I managed very little sleep that night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw rain streaking across a courtyard and a grey-haired woman hanging between two guards, and every time I opened them, the black dome in the ceiling corner seemed to be studying me with patient interest.

Sarah arrived at first light carrying a folded charcoal dress and a pair of flat leather shoes. Her bun was as severe as it had been the day before, and her face revealed absolutely nothing.

"The Alpha will receive you in his study within the half hour," she said, laying the dress across the bed. "You will dress quickly and keep your questions to yourself."

"Where did they take the cook last night?" I asked.

Sarah's hands stopped moving on the fabric. "The cook is not your concern, and the sooner you accept that, the longer you will survive in this house." Her eyes slid toward the ceiling corner as she spoke, and a flicker of something tight and frightened crossed her expression before she smoothed it into stone again.

Two guards escorted me through the manor, one walking ahead and one behind, their boots striking the flagstones in a rhythm that made me feel like a prisoner marching toward sentencing. Dark paneled corridors branched in every direction, hung with oil portraits of stern men who all shared the same silver eyes. Servants flattened themselves against the walls as I passed, and not one of them dared to meet my gaze. A towering painting at the head of the grand staircase showed an iron-haired man in a general's coat, one hand resting on the head of a black wolf, and the brass plate beneath it read Alpha King, Founder. He looked as though he had never forgiven anyone for anything.

The study doors were carved with snarling wolves, and they swung open before the guards could knock. Inside, a fire crackled beneath a marble mantel, and shelves of leather-bound books climbed all the way to the ceiling. The air smelled of old paper and expensive bourbon. Two men in grey suits hurried past me with thick folders pressed to their chests, never lifting their eyes, and the doors closed behind them with a heavy thud.

Derek sat behind a desk the size of a small boat, a steel pen moving across a document in his right hand. He wore a black suit and a white shirt buttoned to the throat, and he did not bother to look up.

"Sit," he said.

I stayed where I was. "Someone dragged a woman out into the rain last night, and I would like to know why."

The pen stopped moving. Slowly he raised his head, and those silver eyes settled on me with the full weight of a winter sky. "The cook was questioned by Captain Harlan about an unlocked kitchen door, and she has been returned to her duties. I gave no order to harm her."

"I saw you standing on the east balcony, watching them do it."

Something shifted behind his expression, so briefly that I might have imagined it. "At sundown I was in the vault with the tribunal lawyers, reviewing property records, and six men will swear to it." He set the pen down with great care. "You saw someone, Belinda, but you did not see me."

"That makes no sense at all," I said.

"Then it will have to remain senseless." He folded his hands on the blotter. "Listen closely, because I will not repeat these terms. You will not leave the master wing without an escort. Your phone stays locked in this desk, and you will not ask for it again. You will attend meals whenever I summon you, you will never discuss our arrangement with a member of this pack, and you will not ask me questions about King business."

"And if I break one of your rules?"

"Then I will decide what it costs you." He said it without any heat, the way another man might read a weather report.

I thought of my father then, of the silent phone and the empty weeks behind it, and the words escaped before I could stop them. "Has my father asked about me even once?"

"Your father is content with the bargain he made," Derek answered. "He has not asked about you at all."

The sentence landed exactly where he had aimed it, and I felt it sink beneath my ribs and settle there like a stone. I refused to let him see me flinch. Instead, I reached up and pulled aside the collar of my dress, exposing the purple bruise at the base of my throat.

"Then perhaps you can explain this," I said. "A man with your face put it there yesterday morning, and he laughed while he did it."

Derek rose so suddenly that his chair scraped backward across the floor. He crossed the room in three strides, and before I could retreat, his fingers closed lightly beneath my chin and tilted my head toward the window. He studied the mark the way a surgeon studies a wound, his jaw ticking, his breath gone shallow. Something dark and wounded flared in his eyes, something that looked almost like shame, and then it vanished beneath that glacial calm again.

"Who else has seen this?" he asked quietly.

"Captain Harlan, Sarah, and the cook."

