LYRA
The cold floor was the first thing I felt.
It pressed against my skin like winter stone, stealing what little warmth remained in my body. For a moment, I stayed still, caught somewhere between sleep and pain.
Then I opened my eyes slowly.
My vision was blurred, the world swimming in pale shapes and shadows. Above me, a high ceiling stretched into view, lined with dark wooden beams carved in old patterns I couldn't make out clearly. A chandelier hung from the center, its crystal drops catching the dim light and scattering it across the room like fractured stars.
I blinked hard.
Once.
Twice.
The shapes sharpened slightly.
A groan slipped from my lips as I tried to sit up. The moment I moved, the room spun violently around me. My stomach twisted, and I had to brace one hand against the floor to stop myself from collapsing again.
Where am I?
For one brief, foolish moment, relief rushed through me.
Had I made it?
Had I somehow crossed into the nearest territory beyond the border?
I had run blindly through the forest, my lungs burning, branches tearing at my skin. I remembered desperation. Fear. Hunger so sharp it had become pain.
Then...
A sharp migraine stabbed through my head, forcing a gasp from me.
Fragments of memory returned in broken flashes.
The fruit.
I had eaten the fruit.
Sweet at first.
Then bitter.
Then poison.
I remembered crawling through the dirt, my fingers clawing at the ground as my body weakened. I remembered reaching the stream near the border.
The icy water against my skin.
My body slipping into it as darkness closed over me.
The poison spreading like fire through my heart.
I shuddered.
How, then, had I ended up here?
I tried to move again. Metal clanged.
My breath caught. I looked down sharply.
Thick iron chains wrapped around my wrists and ankles, their dark links fastened to heavy rings set into the polished floor. They were old but strong, each link engraved with symbols I didn't recognize.
I pulled instinctively.
Nothing.
The chains bit into my skin and held me back with brutal certainty. Panic rose hot and fast in my throat.
"No…"
I tugged harder, my pulse racing.
Still nothing.
Then something strange stirred inside me.
A pressure beneath my ribs.
Heat.
For the briefest second, something glowed in my eyes, a faint golden flicker reflected against the chain near my wrist.
Then it vanished.
I froze.
My breathing came fast and uneven.
The room smelled sharply of herbs and something medicinal. Bitter roots. Burnt leaves. Crushed flowers. My gaze dropped to the floor nearby, where a small clay bowl sat beside me. Thick dark liquid coated the bottom of it, and dried stains marked the stone around it.
A concoction.
Had someone forced it down my throat?
Had it saved me…
or weakened me?
I blinked several times, forcing my vision to steady.
My head still throbbed, but the room slowly came into focus.
I was seated on the floor in the far corner of a chamber unlike any room I had seen before.
The floor beneath me was made of smooth crystal stone, pale and glossy enough to catch the chandelier light in faint silver patterns. The walls were lined with polished grey marble, simple but expensive. Tall narrow windows stood between heavy curtains, though the fabric was drawn shut.
There was no softness here. No comfort, no personal warmth. Only order and control.
Across the room stood a carved wooden table stacked with books, scrolls, and glass bottles filled with strange powders. A fireplace sat cold and empty along the far wall, its ashes long dead.
Nothing about the chamber was overly elegant.
Yet everything inside it whispered wealth.
Power.
And whoever owned it did not waste space on useless beauty.
My throat tightened.
This was not a prison cell. It was worse.
Because someone with status had put me here.
I swallowed hard and tested the chains again, more carefully this time.
The metal gave a small rattle, then tightened.
No escape.
My pulse quickened as fear settled deeper into my chest.
Who found me?
Why save me only to chain me?
A sound echoed suddenly from somewhere beyond the closed door. Footsteps slowly approaching closer.
Every muscle in my body locked. I lifted my chin despite the fear clawing at me.
The footsteps stopped outside, then the handle began to turn.
The handle began to turn.
Every muscle in my body locked.
I glanced around wildly, searching for anything I could use if the person on the other side of that door wanted me dead. A bottle on the table was too far. The clay bowl beside me was useless. The chains around my wrists were heavy enough to bruise but too short to swing properly.
Still, I wrapped my fingers around one of the iron links.
If someone meant to kill me, I would not make it easy.
The lock clicked, then the door opened.
And he walked in.
Lucian.
For a moment, the room seemed smaller with him inside it.
He filled the doorway with the same quiet power I remembered from the gathering, but something about him was different now. His dark hair was slightly disordered, as though impatient hands had been dragged through it more than once. His black shirt was unfastened at the throat, sleeves rolled carelessly to his forearms. He looked less like a ceremonial Alpha and more like a man who had not rested.
His silver eyes found me immediately.
They moved once over the chains, my bruised wrists, the floor beneath me.
Then back to my face. Cold. Sharp and unreadable.
I struggled upright, the chains rattling loudly as I pulled myself straighter against the wall.
His gaze lowered briefly to the movement.
"I wasn't expecting a live body here this morning."
I stared at him, caught off guard by the words.
Wasn't he the one who brought me here?
Why was he speaking as though my survival had inconvenienced him?
Without waiting for an answer, he stepped back and shut the door behind him. I heard the turn of a key before he slipped it into his pocket.
Then he walked fully into the room slowly and deliberately.
He stopped a few feet away from me.
"You should be grateful to me," he said, his voice low and even.
I lifted my head and looked back at him.
Our eyes locked.
For one strange moment, something stirred lightly in my chest.
Not warmth. Not the fierce pull I had felt the night of the gathering.
That was broken now.
Shattered.
What remained was only the ghost of it, a faint ache buried beneath hurt, like embers trapped under ash.
I hated that I could still feel anything at all.
"For?" My voice came out hoarse and rough from thirst. I raised a brow despite the weakness in my body. "Chaining me?"
Still seated on the floor, I lifted my wrists slightly, letting the heavy chains drag and clatter between us.
His jaw tightened.
"You ungrateful bitch," he said coldly. "For saving you twice in one day, even when you didn't deserve it."
A faint laugh escaped me before I could stop it. The sound surprised even me.
"I don't deserve it?"
I looked at him fully now.
Really looked.
At the Alpha who had stood before his entire pack and cast me aside like filth.
"At the gathering, if you had ignored me like every other wolf there, I wouldn't be here."
My throat tightened, but I forced the words out.
"You were the one who walked toward me."
His expression did not change.
"You were the one who touched me."
The ache in my chest deepened.
"You were the one who gave me hope…"
I swallowed hard. Only then did I let the last words fall.
"…just to humiliate me."
Something sharp twisted inside me as I said it, but I refused to let it show on my face.
I would not bleed for him again.
For the first time since entering, something flickered in Lucian's eyes.
Not pity. Not anger. Something darker and more dangerous.
He took one slow step closer.
The air in the room shifted with him.
"You think this is about your feelings?" he said quietly.
The chains around my wrists suddenly felt much heavier.
His gaze dropped to my chest, then rose back to my eyes.
"You have no idea what you became the moment I rejected you."
A chill slid down my spine.
He crouched in front of me then, bringing himself level with where I sat on the floor.
"And if I hadn't dragged you out of that river," he said softly, "you would already be dead."
My breathing faltered.
River.
So it had been real and not just a mere memory.
The poison.
The water.
The darkness.
I searched his face for mockery and found none.
Only tension wound tight beneath his skin.
Then his hand lifted slowly, toward the chain locked around my wrist.
I went still.