Moss clung to the walls. I felt it brushing my shoulders as we descended farther into the earth.
Then a door opened.
Metal screamed against stone.
They threw me inside like garbage.
The cell was barely wide enough to turn over in. Dirt floor. Iron walls that wept condensation. A rusted pipe dripped somewhere behind me. No light. No name. Just darkness and damp and the sound of my own ragged breath.
Time broke into pieces. At first, I tried to count seconds. Then I counted heartbeats. Then I lost the rhythm altogether. I didn’t cry. Crying wasted breath. And I needed to survive.
Two days passed.
No food. No water. Only the sounds above—chairs scraping, boots thudding, voices jeering and laughing. Sometimes footsteps stopped outside my cell, just long enough for hope to flicker.
Then they moved on.
On the third day, I stopped trying to sit up.
My head throbbed. My lips cracked. My skin burned with fever and dirt. The bond inside me pulsed weakly, like a dying ember under too much ash. I curled up on my side, cheek pressed to the cold ground, praying to gods I didn’t believe in that Cassian was still alive.
Then I heard boots on the stairs. Louder this time. Closer. Cruel.
The door slammed open. Light stabbed into the dark.
I didn’t resist when they grabbed my arms. Hands curled into my hair. They dragged me through the winding hallways. My feet scraped against stone. My knees hit marble. I didn’t make a sound.
I saw glimpses of the packhouse—the golden staircase, the blood-stained walls, the firepit still burning. Familiar halls twisted by dread.
Wolves watched from the shadows. Some stared. Some smirked. One looked away.
“Is that her?” someone whispered.
I didn’t lift my head.
They dragged me to the raised dais in the center of the grand hall. My knees slammed against the stone. I crumpled there, shaking, filthy, weightless in my own body.
Valen waited on his throne.
All white furs and smug silence.
He lounged like a king at a feast. His lips curled in amusement as he studied me. His gaze moved over my torn clothes, my bruised skin, my hollow eyes.
“You’re home, Lucy,” he said, like it was a gift.
My name sounded diseased in his mouth.
“And you’re mine again.”
I didn’t speak. I wouldn’t give him anything. Not a sound. Not a plea.
He didn’t care.
He rose slowly, descending the steps with the swagger of someone who knew he had already won. The guards gripped my arms tighter.
“Hold her,” he said.
They did.
He stepped toward the firepit. Lifted something from the coals—long, metal, glowing red.
A branding rod.
I saw the twisted wolf sigil at the end. His crest. His ownership.
“No,” I rasped, voice barely a whisper.
He smiled like a wolf in winter.
Then he pressed the iron to my wrist.
I screamed. I screamed until my voice cracked, until the stone echoed with the sound of my agony. My skin blistered and split. The searing pain crawled up my arm like fire given fangs.
I buckled. My knees gave way.
Still, they held me.
Still, he watched.
The stench of burning flesh filled the air. The sizzling of skin and iron carved the room into silence.
The bond inside me recoiled. Twisted. Flared with pain. It pulsed like it was trying to fight back, trying to sever itself from the violation. But it couldn’t.
Valen leaned in, his breath hot against my ear, voice low and venomous.
“You should’ve chosen me from the start.”