He released my chin as though it had burned him, crossed to a velvet bell cord, and pulled it twice. Sarah appeared in the doorway within seconds, so quickly that I suspected she had been waiting in the corridor all along. "Bring the healer's cream from my private cabinet at once," Derek said without turning, "and tell no one it was meant for the Luna."

"At once, Alpha," Sarah murmured, and she was gone.

I stared at his rigid back. "Why would you hide a bruise you claim you never made?"

"Because bruises tell stories," he said, "and I do not care for the story this one tells." He returned to his desk and picked up the pen again with his right hand, as though our conversation had ended. "If anyone ever enters your room and claims to be me, you will scream until the entire house hears you. Is that understood?"

"Claims to be you?" My heart began to pound. "Then you do believe me."

"I believe that your throat is bruised and that I did not bruise it, and the rest does not concern you." His writing resumed, scratching steadily across the page. I watched the pen glide through his right fingers, and I noticed that his left hand lay curled against the blotter with the knuckles bone white, as if it were holding something back. I could not have said why that detail mattered, only that my instincts filed it away beside the two notes hidden in my mattress.

Sarah returned with a small silver tin and said nothing as she worked the cool, herbal cream into my skin. Derek did not watch her. He watched me, and the intensity of his stare made the room feel smaller with each passing second, as though he were calculating a debt that I could not see.

"You will dine with me tonight at seven in the great hall," he said when she had finished. "Wear whatever Sarah selects, and try to look as though you are not being led to the gallows."

I opened my mouth to refuse, and then I thought of the iron door at the base of the east tower. "I will be there," I said instead.

Captain Harlan escorted me back to the master wing himself, his hand resting on his belt, his boots silent on the thick runner. He was a broad man with a grey-streaked beard and eyes that had seen too many things, and he kept glancing sideways at me as if weighing a decision. We had nearly reached my door when he finally spoke, so softly that the guard behind us could not have heard.

"The Alpha has not taken a single meal in the great hall since the night his father died, Luna. If someone invites you to dine there tonight, I would think very carefully about who is truly sitting at the head of that table."

He opened my door and left me standing alone on the threshold with my pulse racing, because if my husband never dined in the great hall, then someone had either lied to me this morning or was planning to lie to me tonight.

Sarah dressed me for dinner as though she were preparing a sacrifice. The gown she chose was emerald silk, cut low at the shoulders and tight through the ribs, and it made my skin look like candle wax against the dark green. She pinned my hair into a heavy knot at the back of my head, carefully exposing the faded bruise at my throat, then stepped back and studied her work with an expression I could not read.

"Eat only what the footmen carry to both plates," she murmured while she fastened a thin silver bracelet around my wrist. "Drink only what you have seen poured with your own eyes, and do not argue with him tonight, no matter what he says."

"Which one of them will be at the table?" I asked.

Her fingers froze on the clasp. "I am sure I do not understand the question, Luna." She left the room faster than I had ever seen her move.

The great hall turned out to be an enormous chamber with a vaulted ceiling and a table long enough to seat fifty people, though only one end had been laid. Candles burned in silver candelabras, a fire roared in a hearth tall enough to stand in, and the rest of the room dissolved into shadow beyond their reach. At the head of the table, in a high-backed chair carved with wolves, sat a man in a black shirt with the collar open at his throat.

He rose the moment I entered. Then he smiled.

It was a warm, easy, devastating smile, the kind that crinkled the corners of his eyes and softened every hard line in his face, and it transformed my husband into a stranger. My stomach dropped as the first note flashed across my mind in blocky capitals.

"There she is," he said, pulling out the chair beside him with a flourish. "I was beginning to worry that you had climbed out of a window."

"I was told that attendance was not optional," I answered stiffly.

"Everything is optional when you ask nicely." He winked at me, and I sat down because my knees refused to hold me any longer.

Footmen hurried in with platters of roast duck, glazed carrots, and bread still steaming from the oven. The man beside me reached for a decanter of dark red wine, and my entire body went rigid as he filled both glasses with his left hand. Only that morning, the husband in the study had signed documents with his right. I remembered how rigidly he had held his left fist against the blotter, and a cold finger traced down my spine.

"You look pale," he said, sliding my glass toward me. "Is the wine not to your liking?"

"I prefer not to drink tonight."

"Of course you do." He laughed softly, picked up my glass, and drank from it himself before setting it back down. "There, now you have proof that I have not poisoned it. I am far more creative than that, I promise."

I should have stayed silent. Instead the hunger and the exhaustion and the loneliness of two endless days made me reckless, and I let a small, helpless laugh escape before I could swallow it. His eyes brightened with such pleasure that I felt ashamed of myself.

For nearly an hour, he was the most charming man I had ever met. He asked about my favorite books and listened to my answers as if they were precious. He teased me about my habit of straightening the cutlery whenever I felt nervous, a habit I had never mentioned to anyone, and he described the elders as a flock of vultures wearing expensive waistcoats until I was biting my lip to keep from smiling. When I finally relaxed enough to take a sip of water, he leaned his elbow on the table and gazed at me with open, appreciative curiosity.

"You carry six plates along your forearm without spilling a drop," he said, "and you can recite the seating order of every dinner you ever served in that miserable pack house. I find that remarkable."

A chill dragged through me despite the heat of the fire. I had never told anyone in the King manor what I did in my father's house. "Who told you about my work?" I asked slowly.

"I make it my business to know my property," he replied, still smiling.

The word hung between us, and the warmth in the room drained away. He sipped his wine, and when he lowered the glass, his smile had sharpened into something much colder. "You hid something yesterday, little wolf, when you believed that the cameras could not see. A square of paper, folded very small, pushed into the seam of your mattress."

My blood turned to ice. "I do not know what you mean."

"Poor Mara never could keep a secret." He cut into his duck with the knife in his left hand, as unhurried as a man discussing the weather. "She will not carry any more messages for a while. I only wanted you to understand how quickly kindness gets punished in this house."

"You dragged an innocent woman into the rain," I whispered, "just to prove a point?"

"I did it because it was educational." He chewed, swallowed, and gestured with his fork toward my untouched plate. "Eat. A starving wife is no use to anyone."

I pushed my chair back and stood up. My hands were shaking, but my voice came out steadier than I expected. "I want to read the contract that sold me to you. I have a right to know what my life is worth."

His hand shot across the table and closed around mine. The pressure began gently, almost tenderly, and then he squeezed until the bones of my fingers ground together and white sparks burst across my vision. A cry tore from my throat, and I tried to pull away, but he held me there with the patience of a man who had all night.

"Your rights," he said softly, "are whatever I decide they are, and the contract says exactly what I tell you it says." He lifted my crushed hand to his mouth and pressed a slow, mocking kiss against my knuckles. "Now sit down, finish your dinner, and thank me for being so merciful."

I sat down. I did not thank him. I ate three bites of duck that tasted like ash, and when the footmen finally cleared the plates, he dismissed me with a lazy wave of his fingers and a smile that I would see behind my eyelids for the rest of the night.

Harlan walked me back to my room without speaking, and he did not meet my eyes when he locked the door behind me. I sank onto the edge of the bed and examined my hand under the lamplight. Three fingers had already turned a deep, ugly purple, and every beat of my heart throbbed through them like a drum. I thought of the two notes folded in the mattress, and I understood with sickening clarity that both of them had been right. The man at dinner had smiled, and he had broken me. The man in the study had frowned, and he had somehow been frightened.

A knock sounded at the door.

I seized the heavy brass candlestick from the nightstand and held it like a club. The lock clicked, the door opened, and the same face I had been trying to escape all day looked in at me, with the same silver eyes and the same sharp jaw. This time, however, his expression was soft and anxious, and he carried a small tray with a teapot and two cups balanced carefully in his hands.

He smiled at me gently, and that smile was the exact one the first note had warned me about.